Photo from Christiaan Briggs via Flickr
As you’ve probably noticed, there hasn’t been a whole lot of basketball lately. August is usually that time of year when the offseason slows down, general managers take a breath, and the internet turns its focus to one or two painfully uninteresting stories that have somehow remained unresolved (usually a restricted free agent who may or may not sign for his qualifying offer, and something to do with Ramon Sessions).
But with the lockout taking away our beloved July frenzy, basketball in all its shapes and forms has been reduced to various Youtube videos, filmed in suspicious venues and of varying quality, in which NBA athletes play the game with the simpletons and the peasants. Heroes descending upon Pro-Am leagues and playgrounds, treating us to glimpses of their talent that were presumed to be locked away behind fiscal calamities.
Brandon Jennings is one of many NBA players now blessed with too much spare time, and between stints at his Under Armour internship, he too has taken to the amateur tour, doing foolish Brandon Jennings things.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNRRNfE-44Q&feature=player_embedded]
Oh, Brandon, you devil. That’s not cool. That poor fellow is a human being, with friends and a family, who will now all laugh at him forever. You can’t just do that. I hope you don’t appear in another video doing something very similar mere days after that.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJPdpleXZw&feature=player_embedded]
Yikes.
This is probably the stage where grumpy scribes who miss the good ole days of Bob Cousy and the early 70s Knicks will begin lamenting just how far basketball has slipped, how different this is from the times when basketball was played the right way, when 10 gentlemen alternated missed 20 footers taken at a frenetic pace, not this current incarnation of selfishness and money-making, and what good is it to humiliate a fellow sportsman when you can’t even convert the layup, and grumpidy grumpo grump grump.
Well, phooey to those. Because Brandon Jennings is what makes this game beautiful.
Throughout NBA history, there have been plenty of promising point guards who have stagnated during their second year. Some of them broke through in year 3, some of them didn’t. Which group Brandon Jennings will belong to is still an unknown at this point. But the reason we were excited about him in the first place (and still are), the reason we’re not just dismissing this kid as yet another sub-40% shooter in a league where such a breed has no place, is because of that creativity, that different way in which the mind grasps reality, that Brandon displays during both these Pro-Am stunts and in select glimpses during his Milwaukee tenure. Not the frustrating conformity of yet another diminutive point guard struggling at the rim against giants and settling for the easy-way-out 3 pointer, but the unique blend of speed and absolute control that leads to bending time and space in a way that introduces a round object to another round object which just happens to be a dude’s head.
And if Brandon is to continue the ascension promised during that tantalizing rookie year, and not the stagnation displayed in the injury riddled campaign that followed, it is this special knack for the magnificent that will lead him there. In today’s golden era of floor generals, there are many point guards who can both score and find teammates, many Davids rising above the Goliaths, but few with just that amount of oomph and oh-oh-oh-aaaah and other words that are now annoying my spellcheck but whose meanings you understand better than I can verbalize.
So thrive on, Brandon Jennings. Dribble between and around and over stuff as much as you please. We won’t complain when it results in inevitable turnovers, or missed off-balance jumpers that you have no business taking, or even in a – gasp – pass to Drew Gooden. Because we know what the eventual pay off will be. That there will come a point when these herky-jerky moves will no longer be just eye candy, but will propel you to stardom. That they will finally help you drive to the basket whenever you please, or free yourself for open jumpers that you will some day – you will, I know you will – learn how to make, or because that flashy pass will find a streaking (and healthy!) Andrew Bogut for a dunk, and the foul.
Oh, and keep the eye candy too. That stuff is awesome.
Most importantly, don’t slump your shoulders. Don’t give up and conform to point guard normalities that were created as an antithesis to that showman’s mentality that can be so neatly integrated in your game. If we wanted to see another point guard who can’t shoot but is solid in an unspectacular manner, we have enough Eric Snow tapes to last a lifetime. We want something else.
