The Curious Case of Jared Jeffries

"A rare shot by Jeffries!" Mike Breen shouted during a recent home game, as Jared Jeffries lined up for a wide open, 8-foot jump shot that would bounce off the back rim and back into play.

Jared Jeffries is an offensive enigma. He's mind-boggling; he baffles, bewilders, puzzles and perplexes me on a consistent basis. Thesaurus.com had more synonyms, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

 He always plays like he's being double teamed

Jeffries was a Knick from 2006-2010, and was reacquired on March 1, 2011, so I have seen plenty of him (although I spent his first stint slumped in the corner of my room, deliriously convinced it was all just a bad hallucination: that they had never, in fact, traded Patrick Ewing for the likes of Luc Longley, Travis Knight and Glen Rice's plantar fasciitis laden feet).

Here's a breakdown of Jeffries' abilities based on years of watching him stumble his way through the offense...

Pros: He hustles, moves well without the ball and has decent court vision. He's not Charles Smith.

Cons: He is an awful jump shooter, especially off the dribble. He is a 58% career free throw shooter, just about 5% ahead of Shaq's career average. Unless he is wide open, he has an embarrassing touch near the rim; I've seen him miss many layups and dunks.

His career Player Efficiency Rating (PER), which measures a player's per-minute production is 9.7. The league average is 15 every season. The closest he came to that mark was 2005-06, with a PER of 11.6. For reference, teammate Ronny Turiaf has a career PER of 14.3.

The layup may not have gone in

This season, his overall PER is 6.6, and 5.2 with the Knicks, making him 397th out of the 445 players in the league. Have you heard of Mustafa Shakur? Francisco Elson? Both of those players are above him in PER.

Jeffries has never averaged more than seven points per game. This year he is averaging less than 1.5 points per game, shooting about 29% from the field and 35% from the free throw line. He has scored ten or more points in a game zero times this season.

He has scored 15 or more points twelve times in his career, or in .02% of his total games played.

So what conclusion arises from this smoldering heap of statistics? That Jared Jeffries simply cannot play offense?

But the whole reason for this analysis of his play is not to throw dirt on top of an old grave. It's because, digging deeper, that conclusion may not be true.

It's a confusing puzzle to piece together, so let's trace his basketball career back as far as the Internet will take us.

Jeffries played high school ball at Bloomington High School North. He was honored as the Indiana Mr. Basketball in 2000, a yearly award recognizing the top high school basketball players in the state of Indiana. He shares this achievement with Oscar Robertson (the only NBA player to ever average a triple double over an entire season), who won the award in 1956.

Jeffries was a McDonald's All-American that year as well.

Here, Jeffries looks like a basketball player

He was also ranked 9th in the 2000 Recruiting Services Consensus Index (RSCI), which ranks the top 100 high school basketball players each year. There were multiple future NBA players behind him, including Chris Wilcox and former Knick Mike Sweetney.

The next step in his career was college at Indiana University. In his first season, he averaged almost 14 points a game and shot 44% from the floor, leading the Hoosiers to a 21-13 record, albeit a first round exit in the NCAA Tournament. He improved a year later, averaging 15 points per game on 46% shooting, as the Hoosiers went 25-12 and made it to the NCAA championship game, losing to Maryland. In that game, Jeffries had 8 points, 7 rebounds and 3 assists.

Remember how Jeffries has scored 15 or more points in just .02% (12 times in 544 games) of his career NBA games? In college he scored at least 15 points 43% of the time (30 times in 70 games).

Here he looks like a lost child

He entered the NBA draft after his sophomore season and was drafted 11th overall, by the Washington Wizards. Players picked after Jeffries include Tayshaun Prince, Carlos Boozer and Nenad Krstic.

This brings us to the start of his NBA career.

His career actually began with promise. He averaged 4, 5.7 and 6.8 points in his first three seasons respectively. However, since that incredible 2004-05 season when he averaged almost 7 points per game, Jeffries declined almost every season, which brings us to this year, where he is averaging 1.4 points per game. 

So, after weeks of research and days of writing, my analysis of Jared Jeffries is complete, and like all epic tales, it ends just how it began:

Jared Jeffries is an offensive enigma. He's mind-boggling; he baffles, bewilders, puzzles and perplexes me on a consistent basis.