Golden State Warriors: Jarrett Jack Finally Finds The Right Team
By John Hugar
Since his arrival in 2005, Jarrett Jack has been a solid point guard. He put in decent work for the Blazers, Pacers, Raptors, and Hornets, and while he was never one of the league’s best, it was clear that he had a solid set of skills, which could be of great benefit to any team he landed on.
Unfortunately, he consistently found himself on terrible teams. When the Raptors saw Chris Bosh go to Miami and had almost nothing left, he was the guy who supposed to make things work. After a few games of that, Toronto decided to go with Jose Calderon as the starting 1 , so they shipped him off to New Orleans, where he would be Chris Paul‘s backup. This might have been an intriguing arrangement, but Paul wanted out of New Orleans in a hurry. When he bolted for the Clippers, Jack was left as the starting point guard. While he played well, it was not enough to lift New Orleans out of the gutter. They finished with the worst record the in the Western Conference, At that point, it was perfectly reasonable to wonder if Jarrett Jack would ever catch on with a team that had a decent supporting cast.
Thankfully, the Golden State Warriors came along this past offseason, and finally, Jack is on a decent team, one that just might make some serious waves in the playoffs.
At the time, the move hardly seemed like anything special. The Warriors had been an underachieving lottery team the year before, and few thought they were going to do anything better in the upcoming season. It looked as though Jack would simply be adding one more below-average team to his NBA resume.
The Warriors, however, had other plans.
As of now, their record stands at 23-12, and they’ve been one of the most pleasant surprises in the NBA. Most experts expected them to fall to the bottom of the Western Conference yet again, but now, they appear to be a legitimate playoff team.
Jack is a big reason for that, as he is playing some of the best basketball of his career. With Stephen Curry finally returning from injury, Jack settled in as the backup point guard. In that role, he has thrived, becoming one of the best bench players in the league. In the past, Jack’s play had been very workmanlike; he was a solid team leader, but you never saw him making any epic, spectacular moves. This year, he’s been one of the most entertaining players in the league, putting points on the board for the second unit, and putting on quite a show while doing it.
A huge part of Jack’s success with the Warriors has been his chemistry with Carl Landry. Landry was another former starter who the Warriors added to be part of their bench. Much like Jack, Landry had been a solid-but-unspectacular player who put up decent enough numbers, but didn’t do much to win over casual basketball fans. With this team, however, Jack and Landry have turned everything about their careers around. The two are putting on a huge show with the Warriors, running the pick and roll like nobody’s business, and becoming one of the most entertaining tandems to watch. While Curry and David Lee are the marquee players, the excellent chemistry between Jack and Landry has been the team’s most enjoyable feature this season, and it’s lead to a ton of wins. Anyone who doubted either player’s ability to contribute significantly to a contender has been proven severely wrong.
So, after years of being a serviceable player who few gave a second look to, Jarrett Jack has illustrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can be a major player on a good team. Jack is the leader of the Warriors second unit, and he has a legitimate chance at winning the 6th Man Of The Year Award. Any notion that Jack the sort of player who could only be an important contributor on a bad team has been thrown on the window. The Warriors can hang with any other team, and Jack’s high-level play is a huge reason for that. He gives the team considerable depth, and makes the second unit a force to contend with.
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