Almost halfway through the season, albeit just one game into SEC play, plenty of questions surround Johnell Davis — Arkansas basketball’s Million Dollar Man.
The heralded transfer has come nowhere close to living up to the expectations that followed him from Florida Atlantic as a consensus top-3 player in the portal, with Saturday’s performance at Tennessee being the latest example.
The only statistic Davis recorded the first 15-plus minutes he was on the floor against the No. 1 Vols and their top-ranked defense was a personal foul. He ended up grabbing a couple of rebounds and committing a turnover, but finished with no points on 0 of 4 shooting in 25 minutes off the bench.
Despite his playing time dropping from just 32.2 minutes in his last season at FAU to 29.8 minutes for the Razorbacks, Davis’ numbers are nowhere close to what they were when he was the AAC co-Player of the Year for the Owls:
| STAT | FAU (2023-24) | Arkansas (2024-25) |
|---|---|---|
| MIN | 32.2 | 29.8 |
| PTS | 18.2 | 8.4 |
| FG% (att./game) | 48.3% (13.0) | 44.0% (7.0) |
| 3PT% (att./game) | 41.4% (4.1) | 35.8% (4.4) |
| FT% (att./game) | 85.7% (4.5) | 88.9% (0.8) |
| REB | 6.3 | 3.7 |
| AST | 2.9 | 1.7 |
| STL | 1.4 | 0.8 |
| TO | 2.8 | 1.9 |
It’d be easy to blame the drop in production on level of competition, but Arkansas has played only five high-major opponents so far. If anything, Davis’ numbers should be inflated by the non-conference slate at this point of the season.
He also has a proven track record against those kind of teams. Just last season, Davis averaged 20.8 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.8 steals across six games against teams from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC.
With the Razorbacks, though, he’s reached double figure just five times — and three of those were against teams ranked outside the top 250 on KenPom. His season high is 16 points against Maryland-Eastern Shore, which checks in at No. 356 out of 364.
So what exactly is going on with the guy many expected to be a major key for Arkansas to make a potential NCAA Tournament run?
The Johnell Davis Injury Question
Health is probably near the top of the reasons for Johnell Davis’ rough start to the season.
The Gary, Ind., native missed a good chunk of the preseason with a wrist injury and was clearly still hampered by it during the Razorbacks’ two exhibition games against Kansas and TCU.
It wasn’t too much of a concern early on because everyone believed he’d improve as he got healthier and began to mesh with his new teammates.
Not only has that latter part failed to materialize, but questions linger about the status of his wrist. Davis sat out Arkansas’ last two non-conference games, essentially giving him three weeks of rest.
With 14 games in the books and SEC play officially here, some — like Chris Lee of Southeastern 16 — are beginning to wonder if he’ll ever get to 100%.
“It happens in baseball all the time,” Lee said after Saturday’s game. “If a guy gets a wrist injury early in the season, he’s pretty much screwed most of the time. I’ve been worried about this for a long time and I just don’t see it.”
Lee’s suggestion is to give him even more rest in an effort to eventually get him at least close to full strength.
“If he had all that time preseason to rest and it didn’t help, how does it help it playing him through this and that?” Lee said. “I mean, at this point I just shut the kid down for a couple of weeks and see if it’s better on the other side. I mean, because they do have other guards as we know.”
This is a solid idea, in theory. Think back to Eric Musselman’s first season, when Isaiah Joe missed five games so he could get a minor knee procedure and return in time for a stretch run.
The problem is that this year’s SEC is more loaded than ever before and Arkansas could conceivably dig itself too big of a hole while waiting on Davis to get back in the lineup. Plus, while Boogie Fland and DJ Wagner have been fantastic, the Razorbacks aren’t built to sustain long-term injuries because of John Calipari’s nine-man rotation.
There’s also the possibility of the injury having more of a psychological impact on Davis than physical at this point, as he may be more hesitant to attack the basket or draw any kind of contact. If that’s the case, playing through would seem to be the best option — similar to a running back recovering from a torn ACL needing to learn to trust his knee to make cuts again.
