Tre Jones is easily one of my favorite players to watch on the San Antonio Spurs. The 22-year-old guard plays an intelligent brand of basketball with the patience of a seasoned veteran. Although his high-end ceiling doesn’t match up to lottery prospects like Devin Vassell and Josh Primo, he offers a refreshing change of pace from the expected inconsistencies from other youngsters on the roster.
The Duke standout didn’t see much court time during his rookie go-round with the Spurs as he found himself buried behind Dejounte Murray, DeMar DeRozan, Derrick White, Patty Mills, and Lonnie Walker IV on a congested depth chart. Now that the front office has moved on from the trio of Mills, White, and DeRozan, the second-year floor general has flourished into an everyday rotational player.
We could debate how much cracking the rotation means when your squad sits 15 games below .500 with more than fourth-fifths of the season in the books. It would also be perfectly reasonable if you are skeptical of Jones, especially given opponents have outscored the Spurs by 40 points across his 749 minutes. That said, Tre has been productive and effective, and not all numbers are automatically empty just because losses are piling up.
To be transparent, Jones cannot be the engine that makes an offense go, but he has been solid off the bench for most of the year, and he has made considerable strides over the last 15 contests. Tre has averaged 7.7 points and 4.2 assists on 56.3% shooting from the field during that span. He also had a pair of stellar spot starts in place of Dejounte Murray, with 15 points and nine assists in a narrow loss to the Phoenix Suns and 19 points and 11 assists in a nail-biter versus the Miami Heat.
So what makes Tre such an efficient scorer and distributor? We’ll get to his passing in a minute, but let’s first dive into how Jones puts points on the board.
Officially measuring in at six-foot-one and 185 pounds, Jones has exhibited an aptitude for finishing around the rim despite his smallish stature. Of the 51 players six-one or shorter in the association, Jones ranks 15th in field goal percentage within the restricted area (61.2%). Remove guys with less than 50 shot attempts from that zone, and only Collin Sexton, Jalen Brunson, Kyle Lowry, Donovan Mitchell, and Raul Neto stand ahead of Tre.
Jones loves utilizing ball screens to draw mismatches. If communication breaks down or the big man switches, it’s game over. As you can see, Tre often sizes up forwards and centers before getting downhill, whipping out a hesitation-dribble, and putting on the burst. Coupled with his talent for protecting the orange with the rim and a willingness to embrace contact, stopping Tre once he rounds the corner is darn-near impossible.
Even when teams implement drop coverage, the shifty playmaker does an excellent job trapping the primary defender on his backside and throwing feathery floaters over the retreating shot blockers. This touch makes him a unique threat relative to the bulk of San Antonio’s roster. Though Jakob Poeltl leads the team in runners this season, more than 95% of them have come via an assist. As for Jones, more than 70% of his pop-a-shots have been unassisted, which is an important distinction.
Dejounte and Tre are the only Spurs who generate more than half of their field goals, and the latter doing so while shooting 51.6% from the floor for the season could be an encouraging sign of things to come. Before we go off the rails with Jones as a self-creator, most of his effectiveness stems from meticulous shot selection, which in turn is dictated by the holes in his off-the-dribble arsenal.
Sure, there have been a few flashes that imply Tre might have a future as a pull-up shooter. But for now, the functionality of his jumper is restricted to about 14 feet. Jones has nailed 11-of-21 (52.4%) midrange attempts so far, and as much as we may want to read into those numbers, the sample size is much too small. And Jones gets more ineffective and reluctant as he treks further away from the hoop, going 0-of-5 on self-created three-pointers.
That hesitancy and inaccuracy follow Tre off-ball, where he often passes up catch-and-shoot chances, which isn’t shocking considering he is 3-of-16 (18.8%) on stationary threes this season. Limited range caps his value as a scorer, and while many coaches like having multiple ball handlers on the court, Dejounte also struggles to shoot from beyond the arc. But he is an All-Star and a better standstill marksman, so deciding who goes to the bench when Pop needs more spacing isn’t a difficult decision.
For his inability to stretch a set defense away from the ball, Jones offers value elsewhere. The savvy guard grades out in the 94.4th percentile as a cutter, the best on the roster. Tre frequently sells defenders on fake cross screens, darting to the cup before they can recover. He has also shown a penchant for sneaking away from his man, finding uninhibited paths to the basket when they divert their attention from him in the corners.
Tre brings that same level of awareness in transition, plugging the lanes to perfection and running the show as an initiator. Jones has succeeded in conducting the modern fastbreak, throwing pinpoint alley-oops, hitting three-point shooters, finding teammates in full stride, identifying trailers, connecting on leak-outs, and attacking the basket when the opportunity presents itself. Simple stuff at its core, but watch a Clippers game, and you’ll quickly see not everyone can organize the troops after forcing a turnover.
The diminutive point guard is also capable of orchestrating a reliable half-court offense. You won’t see many advanced reads or snazzy deliveries if you turn on the game tape, but Jones is a quintessential floor general. Tre has command of the pocket pass, makes secondary reads out of the pick-and-roll, loves to drive-and-kick to open sharpshooters, and prospers off one-man-away assists.
Though Jones isn’t much of an advantage creator, he understands how to keep the ball moving, and he does so without committing many turnovers. Tre owns the third-best assist-to-turnover ratio in the NBA (4.6:1), trailing only Jordan McLaughlin and his older brother Tyus Jones. You won’t find many backup point guards with a more well-rounded offensive repertoire than Tre, shooting deficiencies and all. An improved context surrounded by better spacing and personnel can negate those faults to a degree.
As for the other side of the ball, that’s a different story. The former ACC Defensive Player of the Year was always in for an uphill battle in the NBA. Between his slight build and six-four wingspan, Jones provides little to no switchability. Like Bryn Forbes before him, his stark lack of size makes him a liability on almost any non-point-guard matchup. And that shows up in his defensive field goal percentage (49.3%), which ranks 248th out of the 283 players who have defended at least 300 shots this season.
Regardless of his shortcomings, Tre is a pesky point-of-attack defender, his motor runs red-hot, and he can get beneath taller players with a loose hand and poke the ball away. Jones keeps his head on a swivel, executes timely digs on nearby drivers, and rarely gambles for steals at the cost of harming the team. Could the Spurs upgrade defensively from Tre? Sure. Yet they are liable to downgrade on the opposite end if they do so.
I’ll leave you all with this thought. The San Antonio Spurs haven’t signed one of their second-round selections to a second contract since soon-to-be Hall-of-Famer Manu Ginobili.
That’s not to say Tre Jones will transform into a perennial All-Star, but at this rate, betting on the former 41st overall pick feels like an objectively better plan than pursuing anyone else in free agency. Especially for a small-market organization in the thick of a rebuild.
