(NOTE: This is the first part of a multi-part series chronicling the rookie season of Jaren Jackson, Jr. As the Grizzlies’ highest-profile draft pick in a decade, Jackson’s development is crucial to the franchise and deserves close attention. I’ll be doing that with this series, taking an in-depth look at Jackson’s first season and checking in to see how he’s progressing.)

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“I think he’s still growing,” a laughing Marc Gasol tells The Athletic. “I’m serious, I think he’s grown half a shoe-size since he’s been here.”
“Still growing” is a good way to describe Jaren Jackson, Jr. On the court and at the shoe store, his progress is hard to miss.

In what was a banner set of top draft picks, Jackson’s tantalizing mix of offensive and defensive potential set him apart from everyone else. In this 15-second clip from his college days against Iowa, Jackson shows on Michigan State’s first three possessions what made teams like the Grizzlies so excited about him as a prospect:

An athletic alley-oop finish off a back screen, followed on the next defensive possession by a block, which leads immediately into a rim run and deep seal on a post-up dunk. Offense leading to defense leading to offense. In his first month alone, Jackson has shown each of those skills, though not necessarily all together, and not as often as he will going forward. But, like many of the top picks in last year’s NBA draft, Jackson is performing well.

Let’s see how he’s doing statistically after his first month:

Overall

Points per game: 11.5
Rebounds per game: 5.0
Field goal percentage: 45.1
Three-point percentage: 18.5
Offensive rating: 96.6
Defensive rating: 101.4
Net Rating: -4.8

It’s never boring with Jackson, as evidenced by his first half Monday night against Utah. Within five minutes, he recorded a key deflection, forced two 3-second violations, scored four points, had four offensive boards, an assist, a steal and two turnovers. He’s generally in the middle of the action, usually for good, occasionally for bad. Such are the issues when you’re a rookie thrust into a key role.

Let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room before we go any further: Jackson’s propensity to foul is a problem. It was one of his few red flags coming into the league and it has manifest itself on the court from time to time. Over his first seven games, he averaged 4.4 fouls per game, fouling out once, picking up five fouls twice, and twice racking up four fouls in less than 11 minutes of on-court action. It really inhibited his ability to play freely, especially once he became a starter after the jaw injury to JaMychal Green.

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“He’s getting to play. I think that’s huge for him,” Grizzlies head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “You know, you start to feel a little bit of mojo, but when you pick up fouls, it messes with you mentally too, because now you’re overthinking everything.” After that rough early stretch, Jackson tiptoed through a tentative game in Phoenix, staying on the floor for 23 minutes but not impacting the game at a high level.

He turned up the intensity over the past week, becoming the youngest player in NBA history to record at least 15 points and 5 blocks in the game at Golden State.  He followed that with a wrecking ball outing against Denver where he became the first Grizzlies rookie with at least 20 points, 3 blocks, and 3 steals since, coincidentally, Marc Gasol. Oh, and in the previously-mentioned Utah game, he became the first rookie this season with a double-double and 5 blocked shots.

Jackson said it simply: “Whenever you don’t foul, Coach is like, ‘Ooooh, yeah, he can play.’ so there you go, no fouls equals more minutes.”

“Now that he’s been able to stay on the floor, you can see the confidence growing,” Bickerstaff noted. “That game against Denver, the energy level he was playing with, there were signs of true belief that he could impact the game the way we think he can.”

That Denver game was one that gets the mind racing about how good Jackson could be. It’s worth examining more closely.

He starts this sequence by hitting a three-pointer, a shot he’s struggled with, and follows it by immediately defending the very physical Paul Millsap in the post without fouling. Jackson’s had the tendency not to go straight up when defending, preferring to reach his Inspector Gadget-like arms across the opponent. That’s an easy foul for the officials to spot. When Jackson defends with verticality (straight up and down), he’s able to impact shots without fouling.

Just a few possessions later, he again defends Millsap well, forcing (and frustrating) him to dish the ball to Jamal Murray. Murray attacks the closeout from Mike Conley, blowing by him for what should be an easy layup. Look closely. You can see Nikola Jokic holding Gasol in a sly veteran move to keep him from contesting. So that leaves Jackson, who springs into action and contests Murray without fouling and snags the rebound. Tremendous multiple efforts from Jackson.

