The benefits of the WNBA were plenty. The professional platform. The endorsements. The chance to grow her game against the top talent in the world. But there was another feeling Johnson couldn’t ignore — something that kept pressing at her as she weighed her options.

Mulkey gave Johnson and Brooks space to work through it. Even from afar, the coach had a sense of where the conversation might land.

“I never worried about it,” Mulkey told ESPN. “I knew the quality of person and family that I signed, and she wanted that college degree. And she’s not going to leave somewhere where she’s got unfinished business.”

“I didn’t want to go out on a loss when I didn’t have to,” Johnson says. “If I have another year, why not try to go out as a champion? I owe it to LSU. I owe it to Baton Rouge. A lot of players don’t stay four years anymore. I’m loyal to the soil.”

She had every reason to feel ready for the next level. She started all 36 regular-season games, averaging 11.0 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.9 assists and winning SEC Freshman of the Year during the 2022-23 NCAA title run. After two more Elite Eight appearances, she could have walked away content after her junior season.

“Her mindset is, ‘I’m going to get better,'” Mulkey says. “Anything scouts question, she wants to show she can do. … Her work ethic is unbelievable.”

Over the past three seasons, Johnson has become the steadying presence on a roster that has turned over constantly. Teammates graduated, left for the WNBA or transferred, while new stars arrived. Through all of it, Johnson has remained the program’s anchor and the last tie to the championship team.

“No matter who transferred, no matter who came in, no matter who left, I was always [me],” Johnson says. “I think that’s what just made me so good. I’m always able to adapt.”

Leaving LSU never felt like a real option.

“That don’t even sound right. I’m a Tiger ’til I die,” she says.

“She doesn’t think the grass is greener somewhere else, even on her bad days, even when she’s aggravated at Coach,” Mulkey says. “She understands you just don’t bail out.”

JOHNSON SITS ON her couch in gray sweats, a bright orange Supreme hoodie and a colorful headscarf, flipping through a notebook. She breezes by sketches she has drawn for a clothing line, mock-ups for what her record label logo could look like and rap lyrics she has scratched down.

“I’m always jotting things down that I want to do,” she says, scanning the pages. “Music, clothing, basketball, housing, beauty, film, TV. Different lists all at once, but it just makes it seem a little more attainable, you know?”

Johnson stops flipping and points to words on the page.

“Act like who you want to become,” she reads. She sets new goals for herself each month and outlines them in her journal, whether it’s a new task she wants to try or something she wants to improve on in basketball.

At this stage of her career, Johnson understands how to use her time wisely. But it took a while to find the right balance.

Early in her freshman season, Johnson would arrive at practice three minutes before it started with her shoes still in her hands. She still got her work in and found success, but Mulkey swiftly pointed out the nonchalant approach couldn’t continue.

But Johnson overcorrected. She’d wake up at 5 a.m. every day to get in a workout, but instead of that helping her performance, it ran her ragged. She missed the SEC tournament last season because she had shin splints — what she now says was the result of her not taking care of her body.

“I had to tell her many times, put the ball down … you’re doing too much,” Mulkey says.

Johnson finally has struck the right chord between studying the game, training and rest. She is intentional with her time, and the steps she takes to get better. This basketball season, “preparedness” is the word she has plastered above her locker, and it’s what’s guiding her.

It’s evident in the pages she fills in her countless journals, writing down everything she wants to accomplish in her life, as well as just what she needs to get done that day. She details the exact tasks she needs to complete to achieve it all.

Wake up and meditate. Breakfast. Ten pushups, 50 situps. Do laundry. Load the dishwasher. Feed Champ (Johnson’s pet bearded dragon).

“I still go through the small stuff, too. I’m proud that I put my clothes in a washer and dryer. Even though you do great big things, you still have to be regular,” Johnson says.

“You could look at it and be like, this is too much, or you could look at it and be like, bro, this is everything I ever asked for. That’s how I look at it. Like Flau, you’re literally the only person in the world that’s doing what you’re doing. And so I take pride in that. And when I feel like I can’t go on anymore, I kind of just think about that: Nobody else is doing this. Of course it’s hard.”

“BOBBY!” JOHNSON EXCLAIMS as she turns into LSU assistant coach Bob Starkey’s office at 7:50 a.m. for a 30-minute film session. They meet every weekday at 8 a.m. sharp.

Starkey is a legend in his own right. The Tigers’ associate head coach joined Mulkey in Baton Rouge ahead of their national championship season. He was also a part of the staff that took LSU to five straight Final Fours during the Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles years.

It was Johnson’s idea to have these sessions with Starkey — she knows how his tutelage can shape her development. Sometimes she sends him plays from a game she wants to go over ahead of time. On this day, they go through game tape from the night before, their Nov. 17 matchup against Tulane.

“Oh, I was perfect in this first half,” Johnson says as the tape begins.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Starkey replies. There’s a long pause of silence. “You did have a good first half, though.”

Starkey spends the next half hour picking apart Johnson’s game. He highlights her patience. He points out that she had too many right-hand drives. He compliments the improvements she has made this year, being in stance when she’s looking for help, instead of relaxing too much. He teases Johnson for turning over the ball because she said she was too speedy. He lays into her for missing too many free throws. He celebrates her presence on the board.

“That’s an NBA move,” he says. “You can be the best relocator in the league.”

As Starkey bounces back and forth from the good and the bad, Johnson’s posture switches from sitting up straight and smiling to slumping down in disgust. But she clings to every word.

