Catchall wrote:GG backing out of UNC could hurt his draft stock. His team was down 27-10 after 11 mins or so tonight to George Washington, and it never got better from there. His team couldn't get any traction and was never in the game.
It all depends on his play. If he shows up and performs, it won't hurt his stock even if his team record sucks. This is not what scouts are looking for. Just look at Fultz, for example.
The gamble you make as a player is based on the question: how ready am I to lead a team with most of the attention on me? If you do well individually and put up big numbers, people will notice and rank you highly no matter what how your team does. But if you don't, there's no bonus from all the attention that better college teams get throughout the year and the benefit of a smaller role when you're not quite ready for consistently taking over games (where flashes make scouts wonder whether you may be able to handle a larger role once drafted).
The problem I see for Jackson currently is: there are a bunch of things he does well compared to most combo bigs but not compared to combo Forwards – and vice versa. What will his role be at the next level, and what ability can he hang his hat onto? The current profile isn't exactly awe-inspiring: very little playmaking, underwhelming FTr, not a dominant finisher or rebounder, solid but not great shooting indicators, pedestrian STOCK numbers.
To me, it really boils down to how you evaluate his age. Is the fact that he is so young for his class enough to project him to be much further along in a year, and do you therefore already price that in when comparing him to other Freshmen in this draft? It's defensible but we're also not talking about a Giannis, AD or even Wembanyama situation where you just look at the player before the draft and think ‘just give him another year or two to fill out and he'll be even more of a beast’. He'll get stronger and improve athletically, but he won't transform I don't think; so that leaves us with with an improved skill-set but that's usually not subject to transformation either but rather marginal improvements (especially outside of shooting and decision-making, where some larger jumps are possible albeit far from typical).