The best part of Lamar Jackson’s game isn’t just the lasers he fires downfield, it’s the way it all looks. There’s a rhythm to it, almost like he’s choreographing the whole thing. And apparently, that same touch carries over to a basketball court. Jackson casually drained a three in a pickup run, and suddenly, he’s joking that maybe the NBA should give him a look.

His media company, Lamar Jackson Entertainment, posted a split-screen clip of Jackson hitting that three on one side, and on the other, dropping a Steph Curry-style, off-platform touchdown to Rashod Bateman. Same body control, same smooth mechanics. Jackson ran with the comparison, tagging the Celtics and the NBA on his Instagram story.

“10-Day contract?” he wrote on his story, tagging the Celtics and the NBA.

And here’s the thing. If Jackson hadn’t become one of the most singular quarterbacks of his generation, who’s to say the NBA wasn’t a possible lane? Cleveland Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell still remembers going head-to-head with him years ago, before either of them became stars.

“We were having dunk contests my freshman year in the gym. Me, Lamar, some of the guys on the [basketball] team and the football team, and he was out here windmilling, throwing it off the wall, like crazy,” the shooting guard recalled.

Jackson doesn’t inflate the story, but he doesn’t run from it either.

“I used to know how to dunk. I used to be alright,” Jackson said. “I’m not going to say I was Donovan Mitchell with the dunks, I wasn’t winning [dunk] contests or anything like that. Freshman year, I saw him throwing alley-[oops] to himself. I’m just going off momentum. I’m just hyped just seeing it,” he said.

Could Jackson have made it in the NBA if he’d chosen that path? Impossible to know. The league is ruthless, and even elite athletes hit ceilings. But from the way NBA players talk about him, he wouldn’t have looked out of place.

In The Athletic’s anonymous NBA player poll, Jackson was voted their favorite non-NBA athlete by a wide margin. They see the crossover appeal.

But all that is more of a fun offseason “what if” than anything else. Right now, Jackson doesn’t need a 10-day contract; he needs healthy reps. He hasn’t looked like himself in weeks, the injuries keep stacking up, and he was sidelined from yet another practice today. Basketball can wait. The Ravens’ season can’t.

Lamar Jackson misses yet another practice

The Ravens head into this week’s AFC North matchup with the Steelers carrying a fresh round of questions, most of them tied to Lamar Jackson’s health. Jackson missed another practice this week, adding to the uncertainty around a game that might be the most important one on Baltimore’s schedule.

Everyone in the building knows he hasn’t been close to full speed. The ankle has bothered him. So have the toe and the knee. And that doesn’t even include the three weeks he missed earlier with the hamstring injury. It’s been one thing after another, and at some point, the accumulation shows up.

It’s showing up now. Over his last four outings, Jackson has looked nothing like the early-season version of himself. One touchdown, three interceptions, four fumbles. The sharpness just isn’t there. In this week’s game, he threw for 246 yards but didn’t find the end zone and tossed a pick.

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He missed clean looks, left a few balls floating, and was tied to three of Baltimore’s five turnovers. The frustrating part for Baltimore is that the ability is still obvious. We saw it in September.

But that version of Lamar hasn’t been on the field much since the injuries started stacking up. And playing through them against an ordinary opponent is one thing. Playing through them against Pittsburgh with the division on the line is something else.

The Ravens need him to look like himself again. There’s no way around it. If they want to keep their shot at the AFC North alive, the excuses won’t carry them this week.