The Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia

Player Dossier · Los Angeles Clippers

Derrick Jones Jr

Derrick Jones Jr. is a low-usage stocks forward whose fantasy usefulness depends on defensive minutes surviving a crowded wing room.

Cutoff/status: 2026-07-18; verified LAC forward, age 29, entering his 11th NBA season. Hashtag lists SF/PF eligibility. NBA profile · Los Angeles Clippers

Baseline and 2026-27 projection

Jones played 50 games at 27.0 MPG, averaging 10.1 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 0.9 steals, 1.0 block, 1.1 threes and only 0.8 turnovers on .499/.763 shooting. A right-knee sprain caused the largest absence block. Basketball-Reference · Official game notes

GP MPG FG% FT% 3PM PTS REB AST STL BLK TO
62 21.0 .495 .760 0.8 7.4 2.8 1.1 0.7 0.7 0.7

Correction 2026-07-18: minutes cut from 26.0 to 21.0 and the counting line re-scaled. LA signed Rui Hachimura for two years and $28M using the full non-taxpayer mid-level, and public 2026-27 lineup projections start Hachimura at power forward with Jones "shifted to the bench." The prior allocation ranked Jones above the team's largest free-agent commitment and listed him second at both wing and power forward. Yahoo/Fadeaway lineup projection

Fantasy translation

Role and scenarios

His path is strongest when Garland and Wagler require a defensive counterweight. His path weakens if LA prioritizes rookie development over short-term lineup balance.

Confidence

Roster Minutes Rate Availability
High Medium High Medium

Career record

Pre-NBA: Archbishop John Carroll High School (Radnor, Pennsylvania), where he finished as the program's leading scorer with 1,645 points, 1,029 rebounds and 268 blocks, and was named Southeastern Pennsylvania Player of the Year and PIAA Triple-A Player of the Year. One season at UNLV, 2015-16: 30 games, 15 starts, 21.5 minutes, 11.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 0.9 steals, 1.3 blocks on .589 FG, .205 3PT, .594 FT. The shooting profile — near-60 percent inside, one-in-five from three, sub-60 at the line — is the reason he went undrafted despite the athletic tools. Draft: undrafted, 2016. Signed a training-camp deal with Phoenix on September 25, 2016, with G-League time at Northern Arizona (2016-17, 2017-18) and Sioux Falls (2017-18).

Season Age Team GP MPG PTS REB AST STL BLK 3PM FG% FT% TO
2016-17 19 PHX 32 17.0 5.3 2.5 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.1 .562 .707 0.4
2017-18 20 PHX/MIA 20 12.3 3.1 1.9 0.5 0.2 0.7 0.2 .396 .667 0.4
2018-19 21 MIA 60 19.2 7.0 4.0 0.6 0.8 0.7 0.5 .494 .607 0.7
2019-20 22 MIA 59 23.3 8.5 3.9 1.1 1.0 0.6 0.6 .527 .772 0.5
2020-21 23 POR 58 22.7 6.8 3.5 0.8 0.6 0.9 0.7 .484 .648 0.6
2021-22 24 CHI 51 17.6 5.6 3.3 0.6 0.5 0.6 0.4 .538 .800 0.6
2022-23 25 CHI 64 14.0 5.0 2.4 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.4 .500 .738 0.4
2023-24 26 DAL 76 23.5 8.6 3.3 1.0 0.7 0.7 1.1 .483 .713 0.9
2024-25 27 LAC 77 24.3 10.1 3.4 0.8 1.0 0.4 1.0 .526 .703 0.9
2025-26 28 LAC 50 27.0 10.1 3.5 1.4 0.9 1.0 1.1 .499 .763 0.8
Career 547 20.9 7.5 3.3 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.7 .506 .712 0.6

The 2017-18 row is a combined two-team line: 6 games in Phoenix before his release, 14 in Miami after. It is a 12-minute-a-night sample and carries no analytical weight.

Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category ranks are not verifiable from available sources for any year, and none is asserted here. The structural read from the box scores is consistent across a decade: he has never taken more than about 8 shots a game, so his points-league value is a streaming floor rather than a draftable asset, while his category value rests entirely on the stocks-plus-efficiency-plus-low-turnover combination. Only three of his ten seasons (2019-20, 2024-25, 2025-26) produced the roughly 1.9-to-2.0 combined steals and blocks that make that case work in standard leagues.

Durability: 32, 20, 60, 59, 58, 51, 64, 76, 77, 50 games. Two distinct eras: through 2022-23 he was a fringe rotation player whose game counts reflected role as much as health, then 2023-24 and 2024-25 produced 76 and 77 games as a full-time starter. The 2025-26 collapse to 50 was not one injury but two to the same joint — a sprained right MCL in November 2025 with a six-week timeline, then a Grade 2 sprain of that same right MCL in January 2026 costing another six weeks. Earlier notable absences: a neck strain in August 2020 from a collision with Goga Bitadze, and a January 2022 stretch in Chicago combining a right knee bone bruise with a fractured right index finger. A re-injury of the same ligament inside one season is the specific durability flag for 2026-27, not the raw games-played count.

Trajectory: Jones is the rare player whose value curve peaked in his late twenties, because his career was a slow climb from undrafted athlete to trusted defensive starter rather than a skill leap. The turning point was Dallas in 2023-24: 76 games at 23.5 minutes with a genuine corner three (1.1 makes at .343, up from a career mark under .320), which converted him from unplayable in spacing terms to a viable 3-and-D forward. The Clippers extended that — .356 then .359 from three, and a career-high .499/.763 in 2025-26. But the 2025-26 line should be read carefully. On a per-36 basis scoring actually fell (about 15.0 to 13.5), so the identical 10.1 points came from more minutes, not more production, and the block rate more than doubled off a 0.4 baseline to 1.0, which is far outside his career 0.7 and reads as a 50-game sample artifact more than a new skill. He turns 30 in February and is on the declining side of the athleticism curve that his entire game is built on. The honest 2026-27 expectation is regression in blocks toward 0.6-0.7, a stable three-point rate, and a minutes total that depends more on the Clippers' wing depth after any Leonard resolution than on anything Jones does.

Career sources: ESPN — Derrick Jones Jr. career stats · Wikipedia — Derrick Jones Jr. · NBA.com — Derrick Jones Jr. profile

Open questions