Looking for a bright spot on the Wizards? Watch Tyus Jones.
Tyus Jr., Jones said, is just beginning to learn about basketball but knows enough to ask the same question after almost every game: “How many assists did you have?”
The answers, lately, haven’t been too shabby.
In a 114-90 loss Friday, their second straight to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Jones led the Wizards with 16 points and five assists and added two steals as he continued his recent string of strong performances. Less than halfway through his first season as a full-time starting point guard, Jones has been a diamond in the rough while Washington (6-28) stumbles through its first few months of a rebuild.
He is adjusting to his new role gracefully, providing a steadying voice in the locker room and a steadying hand guiding the Wizards’ offense, when it’s clicking.
On Friday, it was subpar — the Wizards shot just 41.7 percent from the field and struggled to build rhythm while their defense, for the second consecutive game, let Cleveland settle in quickly. The Cavaliers (20-15) shot 53.2 percent from the field and had 16 three-pointers and five scorers in double figures. Donovan Mitchell led the way with 26 points and five three-pointers.
The Wizards couldn’t figure out a way to keep the Cavaliers off the offensive glass and were outrebounded 52-31.
Jones, though, found the space to get his work done early. The 27-year-old has taken to Washington’s open offense and buried three three-pointers in the first quarter Friday before cooling off. He is averaging career highs in points (12.6), field goal percentage (53.3) and three-point percentage (43.8), and, according to the statistical website Cleaning the Glass, has a career-low six percent turnover rate.
Plus, he’s a quick study. Jones averaged 10.9 points and 4.9 assists in his first 17 games with Washington. In the next 17, those numbers rose to 14.2 points and 5.9 assists.
“[He’s found] that balance of playing fast and trying to score quick versus the execution piece,” Coach Wes Unseld Jr. said recently during a rash of particularly high-scoring games for Jones, including a 22-point night in Phoenix on Dec. 17 and a season-best 24-point performance two games later in a win at Portland on Dec. 21. Unseld also complimented Jones’s improved pick-and-roll defense.
Jones’s goal at the outset of the season was in part to prove his value as a starting point guard after mostly leading the second unit for the first four years of his career with the Minnesota Timberwolves before backing up Ja Morant with the Memphis Grizzlies beginning in 2019.
He came to Washington with a rock-solid reputation predicated on his reliable, low-turnover game that matched a low-key attitude in the locker room. Washington offered the opportunity for more responsibility in both realms.
Jones has attacked the challenge by trying not to think about it too much. Instead, he set about learning, engaging in deep, basketball-related conversations with Unseld, Jordan Poole, Kyle Kuzma and his other teammates. The more questions he can ask, the more he understands his teammates’ wants and needs and the more he can anticipate what they’re thinking in a game.
“The more second nature things are, the quicker you’re getting stuff on court, the quicker you’re making calls and things like that,” Jones said. “Obviously, it’s not literally not thinking about [performing well], but the thinking becoming second nature, trying to know the system like the back of your hand, knowing where guys need to be.”
He has ramped up his aggression on offense in the same manner. Jones increased his shot attempts from 9.4 in the first 16 games of the season to 10.4 in the next 17 games, and his three-point attempts have gone up in kind.
Jones isn’t actively hunting more of his own shots or creating opportunities for himself but rather reading the defense and being quicker to take shots that are available.
“He’s shooting it better from three, which helps and now forces teams to honor him out on the floor, which opens up the pick-and-roll game, opens up the rest of the paint,” Unseld said.
Now, Jones’s singular improvement can’t save the Wizards from a dismal season or fix their rebounding affliction or defense.
But as impressive as his quick improvement has been on the court, he has been every bit as valuable for the Wizards in the locker room as a leader of a group that, despite its record, has been described by several players as having the best chemistry they’ve experienced in their time in the NBA.
Although Jones speaks to reporters with the gravitas of a coach, Poole calls him his funniest teammate. Fourth-year forward Deni Avdija said in a recent interview that Jones has a perfect sense of timing during huddles about when to speak and when to let his teammates have a moment to think and breathe.
“He’s so great. He’s got that, like, sarcastic sense of humor, and I feel like more than that he does a good job of saying the right things at the right time that bring us together,” Avdija said, shrugging as if searching for more to say. “I feel like he’s just an overall good dude who knows how to play basketball.”
