The first time Raven Johnson met Anthony Edwards, she was a shy ninth-grader who promptly told the most electrifying basketball prospect in Atlanta that she could beat him one-on-one. That audacity tells you everything you need to know about who Raven Johnson is — and why their decade-long friendship has quietly become one of the most compelling origin stories in American professional sports.
Their connection was forged under Atlanta trainer Justin Holland, who recognized immediately that these two teenagers shared the same combustible DNA.
“She came into the gym with that exact same energy as me,” Edwards said. “For real, she was like a younger version of myself out there.”
Holland describes their bond with a simplicity that cuts deeper than any analytical framework: “Next thing I know, she’s calling him son, and he’s calling her his daughter.”
From that unlikely dynamic grew something extraordinary. Six days a week, late nights in the gym, sharpening craft and building a friendship that would outlast every obstacle both careers threw at them. When Edwards went No. 1 overall in the 2020 NBA Draft, Johnson was at his Atlanta draft party, quietly absorbing everything. “I thought — this is going to be me one day at a draft,” she said. She committed to South Carolina months later.
The friendship’s most defining moment came in 2023’s aftermath — when Caitlin Clark’s infamous wave-off of Johnson exploded across social media and Johnson publicly admitted the cruelty that followed nearly ended her career. Edwards called. His message was unvarnished and precisely what she needed.
“Don’t let this bring you down. You know who you are… get in the gym and work on your weakness. Nothing’s going to be handed to you.”
Johnson’s response to that message is the most revealing thing she has said about their relationship: “That just tells me he’s watching and he’s paying attention to the little details. He cares.”
She survived. She won a national championship. She went No. 10 overall to the Indiana Fever — and Edwards called again. “He told me just, ‘You work for things like this and you’re living out your dream.’ He told me that he’s really proud of me.”
At Fever media day, Johnson sat in her No. 3 jersey wearing Edwards’ signature Adidas AE 2s on her feet. The image was almost impossibly symbolic.
“It seems crazy to look at how far we’ve come, but at the same time, it’s really not,” Edwards said.
Johnson, characteristically, refused to let the sentimentality go unchallenged: “I taught him everything he knows. His basketball skills, his drip. We’re still working on the drip, though.”
Two kids from Atlanta. One gym. One trainer. Limitless belief. “We started from the bottom of the bottom,” Johnson said. “It means a lot.” 🐓🏀
