Posted by Marv:
oohah, i remember a downhill path in jax's play here. he started out so great as a pass-first floor leader as a rookie, came back in his second year much more intent on being part of the early offense as a scorer, and was much less effective as a result. then got into a bad relationship with the fans, who got tough on him. he seemed to get defensive and isolated as a result. it seemed timely when they made the decision to move him out. do you remember any of this? am i recalling things correctly?
He started out great, he got better in his second year in my opinion, but he possibly focused on scoring too much.
In his third year, he showed up out of shape. He recovered nicely in his 4 year under Stu Jackson and won the starting job, but Bianchi didn't like him personally, so they traded for Cheeks and put jackson on the bench that same day. He still averaged 9 points on .491 shooting and got over 6 assists per game. In his 5th year he was very good at running the offense (8.6 assists per game) and scored in the proper manner (11.6 at .491 FGP), but Riley was so obsessed with defense he forgot about offense.
Riley's mistake was that in trading for Charles Smith who he thought would be Ewing's #2, he misunderstood that you needed somebody to get those guys shots.
To answer your question, Jackson started high, went down for a season, but recovered very nicely. We have not had a true floor general since he was traded.
oohah
12/4/2007 2:56 PM
