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South Carolina’s GG Jackson says he’s declaring for NBA Draft

South Carolina star freshman GG Jackson has made a decision for his future.

The 6-foot-9 forward announced Friday in an Instagram live video that he will declare the NBA Draft.

“A lot of people want to know if I’m staying or if I’m going, and USC definitely helped me a lot,” Jackson said in the video. “I feel like it helped mature me. There were a lot of ups and downs. I went through a little something something with the coaches and all that, so that definitely helped me mentally. And now I’m declaring for the NBA Draft — just like that.”

A Columbia native who starred for Ridge View High School, Jackson has been in the national spotlight for years and ranked as the No. 1 player in the 2024 class before reclassifying to the Class of 2023. Jackson created a stir in the basketball world when he decommitted from the North Carolina Tar Heels in 2024 and flipped to first-year USC coach Lamont Paris and the hometown Gamecocks.

Despite being the youngest player in the country, the 18-year-old Jackson led the Gamecocks in scoring and finished ninth in the SEC with 15.4 points per game, and he added 5.9 rebounds per game.

Jackson also drew headlines for a handful of immature moments, including an Instagram Live rant that prompted Paris to pull Jackson from the starting lineup for a three-game stretch. Jackson did finish the season on a strong note, however, scoring a game-high 24 points in the Gamecocks’ season-ending loss to Ole Miss in the SEC tournament.