LIVERMORE — Quaran Johnson Sr. didn’t lose his edge when he stepped away from coaching.
He just traded dry-erase markers and scouting reports for diapers, burp cloths and the quiet, exhausting work of being present – the kind that doesn’t come with a scoreboard or a final horn.
For the first winter in a decade, the Granada boys basketball coach wasn’t diagramming late-game sets or chasing section and state banners.
He was chasing time. Time with his wife. Time with his kids. Time he didn’t realize had been slipping away until the cheers stopped and the gym lights went dark.
Johnson had just taken Granada to its second straight NorCal Division I title game in 2024 when he chose to walk away, unsure if the sacrifice was still worth the cost.
Winters had belonged to basketball for 10 years. Holidays missed. Family moments postponed. And with his oldest son, Quaran Johnson Jr., still a year away from enrolling at Granada, Johnson decided to step back for the 2024-25 season.
The Matadors regressed without him. The Livermore school lost its juice, reverting back to the bottom of the East Bay Athletic League where it belonged for decades before Johnson arrived as a head varsity coach seven years ago.
But the distance away from basketball gave Johnson clarity.
“I never even considered coming back last year. I was fully invested in my two boys and my newborn,” Johnson said. “They watched me coach everyone before them. I told myself that it was time to dedicate this year to them.”
Now, with Johnson Jr. in high school and running the show as Granada’s freshman starting point guard, Johnson is back on the sideline, guiding a team that looks built to return to its championship form.
But this time, Johnson is not coaching from obligation. He’s doing it from balance, perspective and the joy of finally blending basketball with family life.
“There were times where I felt like I didn’t know whether I was going to come back,” Johnson said. “My life has been dedicated to basketball since I was five years old and now I have a family, and I want to do things with them. I want to travel with them. I want to go on vacation with them. I want to spend time with them. I want to do things that normal families do. But here I am a young dad, and I’m always coaching and mentoring other young men. I just wanted to spend time just doing it with my own kids. I thought that it was really challenging every year.
“But me being here at Granada was for the bigger picture because my boys got to go through it all. They got to see all my players as big brothers and they got to experience all the amazing years we had. So now that I have my son here with me, he feels like these are his big brothers. This is our home.”
A Philadelphia native, Johnson’s Bay Area roots go back to his playing days at Ohlone College in Fremont. He got his start at Granada as the JV coach in 2015 and was elevated to the head varsity role three years later.
Before he stepped down, Johnson led Granada to three straight North Coast Section Open Division postseason berths, a Division I title game appearance and a NorCal Division I championship. His 2023 team that included current St. Mary’s big man Andrew McKeever and Vanderbilt standout Tyler Harris got all the way to the Division I state title game before the Matadors fell to Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks.
But after taking Granada to its second consecutive NorCal Division I title game in 2024, Johnson said he made the choice to step away. At the time, his newborn child arrived midseason with Johnson Jr. in seventh grade and his second oldest son in elementary school.
For Johnson, it wasn’t the grind of being a father and a basketball coach that withered away at his spirit. It was the time away from middle school games and family functions that weighed on him the most.
Without Johnson on the sidelines, the Matadors went a disappointing 8-19 and missed the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.
While Johnson was on leave, he couldn’t stay away from coaching long. He used the time to coach Johnson Jr. during his eighth-grade year and was still dialed into what Granada had going.
“He was still my coach during the AAU season, but we were always dialed into Granada games,” Johnson Jr. said. “Everything was pretty much the same. My dad was always a great coach, but he’s been a great dad all of my life.”
Even in the distance, the game never fully let go of Johnson. Not because of banners or championship trophies yet to be raised, but because of what was in front of him.
Coaching his sons had always been the end point, the finish line that Johnson quietly measured every season against.
Stepping away didn’t erase that dream. It clarified it.
So after a rebuilding season, time well spent with his family and Johnson Jr. enrolling at Granada as a freshman, everything aligned for Johnson to come back.
But while Granada returned talented players such as big man Brandon Hahn, bouncy forward Damien Miles and three-and-D wing Cordell Taylor, Johnson knew he needed to rebuild what was once a strong culture that propelled Granada to one of the top teams in the East Bay.
“In so many ways, they needed last season,” Johnson said. “They knew what it felt like to lose and the residue that stayed with them just didn’t sit right. So this season is all about getting back to our culture. It didn’t continue when I stepped down, and so we have to get back to that and the rest will take care of itself.”
Johnson’s presence has already lifted Granada back into contention.The Matadors went 12-3 in nonleague play with impressive wins over Campolindo, Woodcreek, Acalanes, Fremont-Oakland, Oak Ridge and St. Francis.
“The culture here is just different from last year,” Hahn said. “We work a lot harder. Last year, it kind of felt like we were by ourselves, but we’re just working so much harder than before.”
Johnson won’t measure this season on whether Granada can bring back the glory it had when he left.
The wins matter as does the culture, but so does presence – on the sidelines, in the stands and at home.
Stepping away didn’t diminish his voice. It revealed how deeply it carried in that locker room. What Granada lost in his absence clarified what it needed, and what Johnson almost walked away from for good.
Now, back where he belongs – with his son running the show and a program rediscovering itself – Johnson coaches with a wider lens. One not just shaped by the X’s and O’s, but by the understanding of how much his presence means to the players in front of him.
“It let me take a step back and get a whole perspective on how it impacts these kids,” Johnson, who welcomed his fourth child just before the season started, said. “I could see that the culture, the fire, the passion, the energy, the belief in themselves that they had when I was there, it wasn’t there last year at all, and that was the most hurtful. That was the most disappointing thing, but it also gave me a sense that these kids really believe in me. They really care about what I say. They really value my opinion, and I’m really helping them in more ways than just basketball.”
