Everyone wants to be a guard, to be the person to shoot threes and break ankles all day. The guards want to be guards. The small forwards want to be guards. The power forwards want to be guards. The centers want to be guards. But senior Justin Jia isn’t everybody.

Despite being a guard himself, he favors a more traditional approach to basketball, wanting to play in the more contact-heavy post.

“I don’t feel the guard position is all that it’s made out to be,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to draw contact and be more involved in the battle over the boards.”

Justin has played a guard position for all of his career thus far, starting out as a shooting guard during middle school and eventually evolving into a point guard by his sophomore year of high school. He’s shot the threes and broken the ankles, but found that people, especially the media, over inflate the renown of his position.

“When someone tries to cross a defender up, they usually aren’t trying to get anywhere,” Justin said. “They’re just dancing in front of the defender, looking for a mention in the highlight reel.

He senses a selfish motivation in most guards these days trying to just get into the highlight reel and getting the crowd excited.

“I don’t mind shooting an open three off a good pass, but I don’t like the pull-up shots that people go crazy for these days,” he said. “I feel like someone could get one of those contested shots whenever he wanted, but it’s not a quality look, so it shouldn’t cause so many ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs.’”

Justin sees the post player’s rebound battle as a more interesting job, and one that is more useful for the team as well.

“I like getting physical with getting rebounds, and it’s something that a player can constantly be doing to help his team,” he said.

Justin sees every shot as an opportunity for him to rebound, rather than the absence of an opportunity for him to shoot.
“There’s only one basketball to shoot on the court, but every shot that goes up is a potential rebound to be collected,” he said.