The analysis seems solid and felt it could describe his time at KU. I recommend going to the link b/c there is video footage to illustrate some of the points being made.
5. Josh Jackson, at his own rhythm
Jackson is among the toughest young players to project forward. He can do so much more with the ball than Mikal Bridges, and yet his future -- his place on a theoretical good team -- feels so much less certain. We know what Bridges is: a spot-up shooter with the length to defend multiple positions. That skill set is portable.
Is Jackson? Is he good enough at the things he's nominally good at to do them for a winning team? If not, can he improve the stuff at which he's bad? Any team sniffing around Jackson over the next year has to try to answer those questions.
A random cross-positional comparison: The way Jackson moves with a kind of syncopated freneticism reminds of Jabari Parker. He moves at a different rhythm than the typical NBA player. That can be a good thing -- a way to wrong-foot defenses. It can also be tricky to play with someone whose movement patterns are jagged and hard to predict.
Case in point: Jackson releases his floater, perhaps his favorite shot, with quirks of timing and distance that seem to surprise everyone -- from a step farther out than most dare, off the wrong foot, on the way down.
Those long-distance line drives can land with a thud. His pick-and-roll partners -- Deandre Ayton and Richaun Holmes -- sometimes don't know if they should jump for a lob or shift into rebounding mode.
On the very next pick-and-roll, Jackson might prod more carefully, pull up before drawing help, and loft a pass that isn't there:
Jackson has coughed up the ball on about 13 percent of pick-and-rolls, the 10th-highest rate among almost 200 players who have finished at least 100 such plays, per Second Spectrum.
He's shooting just 30 percent from deep; defenses duck under screens when he has the ball, and ignore him when he doesn't.
And yet! Jackson is 22. He has the tools to develop into a lockdown defender. He has decent passing instincts; he just lacks the supplementary skills to activate those passing instincts as often as he'd like.
Jackson isn't good enough with the ball right now to handle it on a good team, but he's not a good-enough shooter to play off of it. He's a puzzle the whole league is trying to solve.
www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26046302/10-...ding-warriors-genius
