Monday night, the Memphis Grizzlies wound up triumphantly taking down the Golden State Warriors in what was a tightly contested MLK Day bout and paving the way to victory surprisingly proved to be rookie forward, GG Jackson II.
As a result of the club’s slew of injuries over the past week and change, Taylor Jenkins has been forced to dig deep into his talent pool to find players to help fill out their overwhelmingly decimated rotation.
Though by no means a desirable situation to be in, fortunately for them many of these called-upon players have answered the call with flying colors, and Jackson recently served as one of Memphis’ top performers during their primetime outing against the Dubs.
Dropping a career-high 23 points while shooting 62.5 percent from distance, the 19-year-old was labeled as “Player of the Game” by the NBA on TNT crew, giving him an unforgettable opportunity to speak with basketball legends such as Shaquille O’Neal during a live, postgame interview.
While excitement amongst Grind City nation is undoubtedly high following this surprising showing, with the aforementioned Shaq going as far as to say Jackson has become a freshly minted household name, during his post-game presser coach Jenkins provided an honest assessment of Jackson that, though still highly complementary, pulls things a bit closer to reality.
Grizzlies’ Taylor Jenkins provides realistic assessment of GG Jackson
“He’s still got a lot more work to do and I think he’d hopefully be one of the first ones to tell you that. When I’ve been following him with the [Memphis] Hustle, the reports from [coach Jason March] and his staff and the assistant coaches just talking about his consistency and growth. [Those are] probably the biggest things that stood out… I think it’s just his feel for the game. Obviously, this is his first substantial, back-to-back NBA opportunity and he’s going to get some more moving forward for sure… We’re just going to keep pushing on him, saying find ways, keep correcting the things you can do better and the things you’re doing better keep working on that. Make that consistent.”
– Taylor Jenkins on GG Jackson II
As Jenkins noted, Monday’s contest served as Jackson’s second consecutive game where he received ample playing time, as he also eclipsed the 20-minute mark in Saturday’s faceoff against the visiting New York Knicks.
With these opportunities, the power forward finds himself boasting impressive averages of 21.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 2.0 blocks while shooting 65.2 percent from the floor and 58.3 percent from deep.
Though an extremely small sample size, his production in the NBA has certainly warranted attention from fans and media pundits and, as the Grizzlies headman stated, he’s going to continue to get more opportunities to shine moving forward.
However, expecting this brand of production on a nightly basis is both unfair to Jackson and highly unrealistic. Fortunately, it appears that both he and Memphis are fully aware of this, as their main focus seems to be trying to grow and establish consistency within his game.
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