With recruiting tabled until spring, 5-star Trayce Jackson-Davis focuses on basketball -

GREENWOOD, Ind. — With the clock hurtling toward zero at the end of the first quarter of its season opener, Center Grove High School didn’t have time to get the ball to its best player where it usually want him to have it — as close to the basket as possible — so the Trojans just let him bring the ball up and shoot it whenever he was ready.

Trayce Jackson-Davis, all 6-foot-9 and 235 pounds of him, took the ball up the floor and dashed between defenders until he was just past the timeline on the left-hand side of the floor. The left-hander pulled up and drilled a 3-pointer at the buzzer, flicking his left wrist when the shot fell as if he was always sure it was going in.

Of course, he wasn’t, but that was beside the point.

“I think I had a little luck on that play,” Jackson-Davis said. “But it went in.”

That was Jackson-Davis’ only 3 on a night when he scored 29 points in a 20-point win, so that alone doesn’t suggest that the nation’s No. 16 recruit and the favorite for the state of Indiana’s revered Mr. Basketball award has become a lights-out shooter from outside. But it is proof that he will be allowed to try everything on the floor in his senior year to prove not only to Indiana, Michigan State and UCLA — the three schools he’s considering committing to — but also to the NBA that he can be the sort of inside-outside playmaking four that has become increasingly important at both the collegiate and professional levels.

“Everything,” Center Grove coach Zach Hahn, who played guard at Butler from 2007-11, said when asked what more he wanted Jackson-Davis to be able to do this season. “Literally everything. He can catch. He can shoot a 3. I want him to be a playmaker and play basketball. As a freshman, I made him sit in the post and he hated me. As a sophomore, I said, ‘You can shoot a jump hook and do some other things.’ Junior year I turned him loose a little bit. This year, it’s, ‘Play basketball. You’ve earned it. Go out and do what you can do.'”

Jackson-Davis has earned that right through work with not only Hahn but also both of his fathers — the former NBA stalwart who provided his genes and some distant guidance and the former college football player who raised him from birth. Thanks to those efforts and a freakish growth spurt, he went from an eighth-grade B-team afterthought to one of the top-10 big men in the nation in just four seasons.

Jackson-Davis was born in February 2000 in Los Angeles, not far from where Ray Jackson — who played cornerback on Washington State’s 1998 Rose Bowl team and spent some time in the NFL — grew up.

Jackson was there to cut the umbilical cord, and he is married to Jackson-Davis’ mother, Karla Knafel-Jackson, with whom he has raised two other children, former Center Grove and University of Indianapolis volleyball player Arielle Knafel and Center Grove freshman guard Tayven Jackson, his biological son. But he is not Jackson-Davis’ biological father. That would be Dale Davis, the 6-11 big man who played 17 seasons in the NBA, including 10 with the Indiana Pacers. Jackson has always been the central father figure in the life of Jackson-Davis, but Davis has never been out of the picture.

Despite the awkward state of affairs, Jackson and Davis have maintained a cooperative relationship in the raising of their son. Davis lives in Atlanta and travels often for business, but he usually visits Jackson-Davis in Indiana a few times each month, attends several of his games each year and keeps in touch with both Jackson and Jackson-Davis.

“Him and I, we get along fine,” said Jackson, who is the chief of police for Center Grove community schools. “We’re pretty good friends, and we try to keep each other in the loop. And as Trayce gets older, we try to put him in position to be successful. Whatever knowledge we have, we gotta share that with him. That’s our job. Hopefully, he continues to listen and tap into it.”

The two bring very different collections of knowledge. Jackson was a basketball player through his junior year at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., and spent all of his time on the perimeter. Davis spent his entire career playing in the post. He attempted eight 3-pointers in his 16-year career but averaged 8.0 points and 7.9 rebounds, averaging a double-double to help the Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1994 and nearly averaging another when the Pacers reached the NBA Finals in 2000 but lost to the Lakers.

Jackson can impart knowledge on both perimeter play as well as strength and conditioning as Jackson-Davis works on filling out his frame and remaining explosive. He hopes Jackson-Davis taps into more of his biological father’s understanding of the game. Davis has worked with his son on making sure he has counters to each of his post moves, but Jackson sees so much more that Jackson-Davis could learn.

“I think with Dale, his IQ was so high,” Jackson said. “He always put himself in perfect situations, and he’s super, super-aggressive. That’s what I’m hoping that Trayce continues to get from him.”

