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Tag Archive - brandon jennings

Trade Deadline: Bucks, Warriors Trade For Each Other’s Shadows

March 14, 2012 in by with 0 Comments

Photo from Vít Hassan via Flickr

Trade deadline season finally took off late Tuesday, with an intriguing Golden State-Milwaukee swap. From the gentlemen that brought you Corey Maggette for Dan Gadzuric and Charlie Bell:

The Milwaukee Bucks traded Andrew Bogut and Stephen Jackson to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night for a three-player package headed by high-scoring guard Monta Ellis.The Bucks also receive forward Ekpe Udoh and center Kwame Brown in the deal

via Milwaukee Bucks trade Andrew Bogut, Stephen Jackson to Golden State Warriors for Monta Ellis – ESPN.

There is sense to be made here, from both sides. The Bucks clear up loads of cap space by bringing in Kwame Brown’s expiring deal and sending out the poisonous fumes of the burning pile of feces that is Stephen Jackson, and bring in a talented scorer to boot. The Warriors finally pick a side in the 32-month saga that is the Stephen Curry/Monta Ellis backcourt, get their elite defensive center, and now have the legitimacy to play horrible basketball for the rest of the season so they can sneak back in to the lottery in one of the deepest drafts in years.

The basketball intricacies are fascinating. Bogut and Lee is a frontcourt match made in heaven: Lee is the high-post presence that Bogut never had in Milwaukee, enabling him to make the logical move from the overmatched only option to just one other crucial part. Both are elite passers with deft touches around the basket, a combination of big man that pretty much can’t be rivaled in today’s NBA outside of Los Angeles and Memphis. Conversely, Bogut very nearly league-best interior defense is just the security blanket that Lee has always lacked. Add in the fact that both have career defensive rebound rates over 24%, and Golden State looks very, very scary long term, ankles and elbows notwithstanding. Curry-Thompson-Dorell Wright-Lee-Bogut lineup, with Jackson and hopefully that top 7 pick helping out is a good NBA lineup, if not a great one.

Milwaukee loses that presence as part of a complete makeover from a defensive squad to an offensive squad, albeit one that specializes in quantity over quality. The Bucks will never have trouble creating a shot again. Making them is another matter – here’s hoping that Ersan Ilyasova, instead of wilting and crying in the corner, continues to grab every offensive rebound in sight – but the previous Bucks were bad at both. Meanwhile, they get what could possibly be the biggest steal of the deal in Ekpe Udoh, a +/- deity who may or may not become an all-NBA defender given the minutes.

Adding the cap space, and remembering that both Jackson and Bogut were giving the Bucks nothing this year, and it’s possible to argue that this both vaults Milwaukee into the playoffs over the Knicks (sheesh, the Knicks, let’s not even go there), and are better in the long-term. In fact, if Milwaukee finds a team willing to take on Beno Udrih’s 2012-2013 salary (the Lakers? The Blazers? The Rubio-less Wolves? People need point guards) and amnesties Drew Gooden next summer, they could be looking at 28 million dollars of cap space. Re-sign Ghostface Illa, AND GO BANANAS.

More than anything, though, this trade is striking from a grass is greener perspective. The Bucks have been in “if only Andrew comes back” mode for two years now, the prospect of the Aussie’s rehab going well hanging over the franchise like a noose. It’s unfortunate – that 09-10 squad meant quite a bit to me, as I’ve written here before, and this is the final nail in its coffin – but it’s true. A franchise can only go on for so long before the what-ifs sink it, and Milwaukee’s nose was barely above water levels as is.

The same went for Golden State. Ellis is wildly overrated, but he’s just as talented, and Stephen Curry is a bum wheel away from being an elite NBA player, but the fit wasn’t there, and wasn’t going to be. As Ethan Sherwood Strauss noted a few weeks ago, making an actual pick was always more important than what the pick would eventually be. Well, the pick has been made, and even if it comes at the price of Stephen Jackson, even if it is dependent on how Bogut can come back, even if we’re still not sure what a Klay Thompson is (though we’re less pessimistic than last month), even if it just reminds us how ridiculously stupid it was to amnesty Charlie Bell’s expiring contract instead of Andris Biedrins (you could have had Bogut, Lee, Curry AND CAP SPACE, you fools!) – it is commendable.

