Jalen Cook reminds of Johnny Jones

Johnny Jones had awesome quickness. Cook is a much better shooter.

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JJ’s nickname was “The Bullet” for that quickness. But he was not a scorer. He was a pure point guard focused on distributing the ball.

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Agreed. Jones never scored consistently, most points were layups . He could be disruptive on the defensive end.

He was also the cousin of former Tiger Wayne Sims, the father of the late Tiger Wayde Sims.

Johnny Jones was an excellent defensive guard.

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His offense was a hindrance to the team. And I was being nice.

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His first two years there was so much firepower it made no difference. Then came a couple of rebuilding years before another Fantastic Climb to the Top.

I don't see that at all. I think Tac Minor and a young (first two years) Skylar Mays are better comparisons.

The lasting memory I have of Jones as a player is that on fast breaks he always seemed to be dribbling out of control with no plan in mind....and he could not shoot a lick.

Cook is already a better shooter than Jones ever was. Jones could handle the ball well in the half court and four corners I agree was a good defender and I think Jones is a good guy.

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Don't start the Jones coaching crap, we had enough of that all week when the game was supposed to be against Texas Southern.

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I agree, as Curley would say let's not beat a dead horse to death.

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Jalen Cook reminds of Johnny Jones

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That's not a compliment to Jalen...Jones came in highly rated and was an absolutely horrible scorer and played mostly out of control. Daddy Dale really went hard for Rocket Rod Foster a year earlier and lost out to UCLA. Both Foster and Jones never lived up to their hype.

I see nothing in Jalen that reminds me of Johnny Jones.

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Just go look at his assist to turnover ratio. That’ll tell you the whole fricking story.

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A:TO ratio tells you very little of the story on any player.

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I think assist/turnover ratio is the paramount stat for a point guard.....especially a PG like Jones, who was not a scorer.

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For one, it doesn't account at all for defense, which is a major part of most non-scoring PG's games. Also, assists don't capture anything a PG does on offense except make passes that directly lead to baskets. Those situations are usually limited to fast breaks and two-man set plays, which only make up a small portion of the game and are highly dependent on style and pace of play.

Press break, controlling the shot clock, running the offense right, making the pass that leads to the pass that leads to the bucket...so much more.

Not saying JJ would fare any better by a better metric, just saying A:TO is outdated and not really used in high-level basketball analytics anymore.

TO by usage rate would be better, because it theoretically measures how often you give it up based on how often it is in your hands. But that doesn't measure how useful it is when it in your hands, so it is limited, too.

Ideally someone would create a QBR-like metric that evaluates their decisions and contributions on a truly situation-specific basis, but the man-hours to code the data would be pretty absurd.

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Whether he proves to be a better offensive player than Jones remains to be seen

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Honestly, I think I've seen enough already to tell me he's a better offensive player than Jones. He made 3 threes in 11 minutes one game. Had their been a 3-point line in Johnny's day, it may have taken him 3 weeks to duplicate that - and anyone who was around then I think would agree on that.

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Johnny Jones was not... good.

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Jones was not a star, but he was a good player who made valuable contributions to powerful teams. He was the perfect backup point guard, part time starter on tournament teams.