Searching for a Role with Arkansas Basketball
Perhaps the best-case scenario for Arkansas is that the coaching staff is still searching for the best way to use Johnell Davis on this team and he just hasn’t quite found his footing, even if the wrist is healed.
As Calipari likes to point out, the Razorbacks haven’t been able to scrimmage much this season because of various injuries and illnesses throughout the year, dating back to the preseason.
With a completely new roster, those practices were going to be critical to ironing out rotations and roles. Not getting them delayed the growth of the team as a whole and might be impacting Davis more than most.
A closer look at his statistics reveals some potential issues.
Most notably, Davis appears to be settling for 3s as his primary offense. So far this year, a whopping 63.1% of his field goal attempts have been from beyond the arc. Over his last two years at FAU, it was 33.0%.
The lack of aggression has led to a side effect of Davis not getting to the charity stripe. He’s taken just 9(!!) free throws all year, averaging just one attempt per 40 minutes. That’s a stark contrast to his final two years with the Owls, when he averaged 5.5 attempts per 40.
Curtis Wilkerson of Inside Arkansas pointed this out as the most glaring issue he’s seen from Davis so far.
“(Those numbers) tell me his creation, his playmaking, some of the things that made him a special talent, they’ve been non-existent,” Wilkerson said on The Pod at the Palace. “Those are the best attributes he had before transferring to Arkansas. Yeah, he was a 40% three-point shooter last year, some pretty good volume, but that wasn’t the half of it of him as a player.”
There could be several reasons behind that, including the wrist physically or mentally altering the way he plays or simply not fitting into the team just yet because of his limited practice availability.
One solution proposed by Wilkerson is to keep Davis on the bench and use him in a sixth man role, similar to JD Notae on Eric Musselman’s first Elite Eight team. This would be familiar to him, too, because he was actually the CUSA Sixth Man of the Year when FAU made the Final Four.
By subbing him in for Boogie Fland — or even D.J. Wagner — rather than starting him alongside the Razorbacks’ two ball-dominant guards, it could almost force Davis to regain that “alpha” mentality.
“If Johnell Davis is going to refuse to demand the basketball, I think they have to force it into his hands strategically a little bit,” Wilkerson said. “Put him in, have him initiate the offense, force the ball into his hands, force playmaking back into his DNA, force him into attack mode.”
Fland can’t stay on the bench too long, but giving the freshman more breaks so he can stay fresh in the grueling SEC wouldn’t be the worst idea. That could even mean taking some of the pressure off of him when he is on the court.
Is NIL an Issue?
When he signed with Arkansas basketball, it was understood that Johnell Davis came with a hefty price tag. According to Jeff Goodman, he received an NIL deal worth “north of $1 million.”
That has led to some fans asking a truly frightening question: Is he just mailing it in and collecting a paycheck?
To be fair, Arkansas fans are understandably scarred by what unfolded with KJ Jefferson in football, but he is likely the exception, not the norm, in the era of NIL.
While a seven-figure payday is nothing to scoff at, it pales in comparison to what Davis hopes to make in the NBA, where the minimum salary is about $1.16 million for rookies — and only goes up each year a player is in the league.
This is a guy who actually tested the NBA Draft waters before officially heading to Fayetteville for his final season of college eligibility. His plan was likely to use this year to learn from a Hall of Fame coach and prove his talents in the best conference for college basketball in the country, vaulting him up draft boards for 2025.
The way things are playing out, though, Davis’ draft stock is plummeting. Why would he be doing that intentionally? Is $1 million in the bank really worth a player costing himself millions in the immediate future?
There are plenty of college athletes making good money while also producing. Tennessee’s Chaz Lanier was also a top-10 portal prospect and is probably being well compensated, and he’s been one of the best players in the country this year.
To suggest NIL as the cause for Davis’ struggles is silly talk, and why it’s much more likely they’re tied to the points laid out above.
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Inside Arkansas’ Curtis Wilkerson goes more in-depth on the Johnell Davis situation here:
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