Justin Jackson sat on the bench, ready to pray -- just as he does every game -- before the Sacramento Kings played the Houston Rockets Wednesday night.
But this iteration of his pregame ritual went unlike any other.
Soon after sitting down, a Kings official informed Jackson the organization had traded him to the Dallas Mavericks. He wouldn’t be playing against his hometown team. Jackson went to the locker room and stayed there the entire first half.
In his first comments since the deal sent him and Zach Randolph to Dallas for Harrison Barnes, Jackson recounted the hectic sequence after the Mavericks’ morning shootaround before facing the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night.