Forgive me if I’m a little obsessed with Brandon Jennings right now. It’s still really hard to believe that the Bucks actually have him on their team. And while there will undoubtedly be a lot of ups and downs with him this year, I have a feeling he’ll work hard and learn a bunch and generally be awesome as the season goes on. I mean, he learned something important in that Golden State game, even as he was destroying them: If a bad team refuses to cover you, you make them pay by setting records.
Ever since his little post-draft radio interview that got him in trouble*, Brandon Jennings has been practically perfect in every way. He’s been humble in post-game interviews, explaining how his good games were him just taking what the offense gives him. He make the 55-point outburst the other night seem like a product of a specific offensive strategy against a specific defense, rather than taking all the credit for it. The best part about his image is that it doesn’t seem to be faked — he’s not just saying what we want to hear when he talks about just wanting to win. Nor does he display false modesty, at least not so far. A few more games like that, though, and any modesty will seem false.
The biggest reason for his success as a communicator is a classic sports cliche’: He does his talking on the court. When he says he started out looking for teammates, but then Golden State practically dared him to take the game over — that matches up perfectly with what any intelligent observer saw in the game. When he’s pissed that he missed a shot after previously making twelve in a row, that shows that he’s focused. When he continues to pass the ball to Jodie Meeks and Charlie Bell even though they are shooting horribly, that shows he knows he needs his less-talented teammates. It took Jordan eight years to learn that. I’m not sure, but I think Kobe Bryant’s still fuzzy on that one, too. So you see why I’m obsessed with this guy.
Plus, he’s a skinny 6-1 kid who very few people believed in, which makes him a natural underdog. I don’t know if his corporate benefactors at UnderArmor are responsible for this, but whoever told him to adopt a “keeping my nose to the grindstone” public persona is a genius. In some respects, it’s probably a result of having to deal with Scott Skiles every day. Anyway, when he talks about shooting 1000 shots with Kelvin Sampson before practice, it’s hard not to juxtapose that with the famous Allen Iverson quote about practice:
While I do think Iverson was correct in his assessment of the ridiculous media at that point in his career, it’s still nice to hear a franchise player (which Jennings, fair or not, already is) talk about the virtues of game preparation even while he plays the game with intensity. It’s even nicer to know that the franchise player in question is on the Bucks. All I can say is, it’s about time.
* And since nobody else in the media seems to remember what he said that was so horrible, let me jog your memory: He made the audacious claim that he would be the starter, Ridenour would back him up, and Ramon Sessions would be gone. Hmm…that all happened. Makes me wonder exactly when the Bucks knew Jennings was good, because specific talk like that regarding player movement (and make no mistake, it was definitely wrong place, wrong time for that) had to come from the Bucks and not his own brain, right? They had to have at least told him that was a possible plan, right? I’d love to know what Hammond/Skiles were thinking heading into the draft, and if they ever intended to match anyone’s offer for Sessions. At the time, letting Sessions go for 4 mil/year seemed pretty dumb. Having seen Ramon in Minnesota, that looks like the second-best move of the Bucks’ offseason.