Of course, these problems aren’t over – they were just shifted. Stephen Jackson’s contract is still as bad as it ever was, even though it makes all the karmic sense in the world that the original offending front office is the one that must pay it.The Andrew Bogut Comeback Train is now parked in the Bay area instead of Wisconsin, but it will still suffocate an entire franchise until Bogut is either back in full form or retired. The Monta Ellis Quandary will live on as well, even if it involves a different ill-fated backcourt companion. The fears are all the same, it’s just another franchise trying to overcome them.

Which is why it’s so fascinating.

Trade Deadline: What Bogut-For-Monta Means

March 13, 2012 in by with 1 Comment

Bucks and Warriors have agreed in principle on trade to send Bogut and Jackson to Warriors for Ellis, Udoh and Brown, league source tells Y!
March 13, 2012 7:27 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@WojYahooNBA
Adrian Wojnarowski

Ask, NBA blogosphere, and ye shall receive. After a few days of intensifying speculation and rumors, the first real trade of the 2012 deadline went through on Tuesday evening, and it’s a doozy. Let’s unpack:

  • If Andrew Bogut can stay healthy (kind of a big if, but it’s not at all out of the realm of possibility), he and David Lee will make up one of the better 4-5 combos in the league. Bogut isn’t expected back for a while, but the back end of the Western Conference playoff race is close enough that Golden State has a shot at sneaking in, and if they do, his presence could make them a tough first-round matchup for one of the top seeds.
  • As unlikely and questionable as Stephen Jackson’s return to Golden State seems on the surface, perimeter D is a need that he fills. There are risks involved with bringing him back, but getting a center as talented as Bogut makes it worth the gamble. Worst-case scenario, they can negotiate a buyout.
  • If the Warriors do decide to buy Jackson out (which isn’t the plan as of now, according to Yahoo!’s Marc Spears), he instantly becomes the most intriguing candidate to be picked up for cheap by a contender.
  • The biggest downside to this trade for the Dubs: the future of their franchise now depends entirely on the health of Bogut and Stephen Curry, the very definition of a high-risk/high-reward proposition.
  • The second-biggest downside to this deal for Golden State is losing Epke Udoh. But if the Warriors are in win-now mode, it’s worth giving up an unpolished prospect for a known quantity like Bogut.
  • The Bucks save some money by unloading Jackson’s contract and getting back Kwame Brown’s expiring deal.
  • Think about the prospect of a Brandon Jennings/Monta Ellis backcourt for a second. Has any guard combo ever posted a usage rate over 100? Will they combine for 70 shots per game? Is this the black-holiest backcourt since Marbury and Francis? The Bucks just became everyone’s favorite League Pass team for the final third of the season, purely from a morbid entertainment standpoint.
  • Of course, though they deny it now, there’s always the chance this deal could foreshadow a Jennings trade. I wrote about his future in a post yesterday, and now the Bucks may have to answer the question sooner than we thought. If it doesn’t happen before Thursday, we’ll definitely be hearing increased talk about moving the third-year guard this summer, when he becomes eligible to sign an extension.
  • In the grand scheme of things, this trade will probably become a footnote to whatever does or doesn’t happen with Dwight Howard in the next 36 hours. However, if Howard does get traded, this could be viewed as the first domino. The Magic had been making a hard push for Ellis in the past few days, in hopes that it would placate him. Now that that’s off the table, who else can they target to try and keep Dwight happy? Even if Phoenix has a change of heart at the last minute and decides to move Steve Nash, Orlando doesn’t have great assets. The Ellis/Bogut trade might be the thing that finally convinces Otis Smith to pull the trigger on a Howard deal, in which case the Bucks and Warriors can claim a small piece of the credit in helping to end the tiredest story of this season.

The trade deadline is fun, isn’t it?

Trade Deadline: Brandon Jennings’ Self-Positioning

March 12, 2012 in by with 0 Comments

Photo via EnoNarYam on Flickr.

Sources said Milwaukee has made third-year point guard Brandon Jennings available “for the right price,” as one executive who has spoken to the Bucks put it. Jennings, who was drafted 10th overall in 2009 and has been considered the team’s future franchise player, irked Bucks officials with his comments to ESPN.com in early February about a possible departure.

