He finally snapped. There had been one too many forearm shivers, one too many elbows to the gut, one too many shoves, pushes, trips, and most of all, disparaging words. You’re soft, you don’t play hard, your little brother is tougher than you. All those years of poking and prodding had drawn blood at last. And Trayce Jackson-Davis got mad. “That’s iiiiiiitt!” he yelled, grabbing the ball from his stepdad. “Check it up!”
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Ray Jackson had been winning their one-on-one game as usual. He hadn’t seen Trayce get angry that often, so he didn’t think this display was for real. He discovered otherwise when Trayce crossed him over, lowered his shoulder, drove into Ray’s chest, knocked him to the ground, and dunked with all his might. “Murdered the rim,” Ray marvels. Trayce won the game, but instead of offering praise, Ray gave him yet another verbal jab. “Why can’t you play that way all the time?” he said.
Jackson-Davis has heard that question more times than he cares to remember. He still hears it, even though he is polishing off an All-Big Ten caliber season as a 6-9 245-pound sophomore forward at Indiana. Jackson-Davis entered Wednesday the league’s second-leading rebounder (9.4 per game) and third-leading scorer (20.2), and he is by far the biggest reason the 12-11 Hoosiers still have a chance at an NCAA Tournament at-large bid, even after a 74-63 loss at Rutgers on Wednesday. Despite those gaudy numbers, Jackson-Davis has a cheerful equanimity that leaves the impression he’s not trying very hard, and he’s the first to admit he does not exactly burn with intensity. During postgame Zooms, Indiana coach Archie Miller frequently laments Jackson-Davis’ tendency to start games slowly. It’s as if he needs to get hit before he realizes he’s in a fight. “Coach Miller wants me to have more dog,” Jackson-Davis says. “I have it in me, but sometimes I need to tap into it better.”
In mid-February of his freshman season, Jackson-Davis played in a befuddling haze at Michigan, putting up five points and two rebounds in 27 minutes in an 89-65 loss. The next morning Miller popped into the training room where Jackson-Davis was getting treatment and asked him to come up to the office for a heart-to-heart. “Sometimes it’s better to motivate him with a one-on-one talk,” Miller says. For 45 minutes, Miller made clear that Jackson-Davis needed to let the dog out. The next game he barked and bit his way to 27 points and 16 rebounds in a 68-56 win at Minnesota.
Last November during the Maui Invitational in Asheville, N.C., Jackson-Davis gave another desultory effort in Indiana’s 66-44 loss to Texas. He scored 17 points but needed 12 shots to do it, and he had only four rebounds. This time there was no quiet conversation. Miller spent most of the next day’s video session roasting his best player in front of the entire team. Jackson-Davis raised no objections — “I don’t ever disagree with my coach,” he says — and later that afternoon he disemboweled Stanford with 31 points and six rebounds in a 79-63 win.
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Those who know Jackson-Davis best rave about his personality. Miller says he’s “really really sweet. Just a nice kid.” IU assistant Tom Ostrom calls him “seriously one of the nicest, most kind-hearted human beings you’ll ever be around.” His mother, Karla, describes him as “so sweet.” The stepfather who raised him, Ray Jackson, says he’s “just a super sweet kid.” His biological father, Dale Davis, who played 16 years in the NBA, says he’s “a good kid, a really good kid.”
Those are wonderful qualities in a son-in-law. A power forward, not so much. Yet despite the frustrating lulls, Jackson-Davis is clearly one of the top players in the country. He might be a little too nice sometimes, but he also brings a deep well of character and grace to his craft, and there is no denying his impact on the bottom line. “You watch the game and think, man, if Trayce could have just done this and that better,” Miller says. “Then you look at the stat sheet and he had 23 and 12, with six offensive rebounds and five blocks. At some point you have to say to yourself, the guy’s doing a hell of a job.”
It probably goes back to the head trauma. When Trayce was 4 years old, he pulled on an exercise band that was lodged in a door. The anchor popped out and pegged him in the forehead. He didn’t cry but he was bleeding badly, and a trip to the emergency room revealed a small fracture. Trayce was rushed into surgery, where over seven hours doctors cut his scalp from one side to the other and peeled down his skin so they could bind up the fracture. The procedure left scars over both ears.
