Nothing surprises Jim Jackson anymore. Trade him tomorrow. Trade the entire team. You can’t surprise him.
Jackson picks up the paper, sees Atlanta Hawks President Stan Kasten’s fire-and-brimstone message to his underachieving team and shrugs. Been there, done that. Jackson is like the phoenix, symbol of the city of Atlanta: His career has been rebuilt time and time again from the ashes of his previous stop. Once thought of as an insurance policy in the Isaiah Rider-Steve Smith trade, the former lottery pick has emerged as the key player.
Jackson is playing 37 minutes a game, is the team’s second-leading scorer at 18 points per game and is second in the NBA in three-point shooting at .491. He appears to have found a home with the Hawks and said he hopes to remain in Atlanta for a while.
Jackson did not ask to become a Hawk and wasn’t particularly thrilled about coming here after sacrificing and reaching the Western Conference finals with Portland last spring. But unlike his friend Rider, he did not indulge in a fit of kicking and screaming; he came in and resolved to make the best of it.
“I told them, `So based on what you’re telling me, I’m an insurance policy for J.R.,’ and [General Manager Pete Babcock] said, `Yeah.’ Well, they didn’t know it, but I resolved that I was going to make the best of it,” Jackson said. “I wasn’t going to be a bench guy if I could help it. I was going to start, and I was going to be a good teammate and compete and try to help them win.”
Beginning in 1992, when Dallas selected him with the fourth pick of the draft but refused to pay him No. 4 money–he sat out more than 50 games demanding fair treatment–it’s been one wrong turn after another for Jackson, but he has survived each one. From Dallas to Philadelphia to New Jersey to Golden State to Portland to Atlanta in the span of 30 months. The man is an encyclopedia for apartment living. Need to know the market? Don’t call a real estate agent. Call Jim Jackson.
“I got a hard lesson in the business of basketball my rookie year,” he said last week, knees encased in bags of ice. “It’s taught me a lot over the years.”
He survived the breakup of the celebrated three J’s–Jackson, Jason Kidd and Jamal Mashburn–who actually played 69 games as a starting, functioning unit. He survived the damage to his reputation when he and his close friend Kidd allegedly were seeing the same woman, singer Toni Braxton, only the truth is that neither player ever met her.
“I never met her,” Jackson said. “It was all her [public relations] stunt.”
And on to a half-season in New Jersey. A half-season in Philly. A season with Golden State, then the promise of a three-year tenure in Portland that lasted six months.
Through it all, Jackson remains whole as a person, refusing to give in to the bitterness and distrust he feels toward basketball management. He realizes he has little clout.
“If Jerry Reinsdorf can finally give Michael [Jordan] the $30 million he deserves and say he’s going to regret doing it, you know that’s the business,” Jackson said.
Nothing is going to ruin the game for him.
“I try to keep everything in perspective,” Jackson said. “In reality basketball doesn’t mean anything. We place so much emphasis on the ring and winning the championship. And there are some guys today who have that ring, and they don’t have anything. That ring can’t get you what you need to be successful in life. I don’t care if you’ve got 11 like Bill Russell or if you’ve got six like Michael; it doesn’t matter. In the end, basketball is just a game. I love to play and I love to win, but I’ve got to keep everything in perspective.”
A history buff, Jackson knows something about the world:
“You’ve got people over in Europe getting hijacked or don’t have food, got bombs going off around them. You’ve got people in the U.S. who don’t have a place to live, children out on the streets, and I’m going to get stressed out worrying about a basketball game where my life is pretty much taken care of? No.”
He knows his position is not like real life.
“I get traded, I’m going to another team,” he said. “I’m still playing. I may not like the other team, and I may not like the situation I’m in, but that check is still coming in and I’m doing what I love to do. But the average person who gets laid off or gets fired, or gets evicted from their house, a death in the family creates loss of income, you’re now a single parent, you don’t know what the future holds.
“Am I going to get frustrated and not enjoy life? No. For a while I didn’t, and I let some years slip by without having fun just because of circumstances.”
It started to change for Jackson last winter when he went to Portland and discovered winning for the first time in his career after being with teams that were a collective 135-299, never having participated in a playoff game.
“I got a lot of it back last year,” he said. “I got more favorable publicity last year for playing 20 minutes and scoring less than 10 points than I did the previous three years.
“Even this year, when we’re not going the way I or management or the coaching staff would have envisioned it, the desire and love is there.When you think about all the things that could be wrong, all the things that plague society.
“I mean, if I had a fatal disease. Or I couldn’t see or I couldn’t walk. So my knees hurt, so what? Go and get them [treated] and play.
“When I’m done, I’m done there will be a time when I can’t play anymore, but I’m not going to look back and see lost opportunities.”
