The commentators touched on this during the tournament game, but someone correct me if I misunderstood the story or if I’m missing important details.

So he WAS a starter and then got injured, and then came off the bench. Then when asked to rejoin the starting lineup, he declined, and the reason for that was because “it was more important for him to be a finisher than a starter.”

I was watching the game with my dad. I remember the commentators were presenting this narrative as though it said something unique about his competitive spirit, and my dad was kind of nodding his head. He wasn’t going to hear how weird that sounded because in that moment, Jaxon was the only person on the team that looked capable of scoring. But I was immediately confused, and asked “can he not do both? Is he mixing up basketball with starting pitching? Starters finish the games! Find me one starter that isn’t also regularly finishing games if he hasn’t fouled out. What is he talking about?” This kinda snapped my dad back into reality, and he was like “yeah … I don’t really get that either.”

I really like JR, and I’m obviously rooting for him. But if that is actually an accurate characterization of how things really went down and you still see an NBA future for Jaxon, you might be beyond reach.