The early results of the Hawks’ “Damian Jones as starting center” experiment were good. In his first game as a starter, the Hawks beat the Nuggets and I assume Jones just absolutely manhandled Nikola Jokic with his superior athleticism and movement abilities.
After that success, though, the experiment kind of went off the rails. Perhaps it would’ve happened with or without him as the starting center, but the Hawks then lost their next 10 games. It’s easy to think that it wasn’t his fault, that he was performing his role well, but think about this: would a prime Bill Russell have let the Hawks lose so much? No. So Jones actually IS at fault, because he is not a prime Bill Russell. If he was, the Hawks would probably be a playoff team.
He might not be prime Bill Russell (that title goes to Ryan Hollins from a few years ago), but he did kinda look like prime Shaq in this game. The Hawks broke their losing streak based on the burning desire for REVENGE against his former team that Jones possessed. You could tell Jones wanted to say to Steve Kerr “I am become death, destroyer of worlds” with his play, because I’m pretty sure he killed Willie Cauley-Stein with his last dunk. Just killed him with a career-high-setting dunk.
Brutal.