I was gonna criticize the way Jaxson Hayes’ parents decided to spell the name “Jackson”, but while I was doing some further research I decided I would hold off on the criticism. During the course of my research I discovered that if you instead spell it “Jaxon”, “Jaxxon”, or “Jaxxxon”, it really looks more like a porn-star name than anything. Which makes “Jaxson” look perfectly reasonable as an alternative to the normal spelling. It’s like “Paxson” with a J, and everyone loves that John Paxson dude and that shot he hit with the Bulls (except for Bulls fans themselves because as an executive I’m pretty sure he has cost the Bulls another threepeat just with his dumb-bum trades ans signings).
With his name off the table, the only thing left to criticize about is hair, and I can’t do much with that either, because it looks like Robin Lopez’ and Robin Lopez is one of my favorite goofy-looking centers. He’s off the hook on that one too.
And, as you can tell from this immaculately-prepared highlight vid, there’s nothing to criticize about his game. We saw it in Summer League, and we got to see it for the first time (was he injured or something????? because I don’t see why Alvin Gentry would not be playing this guy) in the real NBA tonight: this guy likes to jump high and dunk hard. The way he gets off the ground so easily makes me immediately think of all the great high-volume dunkers we’ve had in the past few years. The Goberts and the McGees and the Jordans. Those guys might be limited in their overall offensive game, but no one can argue their dunking prowess. Hayes can be one of those guys, OR, he could be more if he added a jumper. Maybe he already has one and he’s just waiting for the right moment to show it off?