I am officially reserving the use of “Career High” when designating a performance by Derrick Jones Jr. for when he scores 20 points. This is the most points he has ever scored in a game, but a “Career High” I will not call it, because what kind of pathetic career high is a mere 19 points? This is his fourth year in the league. Time to get a move on.
Miami’s attempts to turn him into a three-point shooter are admirable, but perhaps slightly misguided. It’s true, being able to shoot threes competently is just about the easiest path to 20 points that there is in the NBA (Duncan Robinson can barely do anything but he can score 20 no problem just with his three-ball prowess), but I’m not really seeing it with Jones. It’s like watching Giannis shoot; just a tangled mass of skinny arms hopefully flinging the ball towards the rim. He can hit them, but it always feels like a stroke of luck when he does.
If I were the Heat, I’d concentrate on getting him as many dunks as possible. He had four tonight (and it should have been more, he missed at least one), and with his leaping ability, that could happen every game as long as the correct steps are taken. I don’t know what those steps are, because my knowledge of actual X’s and actual O’s is pretty much nonexistent, but I’d start with throwing tons of lobs and seeing what he can do with them.
Also if I were the Heat, I’d make damn well sure that all his dunks had a suitable amount of replays in the broadcast. We got ONE replay total out of the four dunks he had. Tonight was apparently kid’s night on the Heat broadcast, so I was thinking that maybe it was kids controlling the replays and they didn’t realize what they were seeing, but this has been a season-long problem.