Millsap was getting sick of Jackson by this point. That play highlights another positive early in Jackson’s career — his recovery off screens. He’s shown a lot of determination to fight over and through off-ball screens, which is a great way to endear yourself to coaches and teammates. He’s not perfect in that regard, but he’s well ahead of most 19-year-olds.

That sequence is the one everyone was talking about after the game — in about a minute of game time, Jackson grabs a steal, has a monster block, gets two rebounds, scores four points, and electrifies a moribund game (and crowd) with his athleticism.

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Learning process

Since becoming a starter, Jackson has the best defensive rating of any Grizzly. That side of the ball is coming along very quickly, especially given his partnership with Gasol. Since Jackson and Gasol have played together as starters, they are the best defensive pairing in the NBA, with opponents scoring just 89.8 points per 100 possessions when they’re on the court together.

Jackson’s spent the majority of his minutes on the court playing alongside Gasol. He said that whether or not he’s playing with Gasol, he’s learning.

“Chemistry is built doing anything. Seeing how he plays, either when I’m watching him at his position and I sub in for him, or if we’re starting together and I’m playing off him. All of that comes from watching film, watching how he moves, even on defense — if he’s going to go help a certain way, I can go help him.”

Asked about how quickly Jackson is picking up things on the court, Gasol furrowed his brow and emphasized the sheer amount of information Jackson needs to process quickly. “It’s a lot of things, I mean, it’s a lot of things, lot of things. We talk about schemes, new plays every day, different reads you’ve got to do, read and react depending on what the other team does, the other team could do five different things.”

He continued, “It’s a lot of things that you’ve got to pick up real fast from one day to another, because tomorrow is another 5-to-10 things coming your way differently. Because another team is a different challenge, we want to attack them a different way. We don’t have time to put the gloves on and be careful; like, you’ve gotta come on. So with him, I give him a lot of space, because a lot of people are trying to talk to him. I pick my times to go and talk to him when he’s not high-stressed.”

Gasol has rarely, if ever, played this many high-impact minutes alongside a rookie big, but he credits Jackson for playing with a level of fearlessness and intensity he doesn’t always see in rookies. “I like that he has that competitiveness, I’ve seen that through training camp. He’s not afraid, he wants to go up against the best players and face them, and that’s something that I really enjoy. He wants to go and do well against his fellow rookies, or he wants to go and do well against a big-time player.”

“We’re learning as we’re going through the season,” Gasol said. “It’s not easy, it’s complicated, because we’re learning and trying to win at the same time, so it takes a little bit of time and we don’t have that much time. I like his demeanor, I like his mindset, he wants to do well, so I don’t care about the mistakes, I surely don’t.”

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Unwavering faith

An unusually strong swell of confidence in Jackson has emerged, one that hasn’t been seen in FedExForum for a long time. Whether through skepticism from previous coaches, injury nightmares or just plain not being good enough, rookies traditionally have a tough time breaking through in Memphis. Not so with Jackson.

“The thing about it, just being honest with you, there’s a deep level of belief from the coaching staff in Jaren,” Bickerstaff said. “As a 19-year-old, a year out of high school, whatever it may be, once he starts to understand — and you go through the league just once — once you play everyone once, you see where you fit in and what you’re capable of, you’ll see a huge jump.”

Jackson’s first month has seen him overcome early foul troubles and blossom with confidence. His three-point shot needs to improve, he’s prone on occasion to lose focus defensively, he needs to improve his rebounding. Heck, like all rookies, he’s just getting started. But there’s so much possibility.

Jackson is the first rookie since Anthony Davis in 2012, and only the 18th in the past 35 seasons, to record at least 20 blocks and 10 steals in his first 12 games, per Basketball Reference. The other players who have done it read like a who’s who: David Robinson, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Chris Webber, and Dikembe Mutombo, to name a few. Amazing company for a 19-year-old.

“The best part about him is that he doesn’t even know how good he is yet,” Bickerstaff said. “I think he’s just scratching the surface, and once he starts to figure it out — you see it in guys, like, you see it happen almost overnight where a guy just reaches that level of belief, and their opponents start to feel it, and it then it just starts to snowball where he has nights like that over and over again.”

“He’s going to improve and improve, because he has so many tools that I don’t think he even knows,” Gasol said with a smile.”There’s guys that check a lot of boxes, he creates different boxes.”

(Top photo of Jaren Jackson Jr. (13): Justin Ford / USA Today)