Ya I don't know about the effort argument. To me he looks like he is trying. He still locks down quite a bit on defense, and he attacks the basket more than anybody on the team. So I'm not sure why people seem to think his effort is a problem, I'd disagree pretty strongly with that. I also don't think its fair to say hes regressed across the board. I think both his ball handling and passing are better than last year for example, he certainly does a better job looking for people off dribble penetration or in transition. He is taking a 5% less of his shots at the rim and about 5% more in the mid range, but that looks like its changing in recent games.
I think a large part of the problem is that right now pretty much nothing is going in for him. He is shooting 36.8 from the field and 27.7 from three. Anybody who shoots like that is gonna look awful. I also think those numbers will improve, mostly because its almost impossible to be that bad on a large enough sample size unless you are Marcus Smart, but also because Jaylen has shown he can hit at rim shots (career 62%) and three pointers (career 37%) at a a good clip, he is still taking a lot of those shots, and those averages from him are improvable even from his career marks. Its not like his looks have been cosnistently terrible. He still gets by his man a lot, he seems to have improved his dribble driving, he generates good separation, then he misses. I think those misses are more likely than not gonna start falling. Even his threes are often pretty open, he just keeps missing. Which is also a problem that has plagued the team as a whole, we miss a lot of open shots.
In short, Jaylen has to start making shots. I think he will.