The Youngest Player in the NBA Shouldn’t Be THIS Good Already

The Youngest Player in the NBA Shouldn’t Be THIS Good Already

It hasn’t been the best season for the Memphis Grizzlies missing johnar for nearly the entire season and just generally suffering injuries up and down the roster but one of the brightest spots has been the emergence of GG Jackson who the Grizzlies selected with the 45th overall pick in the 20123 NBA

Draft despite falling all the way to the midc round of the draft GG Jackson was a five-star recruit when he was in high school and he was viewed as one of the best prospects of the 2023 draft class prior to committing to UNC where he subsequently decommitted and

Reclassified to the class of 2022 skipping his senior year of high school and enrolling at the University of South Carolina now this is where things get a little bit odd for Gigi Jackson if you go and look at his college numbers you’re going to see some pretty rough

Efficiency up and down the board 15.4 points per game 38.4% shooting overall 32.4% from 3 and only 41.9% from two those are some pretty pretty rough numbers at a glance but Jackson was only 18 years old playing as the starting power forward and go-to guy for South Carolina but even still his

Scoring in college left a lot to be desired both from a decision-making standpoint and an effort perspective but if you look at what he’s been doing over his recent stretch of games it’s a far cry from the picture that some of the pre-draft concerns painted about him in

Just 19 minutes a game so far this season he scored 11.3 points per game on 58.1% true shooting including 41.2% from three on 4.4 attempts per game he’s already recorded 5 20 plus point games in his only 23 games played so far this year right now from three he has the

Second best efficiency from Beyond The Arc of any rookie that’s attempting at least three threes a game one thing that bodess really well for his future success in the NBA is how good he already is shooting off of the catch he shoots with confidence and he knows

Where to be when defenses are helping off of him not to mention some of the catch and shoot threes that we’ve seen him knock down so far are coming from really really deep range which has some implications for defenses having to step out a little bit further than normal to

Guard him or close out more aggressively to prevent and disrupt shots he’s shooting 43.1% on catch and shoot 3es on 3.9 attempts per game that’s 7.2 catch and shoot attempts per 36 minutes and alongside a guy like johnar that’s exactly the kind of wing that you want

Flanking him we know that J going to demand a ton of defensive attention on his drives since he can pretty much get to the paint whenever he wants and we all know that he can finish at a very high rate so surrounding him with Shooters is going to be one of the best

Ways to capitalize on all of that defensive attention that he gets this makes me really confident that GG Jackson’s going to be a seamless long-term fit with the Grizzlies and John Moran and then you factor in his ability to attack off the catch with his high three-point efficiency and you get

A really solid looking play finisher that can force defenses to rotate when he beats his man closing out on him this is where we can see a little bit of his on Ball scoring shine attacking off the catch and driving into the help defense waiting down low and instead of forcing

It to the rim and having to finish over tough defense he instead creates a little bit of Separation to get into this nice little sidestep Baseline jumper even though his finishing numbers aren’t really jaw-dropping which by the way isn’t uncommon for rookies at all he’s still able to make use of that

Length that he has to get by bigger Defenders and he’s got some cra cess with things like switching to his off hand to get around shot contest at The Rim here when he gets the ball from Williams he’s going to use this nice jab step with his left foot to shift his

Defender and then he’s going to attack their front foot to get going up the middle now when the defense shuts down the drive up the Middle Jackson is going to cross to his left hand and get into that space to get to the basket and

Finish the fact that he’s as big as he is at 6’9 with a 7t wingspan is really going to open things up for him when he’s going to work off the catch both in terms ofo shooting from the perimeter just getting the shots up over that close out and then getting by his

Defender to get to the rim and finish over defenses I think what’s really exciting though about Jackson is that he isn’t just a spot up shooter and he doesn’t need to just be camped out on the wing to get good looks they’ve actually been putting him into some

Plays specifically to allow him to score including this twirl action where it’s going to look like he’s going to get these staggered screens on the weak side but instead he’s going to cut in between the first and the second screen to get into space and get the ball on the way

To the basket for the finish on this play he’s going to fake like he’s going to come and get the handoff when he recognizes his Defender over playing it he’s going to make the back door cut to get the feed for two easy points here he’s going to set this

