Point Guard Mondays: Mark Jackson, the master distributor

Mark Jackson didn’t spend a ton of time with the Pacers. However, his incredible passing still showed every season he spent with the team.

There was a time in the 1990s when Mark Jackson was a scoring machine for the New York Knicks. There was also a time in the 1990s when the Indiana Pacers and Knicks were bitter rivals. In between, there was a half-decade time period between his Knicks tenures where Mark Jackson played for the Pacers, and he wasn’t much of a scorer at all, but rather an elite setup man.

Elite might be an understatement, actually. His passing was impactful both in that he led his teammates open with his passes and changed the momentum of the game with highlight plays like this:

Jackson was a point getter with the Knicks, but with the Pacers, he transitioned to being a passer. Here are his assists per game averages in his seasons with Indiana: 7.5, 7.8, 9.8 (30 games), 8.7, 7.9, 8.0. Those are massive numbers, and those seasons helped Jackson on his way to fourth on the all-time assists list in the NBA.

What is even crazier is that he put up those passing numbers in under 30 minutes per game, he was under the thirty-minute mark on average in four of those six seasons. This is reflected more in his assist percentage, a stat that I talked about in my piece about Domantas Sabonis’ passing this season.

Assist percentage is a stat that measures the percentage of made shots assisted by a particular player in their minutes on the court. The all-time record for assist percentage is 57.5, though only 20 total seasons have finished with a figure above 50. Jackson had three seasons over 45 percent, which has only been done 70 times in NBA history. In addition to this, Jackson had a 44.8 assist percentage in his 30 Pacers games during the 1996-97′ season. In the other 52 games, which he played for the Denver Nuggets, he had an assist percentage of 50 percent. The combination of his Denver time and Indiana minutes led to a 48.2 assist percentage, which ended up leading the league.

For reference as to how crazy that assist percentage is, the Pacers leader this season in assist percentage is Darren Collison at 25 percent. Mark Jackson was nearly double that with his percentages in the high 40s. He was flinging the ball everywhere and getting everyone involved on each trip down the hardwood.

That great passing drove him to a 111 offensive rating during his time in Indiana. That’s a great figure, showing what kind of impact he had on the Pacers attack. Even when he wasn’t making flashy passes like he did in the clip above, he was initiating buckets with on the money passes like this:

That perfect pass on the money in transition created points for the Pacers. That is what made Jackson so special during his time at the crossroads of the United States.

Next: Should Pacers Cash-Out for Kemba Walker?

An assist percentage of 45 is incredibly rare. Only two players are on pace to hit that mark this season, and their numbers will likely drop slightly as the seasons comes to an end. Jackson’s historic passing in a Pacers uniform is what makes him such a legend. He could do a lot more than just pass, but let’s not forget how excellent he was as a distributor.