Two years later, a neighbor’s child swung a golf club and smacked Trayce in the side of his face. This time surgeons screwed a plate into his cheek to fix it.
No wonder he became the quintessential gentle giant. “He was always really careful,” Ray says. “I think he was worried about bumping his head again.” His parents encouraged him to try sports, but he seemed happier playing with stuffed animals. When Trayce took up soccer, he would lollygag his way around the field. When he played basketball, he would stand on the free throw lane with his head in the clouds and his hands on his head. Rather than trying to beat kids his age or older, he was perfectly content playing with his younger brother and his pals in the cul de sac outside their house in Greenwood, Ind.
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All of that was an adjustment for Ray, who played defensive back for Washington State’s 1998 Rose Bowl team and spent three years bouncing around NFL training camps, NFL Europe and the Arena Football League. “He didn’t have a competitive bone in his body, which threw me for a loop because that’s not how I was,” Ray says. “He was happier when one of his teammates made a shot. I’m like, dude, go get the ball and score.”
Trayce tried his hand at football, but as he grew taller Ray persuaded him to focus on hoops. Trayce played on the B team all through middle school, which was fine with him because his two best friends didn’t make the A team either. Trayce was taller than the other players, but he was also pudgy, not to mention uninterested. “He was one of the least physical kids in our program,” says Zach Hahn, who as the coach at Center Grove High School monitored the middle school players closely.
Ray finally got fed up with Mr. Nice Guy. He was chief of police for the Center Grove Schools Police Department, so he had no problem playing the bad cop. He also had keys to every gym in town, and he practically dragged Trayce to come with him after school and on weekends to work on his game. Trayce’s younger brother, Tayven, who is now a junior at Center Grove and a Division I prospect at quarterback, came to a lot of the workouts too, but he never had to be prodded to compete, which gave Ray even more ammunition. During a summertime workout before he started high school, Hahn suggested that Tracye try dunking. Trayce looked at him sideways, and then shocked himself by easily flushing the ball through the rim.
Jackson-Davis had a career-high 34 points and grabbed nine rebounds against Michigan State. (Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)Hahn was only in his second year at Center Grove when Jackson-Davis’ freshman season began. The program was struggling, so he had to plug Jackson-Davis into the starting lineup and force-feed him minutes. Karla, meanwhile, would force-feed Trayce Mountain Dew or Starbucks coffee before games so he would play with some pep. She praised Trayce no matter how he performed but Ray always gave him an earful — before the game, after the game, even during the game, when Ray’s signature whistle would cut through the crowd to let Trayce know he was displeased. Sometimes they’d argue so badly they wouldn’t talk for days. “The car rides were horrible,” Karla says. “I got to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told Ray, you have to find another way. This is not working.”
Ray didn’t even bother looking for another way. He was determined to unleash Trayce’s inner dog. He sat Trayce down at the dining room table so they could write out his goals. He slipped letters into Trayce’s backpack and peppered him with motivational texts. On more than one occasion, Ray suggested that if Trayce didn’t want to put in the extra work, he might as well focus on the piano. “I told him, ‘I’m your biggest fan and I know what you’re capable of, so I’m going to be the one that pushes you the most,’” Ray says. “You might hate me, you might be upset, but I’ll help you get better.”
The light didn’t switch on, exactly, but it did start to flicker one Saturday morning when Trayce walked into his parents’ room and asked Ray if they could go shoot. Ray practically jumped out of bed. At the end of Jackson-Davis’ freshman season, Hahn told him that if he kept improving, by the time he was a senior he’d be the best player in Indiana. Once again, Trayce was surprised, but he was never one to disagree with his coach.
Jackson-Davis hit another growth spurt as a sophomore, and through his exploits at Center Grove and local grassroots teams, he started to garner notice. “He was wet behind the ears, but you could see he had potential,” Miller says. At first, Miller and Ostrom were pretty much the only coaches giving chase, but that changed when Jackson-Davis blew up during his junior season, going from a virtual unknown to one of the top 50 players in the country. The summer before his senior year at Center Grove, Jackson-Davis was selected to play for Team USA at the 2018 FIBA Americas U18 Championship, where he averaged 6.8 points and 3.5 rebounds and helped the Americans win the gold. At the end of his senior season he was named Mr. Basketball in Indiana and chosen to play in the McDonald’s All-American Game and the Jordan Brand Classic.