Screen at the elbow for the cut up the middle and then he’s going to turn around and cut up the middle while the defense is expecting him to pop out to the perimeter so that he can instead get an easy look on the way to the basket

Now he’s not a seven-footer by any means but his size is going to allow him to have a bit of Versatility on on the offensive end we’ve seen the Grizzlies actually experiment with this a little bit having him operate as the pick and roll big man in some of the games that

He’s played this season and I’m pretty intrigued by the results he seems to thrive when he gets the ball in space on the short roll so that he can get a little bit of a head of steam going downhill towards the basket to finish this is another aspect of his game that

I think bodess really well for his long-term fit with the Grizzlies considering they can potentially get weird with some of their lineups when they opt for small ball using jiren Jackson junor as the four with GG as a small ball five or vice versa could be something that adds some offensive juice

To their team and jiren would still be able to act as the five defensively on the other end of the floor if he needs to a lot of people might think that GG Jackson’s big swing skill is going to be his on Ball scoring but considering who

He’s going to be playing next to most of the time I don’t really think he needs to be some high volume scorer to be successful on the offensive end with johnar Desmond Bane and jiren Jackson Jr all being very very capable on ball scorers he’s going to just most likely

Have to be a play finisher and I think he’s more than capable of doing that already when you factor in some of the defensive impact that he’s shown the Grizzlies have a very solid two-way wing on their hands their defense is 4.3 points per 100 possessions better with

Him on the floor versus with him off the floor and his size and athleticism is going to be enough to allow him to hold his own defensively assuming he can maintain a solid motor and just develop some of that institutional knowledge on the defensive end that’s going to come

With more reps he’s got solid defensive ability in the paint too with some flashes of supplementary Rim protection he’s able to get rebounds at a pretty high rate for his position the big thing to remember with him is that he only recently turned 19 and he’s already

Showing a ton of promise right out of the gate he may not be the high usage scoring Wing that he was treated as in college and prior to the draft and that’s totally fine that doesn’t mean he’s a bad player that doesn’t mean he can’t maybe eventually develop into a

High usage scorer but right now he offers something that the Grizzlies need as they look to build this roster around their Court pieces he’s definitely had the right mentality and approach with his expectations coming into the NBA going as far as saying that he thought he’d be spending most of his first year

In the G league and now that he’s shown so much the Grizzlies have already gone ahead and just signed him to a multi-year standard NBA contract he hasn’t even played 30 games yet and he’s the youngest player in the league this year may not have been what the

Grizzlies were hoping for But ultimately all of this might be a good thing for them long term allowing GG Jackson to get more reps under his belt so that he can be prepared to contribute and play a major role in the Grizzlies contending next year once they get healthy hope you

Guys enjoyed this video I’d really appreciate it if you considered leaving a like and subscribing if you want to see more stuff like this shout out to all my patrons for supporting the channel thank you all so much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one know

GG Jackson has been unstoppable lately for the Memphis Grizzlies, racking up a sizable amount of 20+ point games in only 19 minutes a night. GG Jackson was a controversial prospect with all sorts of reports coming out prior to the 2023 NBA draft about things like his attitude and maturity, but you’d never know it by watching him lately.

The Memphis Grizzlies haven’t had the season they probably wanted to have, but the Ja Morant injury has allowed them to focus more on youth development, and it’s clear that GG Jackson is benefitting greatly from it.

➥ 𝙎𝙪𝙗𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙚: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexHoops?sub_confirmation=1
➥ 𝙏𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧: https://twitter.com/AlexHoops_
➥ 𝘽𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙋𝙖𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙣: https://patreon.com/AlexHoops

➥ 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙢𝙚
Providing NBA analysis by making film digestible and using analytics thoughtfully to contextualize on-court production. I cover the NBA in various capacities as a writer and digital content creator. If you love basketball and the NBA, be sure to subscribe to my channel.

DISCLAIMER: I do not claim ownership of any footage or clips used in this video. The use of these clips is protected under Fair Use Policy.

#GGJackson #MemphisGrizzlies #NBA