Good news, Grizzlies fans! Jaren Jackson Jr., your prized young talent who is probably the future of the franchise alongside Ja Morant, is no longer getting outplayed by Brandon Clarke! Part of that has to do with Clarke getting injured last game and not playing this one, but another part of it is that Jackson is starting to score a little bit more. Not very consistently, but I’m noticing an uptick here.
He’s still not grabbing any rebounds, and he’s still fouling like a maniac (he didn’t foul out this game, ending with 5 fouls, but did last game, in 19 minutes!), but those are things that I don’t particularly care about, and you shouldn’t care about them either unless you care about the Grizzlies actually winning games. Which, even if you’re a Grizzlies fans, you shouldn’t. Remember: tanking is the name of the game right now for Memphis. The best thing for any individual player on the roster to do is get as many points as possible but have those points be as empty and ineffective as possible.
I’m speculating here, but with Jonas Valanciunas out, it looked like Jackson had a bit more opportunity to flex his interior-scoring muscle this game. Valanciunas likes to clog up the paint with his burliness, and while Jackson likes to float around the perimeter to shoot threes, what he needs to do is use his own burliness in the paint. You could tell the Grizzlies commentators were happy to see him do some one-on-one paint scoring against Domantas Sabonis, who really couldn’t do much about it.