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Jackson-Davis had scholarship offers from all over the country, but while UCLA made his final three, he was never going far from home. Ray was partial to Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, a football fanatic whose program is imbued with that ethos, but Indiana pressed its homecourt advantage. Jackson-Davis had an especially close relationship with Ostrom, who was at every practice and game he was allowed to attend. “We talked all the time,” Ostrom says. “Not texted — talked. He’s very social. He likes that connection.”
Ray may be an effective bad cop, but Trayce is an unapologetic mama’s boy, and in the end he chose Indiana so he could be near Karla. He and Ray spent much of that summer working out in Center Grove’s gym to prepare for the next step. That was when Trayce exploded with rage during their one-on-one game. Ray never liked to lose, but he was encouraged by what Trayce revealed that day. “That’s when I knew, OK, this joker has it in him,” Ray says. “I’ve just got to get it out of him.”
When Trayce started high school, he had a name problem. For most of his early years, everyone called him Trayce Jackson. Karla was raised in Indiana but was living in California in 1998 when she met Ray, who had just finished college and was trying to make it in pro football. Dale was in his ninth season with the Indiana Pacers when Karla became pregnant with Trayce. Dale made clear he would help support their child but wanted to prioritize his career. Ray happily filled the void. He was in the delivery room when Trayce was born and cut the umbilical cord himself. He married Karla when Trayce was 4 and has treated Trayce and his older sister, Arielle, who also has a different biological father, like kin. He and Karla had Tayven in 2004.
As Trayce entered high school, however, teachers started using Davis, the surname on his birth certificate. He and Ray huddled to figure out how to handle things and decided his name should be hyphenated. That was one of many adjustments the family has made over the years as they navigated a dynamic that was awkward and tense at times, but for the most part has landed in a healthy place.
To be sure, it wasn’t easy. While Karla and Ray moved back to Indiana to raise Trayce and his siblings, Dale was living in Atlanta following his retirement from the NBA in 2007. He would see Trayce maybe once or twice a year. The visits usually required Trayce to board an airplane as an unaccompanied minor, which was especially uncomfortable because he was a nervous flyer. “It was hard sometimes because I really didn’t understand why Dale wasn’t always there,” Trayce says.
Trayce wasn’t one to articulate his resentment, but it boiled over on occasion. Once, when they were in an airport and missed their connection, Trayce lost his temper with Dale and said, “You’re not my dad.” He felt badly about it and apologized, but it wasn’t the only time he said it. Dale grew up without knowing his own father, whom he hasn’t seen since he was a junior in high school, so he was empathetic to what Trayce was experiencing. “I’m thick skin, tough as nails,” Dale says. “I understand all the mechanics. Only thing you can do is just keep moving.”
Dale Davis with Trayce Jackson-Davis. (Courtesy Karla Jackson)It helped when Trayce became old enough to get his own cell phone, which allowed them to have more direct communications. Dale, who played at Clemson, was not involved in the recruiting process — colleges reached out to him, but he let Trayce, Karla and Ray handle it — but he flew in for several of Trayce’s high school games and followed his progress closely.
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Like Trayce, Dale can be shy and reserved. The difference is that nobody called Dale “sweet” once he stepped between the lines. “Motor was never really an issue for me,” he says. It was not easy for Trayce to live with that comparison, and in many ways it still isn’t. “Everybody looks at Dale and sees how he was back in the day and expects me to be the same way,” Trayce says. “But I think I’m my own player.”
Most of the time Dale was content to let Ray play the bad cop, but he wasn’t shy about letting Trayce know when he was playing too passively. One night when they were all having dinner during Nike’s EYBL Peach Jam Invitational, Dale and Trayce got into an argument so heated that Ray had to separate them. The next day Trayce played like a man possessed. Each time he scored, he glared at Dale as he watched approvingly from the bleachers.
