As training camp begins for the Pistons, Josh Jackson is in the unusual position of living in a hotel in his hometown. Better than a hotel somewhere else. Better than Phoenix, where Jackson saw his young career go sideways, and better than Memphis, where he slowly straightened it out. Detroit is where Jackson’s career was born – and where maybe it can be born again.
To describe Jackson is to refer to the past. The former star at Consortium College Prep. The former No. 1 recruit in the nation. The former Big 12 Freshman of the Year. The former No. 4 pick in the draft. The former All-Rookie selection. It’s these labels that stick because Jackson has been stuck. The two-year deal he signed with the Pistons last month is a chance to get going again.
“I’m just looking at it like, there’s no way else for me to go but up,” Jackson said Wednesday. “I’ve been to my lowest point, I feel like, and I’ve been moving in the right direction, so I’m just trying to keep on that path. As long as I’m going up, then I’m happy.”
Going up, going home, this feels like the right spot for Jackson to be. All he needs now is a place to live. ("I think I'll find something soon," he said.) His new team has opportunities across the floor. His new head coach has a penchant for reaching young players. And his new GM has an organizational vision that Jackson embodies, long, athletic and versatile.
Here’s one label that should not be assigned to Jackson: bust. A bust doesn’t score at least 20 points 17 times in his first season – nearly a quarter of his games. A bust doesn’t earn second-team All-Rookie honors. A bust doesn’t resurface on a new team in his third season and average double-digit points whenever he got double-digit minutes. A bust isn’t 23 years old.
A bust doesn’t get a call from Troy Weaver on the first day of free agency and sign a two-year, $10 million contract shortly thereafter.
“Right from the beginning, I just felt that he believed in me as a player, just as much as I believed in myself,” Jackson said of Weaver. “He also, just like me, feels that I have a lot to prove. We just had an understanding of each other, and it felt right to me. So it was really easy for me to make that decision.”
Who knows what else was out there for Jackson. His talent has been marred by immaturity. During his lone season at Kansas, he and a teammate went to court for vandalizing the car of a player on the woman’s basketball team. After his second season with the Suns, Jackson was arrested at a hip-hop festival in Miami for repeatedly to trying to access the VIP entrance. He was traded that offseason to the Grizzles, where he was assigned to the G League team and later suspended for missing a team meeting.
Minor offenses, all things considered. But a problem when they become a pattern. It was a year ago that Christian Wood arrived in Detroit with the same sort of juvenile reputation. Unreliable off the court, inconsistent on it. Four teams had already decided Wood’s potential wasn’t worth the headache. In their first conversation, Dwane Casey shot him straight.
“Christian will tell you. I said, ‘Christian, look, I’m in an easy position. If you don’t do it here, probably the next team you play for you’re going to be speaking another language.’ And he did everything (I asked), and that’s all I ask of Josh,” Casey said.
Casey smiled as he recalled this exchange, partly because it worked. Wood finally put it all together, aided by the right opportunity on the right team, and now he’s $41 million richer. And partly because it’s all so similar to where Casey is now with Jackson.
“It’s the same thing everyone was saying, ‘Dwane, don’t mess with him, leave him alone.’ I guess I enjoy people who have a chip on their shoulder, who have been almost forgotten about in our league,” Casey said. “Not saying Josh has been, but we’re all imperfect people.”
And Jackson, if we’re being honest, is an imperfect player. Of the 60 players selected in the 2017 draft, he ranks dead last in win shares: negative 1.8. And yet he ranks 10th in total points. His pedigree bought him time in Phoenix, the club that drafted him fourth overall, but it didn’t matter in Memphis. Jackson found himself in the G League for the first three months of last season.
Perhaps it was the wake-up call he needed. “I had to do a lot of things that I didn’t want to do, necessarily,” Jackson said. When he finally forced his way onto the Grizzlies’ roster, he made the most of his opportunities off the bench, averaging 18.7 points per 36 minutes. He averaged 18.6 by the same measure as a rookie. In terms of win shares, Jackson was a positive for the first time in his career.
He comes home with a new approach to the game, thanks to a new appreciation for the grind.
“I had to realize that it’s not a race,” he said. “Everybody finds success on their own time. I feel like I’ve been moving in the right direction steadily. It’s time for me to take another step and take it even farther, and I feel like I’m ready to do that this year.”
In Detroit, Jackson will have the benefit of a built-in support system. His mom, his grandmother, “lots of aunts and uncles,” they all still live here. “I got a lot of good people around me,” he said. Jackson will get calls from numbers he doesn’t recognize, texts from old friends he never knew he had. That’s the nature of going home while going up. But he said he intends to “keep my circle tight.”
“So it’ll be pretty easy to stay focused,” he said.
For Jackson, this is it. If he doesn’t launch his career here, he’s not launching it anywhere. He’s on the right trajectory on the right team, surrounded by the right people. His optimism shines through his outlook: Jackson wants to bring the Pistons back to the teams “I used to watch as a kid.” First, the Pistons want to bring Jackson back to the kid who used to play down the street.
“I’ve seen the reputation, the perceptions, all that,” Casey said. “I look at him as a basketball player, as I did Christian. If a young man comes in and does what he’s supposed to do, goes by the team rules, plays his behind off and produces on the court, he’s going to play. And that’s how I look at Josh.
“Some guys just need an opportunity.”