The best part about Derrick Jones Jr. getting real minutes (as opposed to garbage-time minutes) on the Heat is the possibility of a hyper-entertaining DJJ Dunkilation at the end of season gets more and more likely with each minute of on-court action. I couldn’t really care less if he’s helping the Heat or hindering them right now. Maybe his energy and hustle is a net positive for the team. Maybe he’s so useless on offense that he tanks every lineup he plays with. For my purposes, it doesn’t matter. All I care about is that Spo gives him enough minutes to produce an adequate number of slam dunks.
When I think of high-flying dunk machines who never really caught on in the NBA, I think of Jeremy Evans. He played parts of seven seasons, but only ever got consistent minutes in one of those seasons. DJJ has already played about half the total minutes that Evans got in the NBA, and he’s not even as old (21) as rookie Evans was (23). So, the low bar of “having a more successful career than Jeremy Evans” is very attainable for DJJ as long as he keeps playing for coaches who have a fetish for high-flying slammeroonis, or have gaping holes in their rotations that can only be filled by a skinny leaper who doesn’t have much in the way of actual basketball skills.
Here’s a stretch goal for DJJ: have a better career than Alonzo Gee. That means starting all 82 games in a season at least one time.