Darnell Jackson is least of the Kings problems - so why this thread? At least Antoine Wright was not thrown into the mix tonight. Darnell will have his moments when matchups favor him as the relatively minor role player he is at this point as a 2nd yr pro.
Darnell Jackson is least of the Kings problems - so why this thread? At least Antoine Wright was not thrown into the mix tonight. Darnell will have his moments when matchups favor him as the relatively minor role player he is at this point as a 2nd yr pro.
Darnell shoudl be headed back to deep bench duty now, but the one troublign thing was Westphal's insistence of not only starting Thompson at SF, but then treating so much like a faield SF that he refused to play him at his natural position late int eh game even though Jackson was giving us nothing. Its not nearly as hard as you are making it Paul.
He had a good run for us there, and I would nto be surprised to se him surge again at some point, but there is simply no justification for him mucking up our rotations of our main guys with him playing like he has for the last few and a huge logjam of frontcourt players.
The only way I'm fine with Darnell playing some minutes for us is if we don't try to make him what he's not. Darnell Jackson is not, and will never be a main offensive threat. Yet we keep going to him for perimeter jumpshots. Just go in, rebound, clean up, take the occasional set shot if you're really that open.
He had a good run for us there, and I would nto be surprised to se him surge again at some point, but there is simply no justification for him mucking up our rotations of our main guys with him playing like he has for the last few and a huge logjam of frontcourt players.
They are both streaky hustle players/garbagemen but come on, on a good night JT can give you 15/10. Jackson on a good night can give you 8/3. And its not even really about minutes played either. Their offense and defense is comparable (JT is actually a decent defender, its just easy to underrate him because he still picks up a dumb foul here and there), but JT is a waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better rebounder than D-Block. Heck, Landry is a better rebounder than D-Block.
What Bricklayer mentioned above I noticed as well; Westphal seems dead set on playing JT at the 3 and refuses to play him at the 4. Thats Kenny Natt level bad coaching.
Any one of the 4 bigs ahead of him who have been starters for signifcant chunks fo their careers.
Or Hassan for that matter, who may have that potential in the future.
There were years in the past when Darnell showing up would have been a real godsend, this is not such a year, and I think his presence, adn Westphal's reaction to it may have been actively hurting us developing a cohesive structure. That's not on Darnell of course, who appears to work hard and played well for the first 5 games. But its still there. Its time to get back to the relatively simple reasonable core guys rotation that everybody knew we were going to have coming into the season, and to see what it actually plays out like. This chaos is bad for business.