“I’m going to keep my options open, knowing that the time is coming up,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Web site. “I’m doing my homework on big-market teams.”

via Trade Notebook: Smith, Howard in similar situations; Bucks available | SI.com

In a recent column about the new reality that the desire to play in a bigger market has become an accepted prerequisite for NBA superstardom, I looked at Dwight Howard’s absurd, confused diva act and wondered whether he had fully thought through his decision to jump ship from the Magic. Lately, this mentality has spread beyond the league’s A-listers and evolved into a sinister form of leverage that lesser players can use to convince their teams and the rest of the league that their on-court value is greater than it is in reality. How the next 18 months play out for Brandon Jennings and the Bucks could be telling, in terms of the willingness of small-market teams to attempt to placate supposed franchise players, regardless of whether they truly are franchise players.

Jennings made headlines a few weeks ago by hinting that he had designs on leaving Milwaukee for a flashier locale. This could have been pure ego talking (and probably was), but it was also a savvy bit of PR. Jennings is a very good player who will undoubtedly have suitors if and when he does hit free agency. But he’s also plainly not a superstar on the level of LeBron James, Howard, Chris Paul, or most of the other players leading the mass small-market exodus. What his threatened departure from the Bucks does is connect him in the minds of the general public with those players. It’s a little like how private colleges jack up tuition rates in order to appear more prestigious than they actually are. Behaving like an entitled, spotlight-seeking “global icon” is now a way up the ladder, not just something a player can do once he gets there. The school of thought goes that an almost-star’s leveraging their way onto greener pastures will transform them into a superstar, even if they haven’t earned that leverage on the court.

Jennings’ trade value currently occupies the untenable middle. He’s good enough and far enough away from free agency (the earliest he can hit the open market is 2014, and that’s only if he accepts the qualifying offer following the 2012-13 season) that the Bucks won’t benefit in the short term from moving him for picks and cap relief. But he’s also far too inconsistent and incomplete a player to command the CP3/Deron Williams/Carmelo Anthony-sized haul they will undoubtedly be seeking.

It’s the same predicament that the Warriors are currently facing with Monta Ellis, and one which may greet the Kings in the coming years as they are forced to decide whether or not their future will include Tyreke Evans. Shoot-first point guards are the hardest players to price accurately in the trade market or in free agency—the gaudy scoring averages demand figures and assets that other deficiencies in their games are just glaring enough to make teams regret forking over. And as the Bucks gear up to be the next team to have to negotiate a deal for a new arena, Jennings’ saga puts them in a tough spot. He’s the closest thing they have to a marketable star, and as a small-market team, they must decide whether that’s enough to acquiesce to giving him a contract that could hurt the franchise down the line.

It’s not much of a surprise that a player who took an early sabbatical in Italy to circumvent the NBA’s age limit is attempting to take a shortcut to elite status in the league. What will be worth watching is how the Bucks handle the years leading up to when they have to make a decision. If he’s able to leverage his way onto a big-market team by declaring himself worthy of that right, it could set a precedent that badly skews the priorities of a whole generation of players on the bubble of superstardom.

NBA Playoffs Bucks Hawks Game 2: Let Josh Smith Show You A Magic Trick

April 23, 2010 in by with 2 Comments

Having Andrew Bogut around would have helped. It really would have. There’s just so much that happens where the Bucks need someone who’s not just big, but smart enough to suss out things and put certain plays to rest like little children being put down for a nap.

This is such a play.

The Hawks create a cluster here by essentially double screening Ilasova. First Salmons’ man comes through to the other side, shielding his back from Smith who’s just kind of getting excited. Frankensova’s trying to watch Joe Johnson to make sure he doesn’t take Delfino to the rack. Which is good. As we saw with the Mavs. You should probably be ready to help your man. Unfortunately for him, he goes a little too far. He’s now parallel to Smith’s flightpath. Here’s the really dirty part. You’ll notice Bibby sneaking up the bottom side of the play, nudging Salmons’ man to squeeze through, and leaving Brandon Jennings wondering what the hell is going on.

Now on the release, Smith starts galloping towards the rim like Gryphon, Salmons is still chasing his man who’s going baseline, and then bam! (/Madden’d) Bibby screens Ilyasova hard, jarring him and preventing him from even starting to reverse course to cut off Smith at the baseline. Meanwhile, Jennings starts to go after Bibby, realizes what’s happening, and jerks back to try and prevent that which he cannot. You can actually see him go one way, then realize it and back up too late.

