Cleveland Cavaliers: Has Jordan Clarkson become underrated?

Not many players on the Cleveland Cavaliers have gained much respect this season, but has Jordan Clarkson become underrated?

To most NBA fans, Jordan Clarkson is known as a ball-dominant player who has the ability to score but fails to have a positive impact on his team. This season, Clarkson has been working with the Cleveland Cavaliers to remove the stigma from his name.

When the Cavaliers acquired Clarkson in a trade at last year’s deadline, fans hoped that he could be a consistent bench scorer. As the Cavs were looking to compete for an NBA championship, Clarkson was supposed to become a spark plug for the second unit.

He had shown potential. In his second season with the Los Angeles Lakers, JC averaged 15.5 points per game and was the team’s second-leading scorer behind Kobe Bryant. At only 23 years of age, his future looked bright.

His career with Cleveland started off great. Coming off the bench in his first game, Clarkson scored 17 points as the Cavs dismantled the Boston Celtics by 22 points.

Sadly, it didn’t take long for Clarkson to unravel and become a detriment to the team. In the 2018 NBA Playoffs, he averaged only 4.7 points per game and shot just 30.1 percent from the field. He hurt the Cavaliers far more than he helped them and sat on the bench for most of the postseason.

This is why it is understandable that the majority of the NBA had given up hope on Clarkson. If he couldn’t be productive as a bench player for a championship-contending team, then what type of future could he have in the league?

The start of the 2018-19 season wasn’t pretty for the Cavaliers. They fell to an 0-6 record, making them the worst team in the league. The entire roster scrambled to find their roles within the team, while Clarkson decided his best option was to suit up and shoot the ball every chance he got.

At first, this mentality was received poorly by fans. The Cavs were consistently losing games and Clarkson appeared to only care about his own personal stats. Through the first 12 games of the season, he was attempting a team-high 13.5 field goals while only dishing out 1.8 assists a night.

To get a good sense of the type of basketball Clarkson was playing, check out this Twitter thread of shot attempts from JC during the first few weeks of the season:

Luckily, Clarkson’s mentality of “shoot first, ask questions later” ended up paying off for him. While his shot attempts might be viewed as ill-advised, none of that matters if he’s getting buckets. This season, JC is putting up a career-high 17.0 points per game on 44.6 percent shooting from the floor.

Clarkson is currently third in the league for bench scoring (minimum 40 games) and has the second-most games of 10-plus points among bench players. Furthermore, the Cavaliers have a 6-13 record when he scores at least 20 points, indicating that his scoring is a huge help to a team that’s only won 16 games on the season.

If Clarkson were playing for a better team, he would likely be in the race for Sixth Man of the Year right now. Instead, he is hardly ever talked about. It is possible that he is putting up empty stats on a bad team, but I think his positive impact on the Cavaliers has been undeniable.

It might be a stretch to call Jordan Clarkson underrated, but he’s erased the negative stigma surrounding his character. He isn’t a selfish player and he can be productive. Moving forward, JC could become a valuable member of a successful NBA team.