Pelicans NBA Draft: Tre Jones is the perfect back-up point guard

Tre Jones has a strong two-way game that should intrigue the New Orleans Pelicans during the 2020 NBA Draft

Tre Jones’ Strengths

What’s interesting about Tre Jones, and why I think he’d fit the New Orleans Pelicans perfectly is he has a skill-set that’s very similar to Lonzo Ball’s.

Simply put on any Duke game from the past two years, and you’ll see Jones do two things: facilitate, and defend. Starting with the first, Jones mostly plays the role of a vintage point guard. He plays with a team-first attitude running sets, and distributing out of pick-and-roll action.

He’s extremely good at that role too, commanding with a calm nature and limiting mistakes when the ball’s in his hands. That’s probably why he takes that mentality to the other side of the court as well.

Jones is arguably the best defensive guard in the 2020 Draft. He’s a high IQ defender. He’s great at communicating what’s happening on the court to the rest of his defense and knows when to rotate or play passing lanes. Most importantly he locks down opposing guards. It’s hard to get anything going on offense when facing Jones on defense.

Those two traits aren’t the only good ones about Jones either. He’s evolving into a more of a scorer now too. In Jones’ freshman year, he was purely a facilitator, but in his sophomore year he began attacking the basket more and his 3 point shot improved from 26 percent to 36 percent.

Of course, we can’t talk about Tre Jones without mention his history with Zion Williamson at Duke where the duo had tight chemistry on the court with Jones setting up Williamson for easy looks. I’m sure that the Duke connection is positive in the Pelicans’ eyes.