Forgetting Brandon Jennings

Three years ago I watched the NBA draft—as I always do—with one player at the top of my radar, one guy who got me so excited that I knew I'd have reached as much as necessary to get him if I were a GM. This year, that player was Royce White. In 2011, it was Kemba Walker. 2010, Xavier Henry (my bad). And in 2009, it was Brandon Jennings. I didn't know a ton about Jennings—I had heard his name come up a bit during his senior year of high school and I had seen him in Gunnin' For That #1 Spot—but I knew more than most friends I talked to. A few months before the draft, someone tipped me off to one of his YouTube mixes, and I would end up watching that video (below) and other similar ones dozens of times before the big night rolled around.

Dude had the kind of game that I drool over. The dunks, the crossover, the Spidey Sense passing, and the style. Oh the style. That kind of fade-plus-shades combination doesn't swagger its way across your computer screen every day. I also read about his decision to get around the NBA's college-encouraging eligibility rules by going to play in Italy for a year, and despite the hardships he faced, I admired his choice to take a draft position risk in order to get professional experience and make a little money. I was, it's fair to say, all in on Brandon Jennings.

On that draft night, when the Milwaukee Bucks selected him with the 10th pick (too late, if you had asked me), I jumped out of my chair and declared to everyone I was with that he was going to be one of the best and most exciting players in the league. I saw him as the future of point guards in the league, and I insisted that he was going to enter the stratus of elite playmakers who would change the way offenses were run. I expected that by 2012, we would all be talking about Brandon Jennings, all the time.

But we're not. In fact, we barely ever talk about him, do we? We don't pick him for All-Star teams. We don't mention his name as part of the Westbrook-Rose-Wall point guard revolution conversation. And we sure as shit don't consider him for an Olympic spot. It seems that many of us have forgotten about Brandon Jennings altogether.

This, despite his 55-point game during his rookie season (perhaps the one moment in the past three years when the basketball world has focused on him for an evening). This, despite continued flashy, rewind-worthy plays. Most egregiously, this, despite a 2011-2012 season in which he put up 19.1 points, 5.5 assists and 1.6 steals per game (and improved his previously sub-40% field goal percentage to a moderately more respectable .418). Jennings was thiiiiiis close to being a top 20 scorer this past season, but you’d never know it from his ghost status in water cooler conversations and his lack of any major accolades.

Recently came news that Jennings, who had previously indicated that he would like to explore major-market teams when he becomes a free agent after the 2012-2013 season, would now be entirely open to staying in Milwaukee if they put together the right offer. Many will see this as the good guy move, the thing that a player like Jennings—young, with sometimes questionable on-court decisions—should say as he tries to become a better player and more marketable star. But based on the numbers and the eyeballs, Jennings is already a very, very good player who should be counting endorsement stacks all offseason long. He’s not though, and along with his occasional sloppiness and his team’s injury woes, you have to acknowledge that playing in the city of Milwaukee has something to do with that. The Bucks are not only a small market team, they are a small market team that has been pretty much middling for as long as I can remember. They are not an old team in a new, sports-starved city with several fantastic management decisions, draft picks and coaching assignments. No, they are not the Oklahoma City Thunder.

This is not me stating, a year in advance, that Jennings should jump ship on The Deer for a more cosmopolitan climate. This is me absolutely understanding some frustration on the part of a young man who has done pretty incredible work, but has lived in the shadows of other uber-athletic point guards who have entered the league in the past five years. This is me reminding all of us—you, me and everyone we know—that there’s a talent up in the North Midwest who deserves our attention during the upcoming season. Let’s all remember not to forget Brandon Jennings, and come this time next year, hopefully whatever we say and write about him—whatever he decides—will be on the tail of many previous words and much previous ink.