Jackson-Davis is admittedly still getting used to this arrangement, especially the increasing amount of advice that has come his way as he has evolved into a blue-chip recruit. But he can see the value of having two fathers with professional experience so invested in his advancement.

“I think it works really well,” Jackson-Davis said. “Dale not always being in the picture, he knows Ray always has his back and always wants what’s best for me as well. They both want what’s best for me, and that’s their specific goal is me to be the best I can be.”

Through middle school, there was a reason to believe Jackson-Davis would excel at Jackson’s sport and not Davis’. He was taller than most kids his age at 6-foot even heading into his eighth-grade year, so he played on the football team and was the preferred target for jump balls on the rare occasions the team passed. However, he was on the basketball team’s B squad, a wing guard with some skill but some missing pieces to his game.

“He knew basketball,” Hahn said. “He knew how to pass, he knew how to play, he just didn’t have the athletic ability that the other kids had. He was a little slow footed.”

But everything changed in the summer of 2015 when Jackson-Davis was transitioning between the eighth and ninth grade. When it started, he was 6-foot-2. When it was over, he was 6-6 and still growing.

“One day, in the summer, my knee started to hurt really bad and I started to sleep a lot and take a lot of naps,” Jackson-Davis said. “Then all the sudden, I grow half an inch throughout a week. My mom would be like, ‘You’ve grown a little bit,” and it just kept going and going and going and going.”

When he showed up at school in August, Hahn, who was heading into his second year as the head of the program, was stunned.

“I’m 6-6 and coach Hahn looks at me,” Jackson-Davis said. “He’s bright-eyed, He’s like, ‘Wow, we finally have a tall guy.'”

Hahn suddenly had a player with a ton of potential on his hands — but all of it was just that, potential. Jackson-Davis had never played in the post, and the sudden lengthening of his limbs made them much more difficult to coordinate. His jumper had been decent but became much more difficult to control with long arms, and he he struggled to control the ball off the dribble.

So to start, Hahn kept Jackson-Davis’ role basic and restricted. He was to work block-to-block only at first and learn all of the post moves he never needed before he got tall enough to play there. Hahn used the lessons he was taught working under Mark James at Ben Davis High School. James coached former Purdue star JaJuan Johnson at Franklin Central High School, and Trevor Thompson, who played at Virginia Tech and Ohio State, at Ben Davis.

“(When he was) a freshman, I said, ‘By your senior year, the goal is you can kinda do it all,’” Hahn said. “But I said, ‘Right now, I need you to play back to the basket. I need you to rebound. I need you to block out and defend and do everything around the rim. You’re not going to catch the ball away, you’re not going to do any of that.”

Jackson-Davis was still a bean pole, weighing about 190 pounds, but he made varsity and he had several welcome-to-the-league-rookie moments in the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference, which surrounds Indianapolis and annually includes some of the best talent in one of the best basketball states in the country. Virginia’s Kyle Guy (Lawrence Central), UCLA’s Kris Wilkes (North Central) and Michigan State’s Aaron Henry (Ben Davis) were all in the conference at the time. Jackson-Davis vividly recalls Emmanuel Little, then a forward at North Central who now plays at Division II Southern Indiana, grabbing the ball out of his hands when he tried to dunk in transition.

“It was like, ‘Yeah, you better get in the weight room,'” Jackson-Davis said.

Still, even in the game that revealed exactly how far he needed to go, he scored 18 points. That told Hahn that Jackson-Davis could be special.

The following year, he grew to 210 pounds and got more involved in screen-and-roll actions on offense to expand his game, was named all-conference and helped Center Grove to a sectional title. Last season, he took the next step, initiating his offense from both the wing and the post, taking the occasional 3-pointer and the frequent mid-range jumper and driving at the rim from the wing. He averaged 22.3 points, 9.5 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 3.7 blocks to take Center Grove to another sectional title before the Trojans lost to Indiana freshman star and McDonald’s All-American Romeo Langford’s New Albany team in the regional finals.

“He knows what is bread and butter is, he’s also starting to become pretty good at the other things,” Hahn said. “His shot has gotten a lot better. He’s always had a decent handle, and his passing has been phenomenal since we got him. He’s always been a great passer. He could see the floor really well, even for an eighth-grader. Some of those you don’t have to develop. It’s not like they come back, because he’s always had them. But I would say shooting and things like that, really he started to turn the corner at the start of his last year.”

