When Harvey Johnson tells Duke University basketball star Monique Currie how to stay in the game, she listens. "Always, in the back of your mind, you must be listening to your body," Johnson told the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year during a recent face-to-face. "You've got to be honest about this."

 

Johnson is no coach. He's a shoe wizard. It was his magic that kept Currie on the court this season despite two stress fractures.

 

Currie wowed crowds all year with her quick hands, strength on the boards and a reliable clutch shot. But pain hobbled her during a game against the University of Miami in early February. Scans found cracks in the guard's second and third metatarsal bones in her left foot.

 

Instead of benching Currie for six weeks, Duke doctors and trainers summoned Johnson, a certified orthotist. He uses a novel system to help achieve an athlete's dream: allowing those with stress injuries play and heal at the same time. One Duke researcher is so intrigued she intends to study Johnson's products in her laboratory.

 

"Harvey's been doing this thing that seems to be working, but we don't understand how," said Robin Queen, coordinator of sports biomechanics at Duke's Michael W. Krzyzewski Human Performance Research Lab.

 

It takes Johnson awhile to explain what he does. A tall, thin man visibly passionate about his work, he can bury a listener with quick-fire references to sagittal, frontal and transverse planes or ankle-joint dorisiflexion.

 

Sometimes he simply flaps his hands to emphasize the intangibles he makes use of: a craftsman's experience, an artist's gifts.

 

Foot meets force

Johnson builds on principles common in his field, which he entered more than 30 years ago at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute in Georgia, where Franklin Roosevelt convalesced from polio so long ago. Orthotists create aids to correct deformities, diminish pain or to simply help people walk.

 

Johnson understands how force moves from the ground into the foot when a person walks, runs or twists. And he builds things -- orthotics, fracture braces, even new innards for athletic shoes -- to redirect the resulting pressure away from tender spots. That holds for the disabled people he treats and for Division I athletes.

 

"I alter how the foot and ground interact in the same way an air bag alters how your body interacts with a steering wheel during an accident," he said.

 

While working for Duke Health System into the 1990s and more recently in private practice, Johnson has protected the feet of many a big name at Duke. Basketball players Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, Elton Brand, Carlos Boozer, Krista Gingrich and Lindsey Harding all received his attention.

 

His stature soared in 2001, when Gingrich suffered a stress fracture and Johnson proposed building a clamshell-shaped brace along with an orthotic to protect her foot. He put all that into an oversized game shoe he took apart and stiffened up. That further shielded her foot from poundings on the court.

 

It worked. Gingrich healed while playing. Harding got similar relief the following year. Coaches from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, Texas Tech University and elsewhere started sending male and female players Johnson's way.

 

Kamie Ethridge, associate head coach at Kansas State University, brought three of her elite players to Johnson last year, hoping he could prevent recurrent fractures and other bone troubles.

 

So far so good. One now plays professionally. The other two are preparing for the NCAA Tournament. "They have no issues. The kids love him. They feel great on their feet," Ethridge said.

 

Made by hand

The bulk of Johnson's work takes place in a tiny basement "laboratory" in his house overlooking the Eno River outside Hillsborough. There, Johnson keeps hundreds of plaster of paris foot molds stacked like firewood.

 

He starts by hand-making molds, rejecting computerized gear now popular in his field. The molds help him design everything else, which he builds with high-tech materials such as fiberglass mixed with nylon resin and carbon. Each layer gets baked, then adhered on a vacuum frame. A grinding machine hones the final shape.

 

When Johnson takes apart athletic shoes to make them bend and twist less, he must keep lift at the toes and heels so when feet strike the ground, players aren't further injured. A carpenter's angle helps him achieve precise angles.

 

"I don't guess at what I do," Johnson said.

No complaints

Since doctors diagnosed her injury, Currie has worn a Johnson clamshell, orthotic and altered Nike basketball shoe on her left foot at practice and at play. To fit all Johnson's creations, she wears one size 11 1/2 rather than her normal size 10 game shoe.

 

Free from the injured list, Currie has remained the uncontested leader of the Duke team, ranked seventh in the country in the latest AP poll. Averaging 17.6 points per game, Currie is among the top women players nationally in scoring, rebounding, assists and steals.

 

The junior feels different in Johnson's gear. She can't cut quite as she likes, and her foot gets fatigued in that clamshell.

 

But she has no complaints. One of only 10 players nationally selected to the U.S. Basketball Writers' Association All-America team this week, Currie just wants to play.

 

"It means a whole lot to me," she said.