The Clippers are expected to sign Luke Jackson to a 10-day contract today, something I advocated they do back on October 27 after he was cut by the Celtics. Jackson was a monster in college, arguably the best of the trio at Oregon that included Luke Ridnour and Fred Jones. He can shoot the ball, and he can also take it to the basket. He was originally drafted by Cleveland with the 10th pick in 2004, but found himself behind a guy named Lebron, and also suffered an injury in his rookie year. So you're talking about a lottery pick from the Livingston draft who's 25 and has played 361 minutes in the NBA. In other words, he hasn't really gotten a chance. Given the success of some other Pac-10 small forwards who Jackson torched in college (Matt Barnes, Trevor Ariza, Jason, Kapono, Josh Childress, Andre Iguodala, etc.), I for one am looking forward to seeing what he can do.
The guy can shoot. In extremely limited game time, he has made 16 of 42 three point attempts in the NBA. In 6 games with the Idaho Stampede in the D-League this season, he's made 7 of his 12 three point attempts.
Why didn't the Clippers just sign him back in October? Well, the short answer is because they wanted to maintain some level of roster flexibility. Last Friday was the first day that teams could sign players to 10 day contracts. So if Jackson doesn't work out, they can try someone else. And apparently MDSr has realized after 34 games what seemed painfully obvious before the season had started, that this team does not have enough shooters. Of course, if they'd signed him to a non-guaranteed contract in October, they could have cut him in December and had exactly the same amount of flexibility, but I'm not the GM or the coach.
Of course, they have been taking a lot of my ideas lately (the one dribble rule, signing Luke Jackson).