Ever since Maryland men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon announced in late December that Justin Jackson would be sidelined for the remainder of the season with a torn labrum in his right shoulder, the sophomore forward’s NBA future seemed to be teetering.
After a standout freshman year when he was second on the team in scoring behind Melo Trimble and made 43.8 percent of his 3-point shots, Jackson appeared out of sync offensively for most of the 11 games in which the 6-foot-7, 225-pound Canadian forward played.
As his 3-point percentage dropped to 25 percent, and he became the Big Ten’s only preseason first-team pick to see his scoring dip into single digits (9.