‘Jimmermania’ is alive and well in China; meanwhile, get ready for the next ‘Jimmer’
When Jimmer Fredette awoke Oct. 10, he must have felt like the game the night before against the Houston Rockets was too good to be true.
Fredette nailed four 3-pointers and scored 41 points at Toyota Center against James Harden and Chris Paul. But this was different than previous games he played in an NBA arena because this time, he wasn’t playing for an NBA team; he was playing for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association.
As Fredette, 29, returned to China to begin the regular season, he was about as far as he could be from “Jimmermania” and his playing days at BYU. Now in his third year in the CBA, Fredette won the Most Valuable Player award in 2017 and is making $1.8 million to dazzle fans by shooting more than 11 3-pointers per game.
Of his 263 long balls this season, he has drained 116 for a 44.1 percentage. He’s also shooting 94.3 percent from the line. Fredette averages 37.7 points per game. has scored at least 30 points in 21 of 23 games, and his season low is 16 points. In 235 NBA games, Fredette scored at least 16 points just 11 times.
On Nov. 11 against a Beijing team led by former Baylor guard and NBA second-round pick Pierre Jackson, Jimmer was lights out. He shot 24 for 34 from the field and 20 for 21 from the free-throw line to score 75 points. He also grabbed eight rebounds and dished out seven assists, numbers he never reached in the NBA.
In China, Fredette brings the same energy and shot making that led him to become the all-time leading scorer at Glens Falls High School in New York and BYU before being selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 10th overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. He was traded on draft night to the Sacramento Kings, where he couldn’t stay on the floor.
Fredette was expected to bring his large scoring numbers to Sacramento. He was coming off a senior year at BYU in which he won the Associated Press and Naismith College Player of the Year award and averaged 28.9 points as the Cougars advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16.
According to Dan Devine of Yahoo Sports, Fredette struggled in the NBA because he “found it tougher to create shots against longer, quicker NBA defenders, and often failed to slow opponents on the other end.”
His playing time sunk even more in his second season, and by his third year, the team was looking to move on. While he averaged 15 minutes and seven points per game in his Kings career, his scoring average over 36 minutes was 16.8 points. The Kings moved on from him in 2014, and after stints in Chicago, New Orleans and New York, the rest of the NBA moved on.
Nothing Fredette did (and still does) makes him a desirable option for an NBA team, though he scored at least 10 points in a game 21 times as a rookie and played fewer than 25 minutes in 13 of those contests.
When he exited high school, Fredette wasn’t yet a household name. He was the 229th-best player in the country, according to 247Sports and had offers from five schools, including BYU and Utah.
Twelve years later, Joe Girard III is in similar shoes at Fredette’s high school alma mater. Girard is ranked as the 199th-best player in the country in the class of 2019, and he has surpassed Jimmer’s scoring records at Glens Falls. After averaging 50 points per game as a junior, Girard committed to Syracuse. Just like Fredette, Girard can shoot from downtown and made a New York state-record 179 3-point shots last season.
Girard will enter Syracuse with all eyes on him, as he’s already being called the next Jimmer.