If Jimmer Fredette wants to be in the NBA next season, specifically with the Phoenix Suns, he has to get onto the court and play – well.
Whether the Phoenix Suns signed Jimmer Fredette for the remainder of this season with a team option for next year as a gimmick or as an actual trial to see if he would be a cheap and suitable replacement to the presumed moving on Troy Daniels, if he wants to stand a chance at being on a roster in 2019-20, he has to get onto the court this year in as many games possible.
And he also has to play well.
In Jimmer’s third game with the franchise, he failed to see the court in either the second or fourth quarters, the two periods that he has seen time for Phoenix thus far, and the reasons are simple:
While one might assume that part of why was because that the Suns weren’t being blown out (which is how he saw his fourth quarter time in game two against Utah), his appearance in game one was at the end of the second quarter when the Suns were still very much in it.
Phoenix Suns
The first (and obvious) problem with Jimmer is that he has come to the NBA after spending the last two seasons in China draining bucks like a monsoon rain, and yet has gone dry, like the Arizona desert.
Jimmer is shooting 1-11 from the field in his two appearances and has yet to make a 3-pointer – his absolute bread and butter.
NBA teams will assume (regardless of how poorly he shoots over the Suns’ final six games) that he can shoot and coaches will always believe that their system will be suitable for him to get the shots off, and they will fall.
However, there are a number of other factors to his game that everyone involved still wants to see as well, particularly, whether or not he can even play in the NBA anymore.
Let’s not fool ourselves (and specifically let Jimmer not fool himself) and understand that the Chinese Basketball Association is no better on it’s best days than the D-League, so a player with Jimmer’s shooting ability had better be able to find success over there.
But if he cannot hang enough right now to even get into games, he’s not going to get a lot of looks this offseason, let alone have his contract picked up by Phoenix.
The second reason that he didn’t get onto the court: Devin Booker.
Following Jimmer’s same-team block of Devin Booker’s 60-point chase, Devin had nothing but positive re-affirmation about his new teammate. And while I suppose that I doubt that Booker said or did anything that would have prevented Jimmer from seeing the court against Washington, it is very possible that Igor Kokoskov never “found time” for Jimmer to play.
It certainly doesn’t help Jimmer’s case, of course, that he can’t shoot and Phoenix was in that game all four quarters, so any time he played and any bricks he shot would have hurt them, and Booker made his run at 50 from the get-go.
Plus, if the two had played together for any amount of time and Jimmer missed a couple of shots that Booker could have had, and Booker had finished with 46-49 points, while Booker again may have never said anything, Jimmer would like be boo’d mercilessly at home for the rest of the season.
Regardless of why he didn’t make the court on Wednesday night, the fact that Jimmer Fredette is potentially playing for his NBA life yet couldn’t even make it into his third game, is not good for someone hoping to stick around for a while.
Basically, Jimmer Fredette is already playing himself off of the Phoenix Suns.