Justin Jackson is Neither Young nor Athletic
Sounds like a typical Bulls rookie…
Happy draft season! Oh yes, it’s time to begin talking about June’s NBA draft — where dreams come true, LaVar Ball will be loud and the Bulls will draft a 23 year old four-year college player! Throughout the coming weeks, the team at Bulls Conf will bring some player evaluations, as well as draft coverage. Stay tuned!
Justin Jackson:
SG/SF | 6-foot-8| 22| North Carolina
Justin Jackson is coming off a National Championship run at North Carolina. While his teammate Joel Berry took home the Most Outstanding Player award, Jackson was the main option for the Tar Heels for most of the season.
The ACC Player of the Year averaged 18.3 points per game, along with 4.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists. Most importantly, he added a 3-pointer to his repertoire, connecting on 37 percent of his attempts from deep after hitting just 29.2 percent as a sophomore. His winning pedigree will attract some teams, but he has some question marks, especially in regard to whether his body and athleticism, or lack thereof, will play at the next level, and if that newfound long-range shot is for real, or just a one-season blip.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
Justin Jackson’s biggest strengths come in the form of intangibles. He was a veteran leader on a team that appeared in consecutive NCAA Championship games, winning one of them. When it comes to actual basketball skills that can be measured, things start to get murky for him.
If you believe in the turnaround, his biggest strength is his 3-point shooting. In today’s NBA a plus 3-point shooter can easily carve out a role on a team, but there are some concerns whether or not Jackson’s shooting is legitimate. Such a large jump over one offseason after two years of well below average shooting is definite cause for skepticism. It’s also worth mentioning that there are studies that show that free throw percentages, not 3-point percentages, in college have the strongest correlation with long-range shooting in the NBA. Jackson’s free throw shooting paints a similarly cloudy picture, as his 71.3 percent mark over his career could certainly be much worse, though the number isn’t eye popping. And it includes a rather large jump over his final two seasons in Chapel Hill, as he went from 66.7 percent as a sophomore to 74.8 percent as a junior.
Even if that shooting does turn out to be sustainable, Jackson may not offer enough in any other facet of the game to be worth keeping on the floor. He has a lot of the problem that recent Bulls draft picks Doug McDermott and Denzel Valentine had as well. While he could indeed be a strong shooter, he hasn’t shown much ability to create his own shot, and his lack of athleticism limits him on the defensive side of the ball.
Let’s start with the creation issues with some numbers, courtesy of hoop-math.com.
Jackson attempted 284 3-pointers this past season, or 47.7 percent of all of his field goal attempts. A whopping 86 percent of his 3s were assisted. Meanwhile just 132 of his attempts came at the rim, or 22.1 percent. He shot 66.7 percent at the rim, and 58 percent of those were assisted. 66 percent is a fine, if not particularly great number at the rim. However, shots coming off of assists, especially ones at the rim, tend to be open looks, so with such a high percentage of his shots at the rim being assisted, you would expect a higher field goal percentage on those shots. What all these numbers should tell you is that Jackson both struggles to create his own shot, as well as finishing around the rim. Valentine had similar numbers around the rim before being drafted last year, and sure enough when he was able to find the floor in his rookie campaign, he struggled to do much of anything below the free throw line.
Defensively, he hasn’t shown much, if any potential. He gives effort, which certainly counts for something, but it only gets you so far. If he has any success on that end in the floor it will likely be thanks to his length, with his 6-foot-11 wingspan. However he is a below average athlete by NBA standards, and will likely struggle to stay in front of his matchup regardless of if he is playing at the shooting guard or small forward position. Despite being 6-foot-8, he weighs just 200 pounds and his thin frame doesn’t appear to be able to add much mass, so it’s unlikely he’d ever be able to bulk up enough to offset his disadvantages athletically with some added strength. He wasn’t the strongest defender in college and the athleticism he’d have to deal with at the professional level would likely only cause him more problems.
Looking ahead:
Jackson is a veteran player from a winning program, who directly goes against the Bulls previously stated goals of becoming “younger and more athletic.” Be ready to see him wearing a Bulls hat on June 22.
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