When conflicts arose, whether it was between Trayce and Dale, Karla and Dale, or some combination thereof, Ray was usually the one who smoothed things over. It worked itself out — and is still working itself out — because all the parents have Trayce’s best interest at heart. “We had some tough times,” Dale says. “As long as we were all on the same page in making him be the best individual and pushing him to have a career in what he loves to, we could always work things out. But it was a process.”
Dale has been to several of Trayce’s games at IU, and Trayce often picks his brain for basketball advice. “I don’t give Dale enough credit,” Trayce says. “He was always in the picture.” Dale dismisses the suggestion he’s trying to make up for lost time, but he does want the future to be different from the past. “The reality is you can’t get that time back,” Dale says. “He’s older now, and whatever support I can give him, he knows I’m always open. It’s a situation where you know that bond is there. It can’t be broken.”
Ray, Trayce and Karla. (Courtesy Karla Jackson)Indiana was squarely on the NCAA Tournament bubble when the season was canceled last March. After the final team meeting on campus, Jackson-Davis approached Ostrom as he was walking toward his car and said, “I just want you to know that I’m coming back next season. So don’t worry about it.”
At that point the coaches hadn’t discussed whether Jackson-Davis should enter the NBA Draft. Ray wanted Trayce to turn pro, but Trayce stuck by his promise to Ostrom. He didn’t even test the waters like most players in his situation would have done. “What’s the point of putting your name in if you know you’re not going to go?” he says. “I came here to make the tournament and try to get Indiana back on the map. I felt like I hadn’t fulfilled that goal yet.”
It has been a challenging sophomore season, to say the least, but after Jackson-Davis got past that early hiccup against Texas, he has been a steady, dependable presence. His funks have been fewer and further between, and he never gets caught up in what people write about him on social media, good or bad. “It’s refreshing to see a young guy handle the overwhelming pressure that surrounds guys like him,” Miller says. “He doesn’t get distracted, he’s never worn out, you can coach him hard. He’s been as popular a teammate as I’ve ever seen.”
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Jackson-Davis is third in the Big Ten in minutes (34.5), which is a testament to his importance to the team. If anything, the Hoosiers would be better-served if they depended on him less. For example, last Saturday against Michigan State, Jackson-Davis put up 34 points and nine rebounds, but spotty guard play sent the Hoosiers to a 78-71 loss that severely damaged their tourney prospects. Against Rutgers he had 21 points and 11 rebounds. Jackson-Davis has grown into his role as a leader, but he has never been one to call people out. “I’m not gonna yell at my teammates like that,” he says. “I know they’re human. I know they make mistakes.”
Jackson-Davis has a season to finish, but as soon as it ends he will once again face the question of whether to enter the NBA Draft. Not surprisingly, Ray believes he should go, but most mock drafts project Trayce will be selected in the middle of the second round, if he’s picked at all. He may be putting up monster numbers in America’s toughest league, but in two years at Indiana he has not attempted a 3-pointer. In today’s NBA, where every four is a stretch four, a player with Jackson-Davis’ physical characteristics needs to be an efficient long-range shooter. Ray and the Indiana coaches swear he makes jumpers in practice, but Jackson-Davis has yet to carry that over into a game. “I don’t think he’s even scratched the surface on what he truly can do,” Ray says.
And so Ray continues to poke and prod. He sends Trayce long text messages imploring him to get madder and play harder. When Trayce takes one of his frequent visits home, he can scan the list of goals he and Ray taped to the refrigerator. Win first team All-American. Make NCAA Tournament. Lottery pick. Mamba Mentality every game. Of course, when Trayce is home he will also call Karla at the hair salon where she works and ask her to pick him up a Cherry Coke on her way home. In many ways he’s more Mama Mentality than Mamba Mentality.
Trayce and Ray can look back and laugh at all the nasty confrontations they’ve had, but Trayce is grateful for every one. “My dad saw my potential before I did,” he says. “I don’t think he was tough enough on me, honestly.” Like his hyphenated surname, Trayce’s game reflects both sides of his personality, and he is still working his way through that duality. He has high potential and lofty goals, but he’ll only reach them if he stays grounded.
(Top photo: Andy Lyons /Getty)
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