Reggie Jackson Doing Himself, Thunder No Favors

Reggie Jackson should have been traded the moment Oklahoma City acquired Dion Waiters.

Both players are ball-demanding guards who were never going to coexist coming off the bench together. While Waiters has done well during his brief time as a member of the Thunder, Jackson has continued to fade.

Jackson made his intentions clear in the off-season. He wanted to start and he wanted to get paid like a starter. The former was never going to happen, but Jackson still could’ve made starter money as a back-up to Russell Westbrook, the first man off the bench, and the two-guard in crunch time. Jackson scoffed at the offer, making it clear that he wanted to be in the starting lineup.

Now, Reggie isn’t starting or closing games and he only has himself to blame.

When Waiters arrived, most expected Jackson’s minutes to take a hit. Waiters is a more natural fit to close games at shooting guard, leaving Reggie on the bench in the final minutes. Head coach Scott Brooks seemed to have a plan in place after the trade with Cleveland. Brooks would close the game with either Jackson or Waiters, depending on who was playing better throughout the game. Jackson has made that decision very easy for Brooks in the recent weeks.

In his last 10 games, Jackson has averaged 7.5 points per game, 2.3 assists, and 3.9 rebounds in 20 minutes of action. All of those numbers are below his season average. Granted his season average was inflated a bit when Westbrook and Kevin Durant were injured and Jackson was starting, but those are still poor numbers for a guy who wants to be a starting point guard in the league.

While numbers can sometimes be deceiving, in this case the “eye test” is not.

When watching Reggie Jackson play, I see a man who is disinterested on the court. Jackson made his name as an athletic, attacking point guard. He was great at breaking down defenders 1-on-1, getting to the hoop, and finishing in traffic. He no longer does that. Now, when Jackson has the ball, he will dribble for 15 seconds before launching a long-range jump shot. While he is a talented scorer, he is not a smoother jump shooter.  There seems no flow to Jackson’s game right now. When he does attack the rim, he’s not finishing with the same conviction that we’re used to seeing from him. He looks afraid of the contact and traffic.

If Jackson isn’t putting up points on offense, he becomes a liability on the court because he might be the worst defender in the league. The numbers don’t quite back that up (although they do say he’s the worst defender on the team), but anyone who watches him will notice just how bad he is on defense. This is a perfect demonstration of Jackson’s faults, on both offense and defense, in just over a minute (via YouTube):

He can’t stay in front of his defender in one-on-one situations and is always taken advantage of by the opposing team in pick and roll situations, especially when Kendrick Perkins is on the floor with him.

Jackson is doing himself no favors with his disinterest. If he’s auditioning for another team and a possible starting spot, those teams are seeing a mediocre and inconsistent point guard. If he’s trying to prove that he’s committed to Oklahoma City, he definitely has a weird way of showing it. One would think that he would be playing the best basketball of his career, proving that he is a starting point guard and deserves the money he’s asking for.

While teams know Jackson’s potential and are still likely to covet him, his attitude has to bring up red flags. There’s no doubt that he will be happier on another team – as long as he’s starting – but will he start to sulk again when things don’t go his way? Most playoff teams already have a high-quality point guard, which means Jackson could find himself on a struggling team this time next year. If I’m that team, I’m very wary about the kind of player I’m getting. While Jackson did put up very good numbers in the absence of Durant and Westbrook, OKC still struggled to win games.

Reggie Jackson isn’t long for Oklahoma City. His lack of interest, the arrival of Waiters, and the obvious frustration from Brooks, Westbrook, and especially Durant have put the writing on the wall in big, bold, perfectly-written letters.

But there’s a reason why he’s still on the team. It’s not because he’s helping the Thunder win basketball games right now, because that’s clearly not the case.

It’s because teams aren’t exactly begging to add an unproven, backup point guard with attitude issues.

It’s the reality of who Jackson has become this season, his last with the Oklahoma City Thunder.