{"id":613860,"date":"2026-02-20T15:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/613860\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:00:20","slug":"the-tenacious-basketball-journey-of-st-johns-star-daniss-jenkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/613860\/","title":{"rendered":"The tenacious basketball journey of St. John’s star Daniss Jenkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniss Jenkins sat in the visitors\u2019 locker room at Madison Square Garden talking about the massive chip that remains on his shoulder, about everything he wants to accomplish in the NBA, about how much he is still motivated by going undrafted.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear the former Iona University and St. John\u2019s star isn\u2019t satisfied, despite how far he has already come<\/a>. And, yet, there is a sense of accomplishment of where he is, part of the rotation for the title-contending Pistons, finally a full-time NBA player now that his two-way contract was recently converted into a standard, two-year deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just shows that anything can be done if you put your mind to something and your end goal never changes,\u201d Jenkins told The Post before the Pistons beat the Knicks again<\/a>, in his first game back on the Garden floor since he played for St. John\u2019s<\/a>. \u201cAdversity is nothing to me. I\u2019m just blessed. That\u2019s all I really can say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins went from Pacific University and\u00a0Odessa College in Texas, to Iona and then St. John\u2019s. He was an All-Big East second team selection in his one season as a Johnnie under Rick Pitino, and landed with the Pistons on a two-way deal<\/a>. He shined in his first season as a professional, selected to the G League\u2019s All-Rookie team after averaging 21.2 points, 7.2 assists and 1.8 steals in 32 games while shooting 43.9 percent from the field. He clearly had plenty of talent, but it was other stuff that stood out to Detroit when he practiced with the Pistons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniss Jenkins sat in the visitors\u2019 locker room at Madison Square Garden talking about the massive chip that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,217,296,188,3860,6,297,3823,1284,66,196,218],"class_list":{"0":"post-613860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-pistons","12":"tag-detroitpistons","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-pistons","15":"tag-post-sports-newsletters","16":"tag-rick-pitino","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-sports-plus","19":"tag-st-johns-red-storm"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116103559509281999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}