Turning Heads: Dominique Jones

As the Summer league has come to an end a lot of us have seen things that excited us in different ways. What has excited people outside of the Mavericks organization the most? Possible the very thing that excites within the organization.

Dominique Jones.

When news broke of Dallas acquiring Dominique Jones many were thrilled, and it gave fans who don't closely follow every youngster in Dallas a reason to watch us in the Summer League in Vegas. "Dojo" as he is now commonly referred to has done our excitement justice. Dominique has displayed great ability in many aspects of his game en route to being named onto the All tournament team.

Jones has also climbed his way up to #4 on the NBA.com Rookie Ladder. On a summer where our hope, Roddy has showed up but not wow'ed, this is a breath of fresh air. I'm not trying to talk bad about Beaubois. I still have high hopes and still believe he is more valuable than Jones, but it's nice to have one player getting attention for strong play while Rodrique goes through a very human like, much more importantly rookie like, slump in his short basketball career. A slump I'm more than confident he will break by, if not at training camp.

Back to Jones. Dominique did his best damage against the Washington Wizards, and John Wall. The first pick in the draft had torn through any in his way in Vegas, but things changed when he faced Jones. Not only did Dominique outscore Wall in the game, but he did so in a game where he scored 28. 28 points, in a summer league game with short quarters and 10 fouls being allowed, on the number 1 prospect(arguably) in any professional sport today. Oh, should i mention he held Wall to 4/19 shooting from the field? All of this seems pretty impressive from a 25th pick in the draft, one that we acquired for cash considerations.

Dojo has shown an uncanny ability to defend and score for Dallas. The impressive scoring is the scoring he did at the rim. Many rookies come into the league able to shoot well and never develop the hunger to actually attack the rim. Learning to shoot is no impossible task(Look at Parker, Kidd, and thank god Rondo hasn't figured this out) so I'm glad he's already got the harder of the 2 down, the aggressiveness. He has great promise as a Maverick, and with Roddy possibly having to upgrade from promising Rookie to depended upon role player, maybe Jones can take Roddy's old place as the guy we all complain about not getting enough minutes.

Since Free Dominique doesn't have the same zing and cool ring to it, Now all we need is a cool slogan as fans to beg Rick to play him more.