Starks the perfect short-term spark

Starks the perfect short-term spark

Sunday, October 5, 2025

tasmania jackjumpers

All the Tasmania JackJumpers will ask of TJ Starks in his few weeks in the NBL is to score as much as he can and his 13-point fourth quarter showed just what he's capable of.

TJ Starks provided the Tasmania JackJumpers the spark they needed with 13 fourth quarter points, just over 24 hours having arrived down under, with both coach Scott Roth and star forward Josh Bannan suitably impressed.

The 27-year-old dynamic scoring guard had a few weeks to kill before heading to China where he is signed for the upcoming season. That matched up perfectly with the JackJumpers needing a short-term replacement for the injured David Johnson.

He joined his new teammates in Brisbane on Friday ahead of his NBL debut on Saturday night where he warmed to the task impressively with 13 of his 18 points coming in the fourth quarter in the eventual two-point victory.

The only real direction his coach gave was to go out there and try to score, and Roth is especially now looking forward to how dangerous the JackJumpers can be with him alongside fellow imports Tyger Campbell and Bryce Hamilton.

"It's going to put a lot of pressure on teams to guard multiple guys on our team because having three guys who can create off the bounce and in pick-and-roll situations, that's definitely something that we're going to exploit as much as we possibly can," Roth said.

"We're lucky to have him and it's a timing situation with us and he's been coached for the last seven days via Zoom, and just arrived yesterday.

"He had no idea what he was doing out there as far as what we were running or anything other than just getting the ball and try to go score.

"But that's what he does and he's a hell of a player, and we're happy to have him for a few weeks before he heads to China.

"This is kind of like his pre-season and a stop gap for us to help us score the ball because when you start losing points from injuries, it's hard to recuperate those. That's what we're hoping he'll give us."

Bannan was playing against his former Bullets team for the first time as well on his old home floor, and was outstanding with 23 points and a career-best 15 rebounds on 9/12 shooting.

He too is looking forward to the next few weeks with Starks in the line-up as they await Johnson to overcome his hamstring injury.

"The guy is a walking bucket who puts the ball in the hole, and it's pretty simple," Bannan said.

"That's going to be awesome for this group and we're going to need that, and we kinda just let him loose tonight and kept it pretty simple.

"We just told him to go out and score the ball, and we'll sort of work around you. He's obviously going to draw a lot of attention and he will help guys like Bryce and Tyger to take some attention off them too.

"We'll have a few ball creators making plays so that will continue to be good for the rest of the group, and he'll come in and have a great impact."

Tamsnia next travel to Adelaide on Thursday to face the undefeated 36ers, live from 7.30pm AEDT on ESPN.