“[This year is] going to go faster than she thinks,” Starkey tells ESPN. “She’s going to blink and it’s going to be senior day. She’s going to blink and she’s going to be taking off the uniform for the very last time. … One of the things that we preach around here is that today matters. Every day matters.”

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The fire that drives LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson

LSU guard Flau’jae Johnson is on a mission to finish the journey her father started before he was fatally shot in May 2003.

This year, Johnson wants to improve her playmaking and shooting efficiency. Starkey sends her film of Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry to study how he moves without the ball to find open shots — in particular, how he relocates himself after handing the ball to a teammate.

“We’re trying to get our perimeter players when they feed the post to relocate so they get a touch back,” Starkey explains.

After her film session with Starkey, Johnson walked to the basketball facilities to get treatment. She tweaked her ankle in New Orleans the night before and needed to get it checked before team film. Next was practice.

It’s grueling on this day. Mulkey has her players run two sprints in 12 seconds, representing the 12 free throws they missed the night before. If someone fails to make it by the buzzer, that sprint doesn’t count. By the end of the exercise, they’ve done 15, and players are physically pulling teammates across the finish line to ensure they all make it. Next, they split into pairs to shoot free throws. Three minutes are set on the clock, and no group can miss two in a row. If they do, the clock restarts. About 20 minutes after the drill starts, they finally finish.

Johnson makes her way out of the gym and toward the weight room. She’s tired and annoyed. Her teammates are too. But as soon as they turn the corner into the weight room, the air — and their attitude — instantly becomes lighter.

In between chest presses and cable rows, they dance to GloRilla’s “Hollon.” They break into laughter before locking back in. The back and forth between letting loose and staying completely focused is a balance Johnson is always trying to strike.

“My energy controls how practice goes,” Johnson says. “My energy controls how games go. So it’s like, can you be a leader while trying to make your dreams come true of going to the WNBA?”

MULKEY CALLED JOHNSON into her office during the first week of practice to make sure she knew what kind of leader she had to be this season. This year, it was going to be her team.

“It felt damn near impossible at first,” Johnson says.

Mulkey first looked to Johnson to lead during the Tigers’ tournament run last NCAA season. She wasn’t ready.

“I don’t think Flau’jae knew how to lead,” Mulkey says.

Up until that point, Johnson had always had a veteran player above her; this time, everyone looked to her. Mulkey called Johnson into her office and told her to find her voice.

Johnson tried, but her form of feedback or criticism was harsh — asking her teammates why they would make a dumb pass, or snipping at them to get locked in.

The switch flipped for Johnson this past summer when she was with Team USA in Chile at the FIBA Women’s AmeriCup. On a roster with Olivia Miles, Madison Booker and Hannah Hidalgo, Johnson’s playing time was slashed. She averaged 11 minutes in the seven games she played and logged just three minutes in each of the semifinal and championship games.

“I got to see a different perspective,” Johnson says. “I got to see how the person on the end [of the bench], how they felt. How can I still lift them up?”

During AmeriCup, Johnson watched the Netflix documentary series “Golden,” following the U.S. men’s national team through the 2024 Olympics. She paid especially close attention to Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum’s storylines — stars for their respective NBA teams who didn’t crack Team USA’s rotation.

“It gave me some time here to understand why somebody might be feeling a certain type of way and how to help them through that,” Johnson says.

Johnson’s acceptance of a bench role with the U.S. women was a crucial moment in her maturity. In the past, she took offense to any criticism, seeing anything but good feedback as an insult.

“She definitely has responded to constructive criticism better,” Mulkey says. “She doesn’t take it personally anymore. She just takes it as a challenge.”

LSU BREEDS SUPERSTARS. Angel Reese. Fowles. Augustus. As Johnson prepares to graduate — she’s majoring in interdisciplinary studies with minors in business, communication studies and entrepreneurship — she wants to leave her mark on this program too.

She listed her best accomplishments: being a successful rapper, winning a national championship, being an All-American, being an All-SEC-caliber player, and staying at LSU for all four years.

But that is just the start of the legacy she wants to leave in Baton Rouge, as a baller, rapper, someone at the forefront of the NIL era.

“I feel like I’ve done something nobody else has done,” she says. “I really left my mark. … It’s going to be able to be something that players or, you know, just young girls and boys try to replicate for a while.”

Now, she’s looking to add to what people think of when they say the name Flau’jae Johnson. Two-time national championship. WNBA lottery pick. Scratch that — No. 1 draft pick (she’s projected at No. 5 in ESPN’s latest mock draft). She also wants a No. 1 hit. She wants her albums to go platinum.

She envisions a building with her name on it in New York City, where she can employ hundreds of people, giving them a stable job and income. Clothing lines. Shoe deals. Beauty products. She wants to do it all.

But more than any of the tangible accomplishments she wants to achieve, her biggest dream is to have an impact that she doesn’t even directly know about.

“I always tell people, success for me is like changing people’s lives that I’ll never meet,” Johnson says. “I hope that my reach is that big. I hope my impact is that big, that I really change lives and inspire people that I probably never get to see. That’s going to be my pinnacle of success.”

The aspirations are bold, just like her personality and the way she plays. For some, such success over multiple industries might sound unrealistic, but it’s the same level of organized chaos that Johnson has not only lived in, but thrived in.

“I don’t want it to go to her head,” Starkey says, a sly grin spreading across his face. “But they’re going to make a movie about her one day. I am sure about that.”