Jackson Portion of Jackson vs. Tatum Write Up

[Sunzgunz]

I apologize if someone already posted this; it's from the ringer:

"Tjarks: The one thing that I can’t get out of my mind when I think about Tatum is the McDonald’s All American Game a year ago. The exhibition itself is pretty pointless, but the practices are usually fascinating because you see the best of the best going at each other on both sides of the ball for two days. I remember watching Jahlil Okafor go up against Myles Turner and Karl-Anthony Towns three years ago and thinking he just couldn’t hang with them athletically. Tatum was matched up against Josh Jackson a lot in 2016, and Tatum couldn’t get around him. All Tatum could do was force long 2s with a hand in his face. I was talking to an NBA executive about Jackson a couple of months ago, and he told me the best players in his class are all scared of him. As soon as I heard that, I flashed back to those scrimmages. Jackson is probably the best perimeter defender in this draft, and when Tatum gets to the next level, he is going to face guys like Jackson every night.

It’s not just his performance against Jackson in high school, it’s how he dealt with that level of individual defense in college, too. I thought Tatum struggled with Jonathan Isaac’s length and athleticism in Duke’s two matchups with Florida State this season. He got the better of Isaac a few times on offense, particularly when he was able to draw fouls by taking advantage of Isaac’s overeagerness. But I thought Isaac won that matchup on the whole. In Duke’s two games against Florida State this season, Tatum shot 12-for-30 from the field and had four assists on nine turnovers. Here is how a lot of their one-on-one possessions went down in those two games:

I think Jackson is one of three elite perimeter defenders in this draft, along with Isaac and OG Anunoby. This is obviously just a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but if there’s a couple of those guys in every draft, it would take only seven to eight years for most teams in the league to have one of the best defenders in the country from their particular season of college basketball. That may seem hyperbolic, but let’s take a quick stroll around NBA depth charts: Kent Bazemore. Jaylen Brown. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. Iman Shumpert. Jimmy Butler. Wesley Matthews. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Andre Iguodala. Trevor Ariza. Paul George. Luc Richard Mbah A Moute. Tony Allen. Justise Winslow. Giannis Antetokounmpo. Andre Roberson. Aaron Gordon. Robert Covington. Al-Farouq Aminu. Kawhi Leonard. Those guys are all rabid defenders who get (or will get) outrageous sums of money to lock dudes up on the perimeter. If you are going to be one of the best wing scorers in the game, you better be able to get consistently (and efficiently) buckets on them.

The point is that if Tatum is going to be the player you project him to be, he’s going to be guarded by the other team’s best perimeter defender on a nightly basis. If he’s not, then I’m not sure the rest of his skill set brings enough to the table to really be a great third or fourth option on a team. With all of the other elite prospects in this draft, there’s something else they can hang their hat on besides one-on-one scoring ability: It’s perimeter defense for Jackson and Isaac, elite 3-point shooting for Malik Monk, or the ability to run a team for Fultz, Ball, De’Aaron Fox, and Dennis Smith Jr. So even if they aren’t taking 15-plus shots a game, they can be really valuable. I feel like there’s no Plan B for Tatum, so he has less margin for error if he can’t consistently create against elite defenders.

I’m not saying there’s zero chance Tatum becomes a Pierce- or Hayward-type player, but his path to doing it would mean reorienting his game. He would have to become more of a distributor who can pick apart help and prevent defenses from collapsing on him; he would have to become an elite off-the-dribble shooter. He was a dominant scorer at the college level without overwhelming physical tools because he put his head down and refused to take no for an answer. But that’s not going to work as well when he’s not going up against guys who went pro in something other than sports."

[Mulhollanddrive]

That's a brilliant write up (if it turns out to be true of course).