The Miami Heat have a new secret weapon: Derrick Jones Jr. using his freakish athleticism to fly in for offensive rebounds. It seems like, in the month of December, you can count on a few buckets per game from him just going in there and grabbing the ball off a miss because no one else is anywhere close to his altitude. It’s hard to box him out because he’s often streaking in from the perimeter and even if you got a body on him he’d just jump over you anyway.
Hopefully me making this video doesn’t spoil the secret for the Heat. The rest of the league should be scouting them well enough to notice Jones’ offensive rebound numbers the last few weeks, right? This isn’t the 50’s anymore. Teams care about winning and gaining any edge they can. So I expect this fun experiment to get gameplanned for at some point and come to an end. Unless teams are already gameplanning and they literally can’t do anything about the stick-figure elevating his head above the rim just to grab a rebound.
Oh, and those drives he had ending in finger-rolls reminded me of Giannis. Granted, everything reminds of Giannis (like the mini cactus I have growing on my windowsill, I even put a little #34 Bucks jersey on it), but it’s still cool to see. Every team needs a vaguely Giannis-esque player to add a little pizzazz to the proceedings.