There is a really solid all-around role-player buried somewhere within Josh Jackson, I just know it. He has the physical tools. Those tools were one of the main reasons he was drafted so high, and they haven’t gone away unless his wingspan got shorter by a foot while I wasn’t looking. And he has the skills. Kinda. Those are the two things that one needs to succeed in the NBA: tools and skills. Skills and tools. It’s simple.
Yet he still sucks. Why? It’s trendy to take dumps on the Phoenix Suns organization whenever possible, so let’s start there. Even if they are not the main cause of Jackson’s suckiness, at the very least they are complicit in his suckiness. And they don’t have a great track record of developing talent; even if Jackson really sucked when he came in, a different team might have been able to push him in a different, non-sucky direction.
A team like… the ‘Zlies? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, but at the very least, Memphis has the reputation of a solid, team-first culture from years past and that seems to have continued even as they turned over the whole roster and are starting a new era. Team culture isn’t going to magically turn Jackson from bad into good, but it can’t possibly hurt.
There are positive signs. Like this 20-point game. While he was spending the entire first part of the season in the G-League, I thought we’d never see another 20-burger again, if we even saw him again at all in the NBA. 20 points is a lot of points, and against one of the best teams in the league, not even in garbage time? That’s a positive sign if I’ve ever seen one.
Another positive sign: the ‘Zlies traded Bruno Caboclo so that they can’t marginalize him anymore. This doesn’t have much to do with Jackson, other than that maybe it opens up some minutes (except not really because Caboclo wasn’t playing at all) for him, but I’m just stoked that Caboclo can go somewhere where his talents will be appreciated like… Houston? Oh god damn it.