SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 Sports) – Former Lone Peak High star Frank Jackson grew up going to Utah Jazz games. So last night when he actually got to be on the floor playing against his hometown team for the first time with the New Orleans Pelicans was a surreal moment.
“This is my home,” said Jackson, who scored four points in the Pelicans win over the Jazz. “This will always be my home. I’ve got tons of friends and family here. We always had tickets or my buddies had tickets and we’d come to a ton of games. So it’s just crazy that I’m actually playing, it’s unreal.”
After graduating from Lone Peak in 2016, Jackson played one season at Duke before entering the NBA Draft. Jackson was selected with the first pick of the second round by New Orleans, but he missed his entire rookie season because of two foot surgeries.
“It was tough,” said Jackson. “It was something that I never went through before, but at the end of the day, it taught me a lot about myself as a person and about my love for basketball. It allowed me to grow, and I’m healthy now and I’m feeling good.”
Jackson has shown signs of greatness this season, as evidenced by his 25-point peformance last month against San Antonio.
Jackson is arguably one of the best Utah high school players of all-time, although Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry wasn’t so sure.
“He told me he’s the greatest high school player to ever come out of Utah, I don’t know,” said Gentry, who interrupted Jackson’s interview to give him a hard time.
“I never said that, I never said that,” Jackson insisted.
“I’ll have to go back and start looking, and wow, that’s a pretty big statement to make,” Gentry continued. “But he said it.”
“I never said that, I never said that, there’s a lot of great talent from here,” Jackson said.
But if you look closer, there are just five Utah high school players to have NBA careers of five years or more. Bingham’s Fred Roberts (13 years), Shawn Bradley from Emery (12), Skyline’s Danny Vranes (7), Highland’s Jeff Judkins (5), and Alta High’s Travis Knight (5). Jackson wants to be the next.
“That would mean the world to me,” he said. “I just think it’s motivation to continue to work hard and be on that list and represent the state of Utah.”
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