So this year, Hahn wants Jackson-Davis to be fearless. Bring the ball up the floor when he can. Attack from the wing. Shoot 3-pointers when he’s open. Trust that his left-handed stroke is smooth enough to hit 10- to 17-footers with ease.

“This year, we’re kinda saying, ‘Hey, it’s your time, it’s your team,'” Hahn said, “‘and we want you to play freely and go down and make plays. Make plays for everybody.'”

And while he’s working on that, he’ll be deciding which of his final three college programs will give him the best opportunity to do the same.

Jackson-Davis didn’t watch much basketball until about sixth grade, but when he grew and realized which sport offered the most potential, he became about as obsessed with watching games as he was with getting in the gym and developing his body. The result is an advanced basketball mind that can diagnose not only what he’s seeing in games on TV but also where the game is headed.

What Jackson-Davis learned about both the college and NBA level is that there is a growing market for players like him — power forwards who can handle, pass and shoot as well as they can rebound and score in the post. He appreciates the benefit of knowing that in high school as opposed to adapting his game to the changing trend later in his career.

“I think KD (Kevin Durant) really changed the game being 7-foot and doing all that stuff on the perimeter,” Jackson-Davis said. “Now everyone’s trying to catch up with him. So for me looking at them and already having a little bit of an advantage because I get to do it so early, that just helps me.”

In Jackson-Davis’ mind, it’s critically important that he gets to play in the right system with the right coaches at the college level, so he’s prepared to make the next step after that. Jackson-Davis isn’t shy about saying that he wants to get to the NBA, and he believes his best bet is to play in a system that allows for freedom and creativity and that he not spend all of his games going back and forth between the high and low post.

“I know all three of the coaches think they have the tools to get me there,” Jackson-Davis said of Archie Miller, Tom Izzo and Steve Alford. “But it’s just where I see myself fit best.”

By the time this season started, Jackson-Davis had heard the pitches of all three of his finalists, but he didn’t believe he had done enough of his own research. He hadn’t watched enough of each team to be able to imagine where he’d work in each offense, imagined himself in the shoes of players similar to him on each team or thought much about who would still be there and who would be gone when he made it to campus. So that’s what he’s doing now.

“I probably could have decided early and focused on my senior season, but I just wasn’t ready yet,” Jackson-Davis said. “My parents were like, ‘Well, do you see how this offense is run?’ And I really haven’t paid that much attention to it, because they’ve just played their first real games at the beginning of the season where they just blow them out, so I want to see what they do against good competition, what they do and what offense they run.”

Hahn and Jackson said Jackson-Davis has handled the pressure of his recruitment well. He has friends on the roster of each team (Langford and point guard Rob Phinisee at Indiana, Henry at Michigan State, Wilkes at UCLA), and IU signee Armaan Franklin has been doing his part to recruit him to Bloomington. But Jackson-Davis has tried to keep himself from being swayed by someone else’s ideas.

Still, it’s not easy for an 18-year-old to maintain that stance, so Jackson has reminded him that it’s his decision and his alone.

“I told him, ‘All these coaches are going to tell you what you want to hear,'” Jackson said. “I’m like, ‘Look man, you’re going to have to take it slow and figure out what works best for you. Don’t let these coaches talk you into something you don’t want to do. If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. It’s not that big of a deal.’ That’s the only advice I gave him. Our household is kinda split. Some want him to go here. Some want him to go there. I had to sit him down and say, ‘It doesn’t matter what we think. It matters what you think. But if you make a decision, I want you to come to me and give me facts on why you want to go somewhere. Not just because, I have friends there. Or, this coach is cool. Give me some facts.'”

So while he’s gathering those facts, three powerhouse programs are waiting to find out if they will get a 6-foot-9 playmaker. He likes that Miller and Indiana have an offense similar to the one he runs at Center Grove. He likes Izzo’s track record of developing NBA-level talent, and he likes the pace of the offense Alford runs at UCLA.

But he wants to see more before he makes a decision, which puts him in the same boat as nine other players ranked in the top 25 according to 247Sports.com’s composite rankings, including Indiana’s other top target, Keion Brooks.

“It’s probably more about what offense they’re running, what type of defense they’re running, looking back at past players, how have they developed players at the next level, because that’s his goal,” Hahn said. “His goal is to be a professional athlete. He’s got a long way to go, obviously, but he’s got the physical tools to be at that level someday. But it’s going to be a process for him, so he’s trying to analyze all that and take it into consideration.”

(Top photo: Dustin Dopirak/The Athletic)

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