See, I included their heights so you would understand why it was such a bad idea. But give the kid credit. He had every intention of going for a pass that he would need to jump off the back of an elephant to catch. Meanwhile, Ilyasova is STILL being cut off by Bibby, which means that even if he misses, the Hawks are going to have a size advantage on the boards. Of course, Smith is eight inches taller, so he’s not going to miss.

It’s easy to say Bogut would have made an impact, but how? Ilyasova still likely would have been on Smith, making the same kinds of mistakes. But you do have to figure Bogut would sniff out what was going on and at least be in a little better position. As is, the Bucks are toast before the pass even gets there.

Dang, Brandon. Dang.

TA-DAAA!

What Would Have Made Milwaukee Famous, HAD ANYONE BOTHERED TO SHOW UP.

April 13, 2010 in by with 0 Comments

The home portion of the Milwaukee Bucks&apos; regular season is over, and the franchise averaged 15,108 fans per game at the Bradley Center.

That&apos;s down just 281 fans per game, although most fans coming to the Bradley Center saw a lot of empty seats in which the reported attendance was higher.

With the regular season nearly over, the Bucks will finish 24th in the league in attendance, the very same ranking they had the previous season.

via Officially, Bucks’ attendance dips – JSOnline.

Oh, come the hell on, Milwaukee. You’re killing me here. What, the superstar rookie point guard who will finish top three in ROY voting and would finish second if anyone took a second to notice Stephen Curry gets taken to the hole more than John Meyer wasn’t enough? The competitive games night in and night out? The defensive player of the year candidate who would probably have been an MVP candidate if he added a better mid-range and played in a bigger market wasn’t enough? The awesome atmosphere caused by the cheering squad? No go? You have better things to do?

What, you needed to work on your tan at the beach? Some cool new exhibit at the art museum? Too many options in the hustle and bustle of Milwaukee?

For the love of everything holy, your team is the six seed! They’ve pushed every Eastern conference contender this season! They’re really good! Why would you not go?

It’s stunning to me that the Bucks improved not at all with all the good will that’s been hoisted upon them. How is Kohl going to justify sinking more money into it at this point? I guess the same way he’s justified it for the last decade. 24th? 20FREAKINGFOURTH?

You and Memphis should get together and NOT watch a basketball game some time.

Yao-zers – Andrew Bogut Out For The Season

April 4, 2010 in by with 6 Comments

This just sucks. We’ve been robbed of our manifest playoff destiny once again.

Andrew Bogut is out for the year. Now, normally this wouldn’t be huge news and it wouldn’t really matter with just a week and a half remaining in the regular season. Normally, the Bucks would have been eliminated from playoff contention for a couple of weeks now and the city of Milwaukee would be turning their attention to Prince Fielder and the rest of the Milwaukee Brewers. But not this year.

This year, the Bucks aren’t just making the playoffs; they’re putting teams on notice that if you face them in the first round you’re going to be in for a rude awakening. The Bucks are scrappy but it’s a different kind of scrappy. In the past, we’ve had scrappy teams that “nobody wanted to face.” They were teams who most likely put up a lot of points or had huge glaring weaknesses that far superior teams would be able to exploit in a seven-game series. The Wolves teams from the late 90s and early 00s were scrappy but you didn’t truly fear them. Tracy McGrady’s Orlando teams were scrappy but you knew they weren’t pulling off the massive upset against better teams. But this Bucks teams is completely different.

Or at least it was until last night when Andrew Bogut seemingly slipped off the rim and fell on his right arm. The diagnosis is a dislocated elbow, a broken hand and a sprained wrist. If it was just one of those injuries, the tough Australian anchor to the Bucks defense would wrap it up and go be the destructive defensive force he’s been all season. He’d be the guy that makes you wonder if Dwight Howard is hands down the best defensive player of the year.

Dislocated elbow? He’d probably pop it back into place in a pseudo-tribute to Lieutenant Riggs and go out there and be the guy Milwaukee needs him to be. If it was a broken hand, he’d most likely tape it up, take a few painkillers and go out there to carry out the plan of his defensive-minded coach. Sprained wrist? I don’t even know that we would hear about him having a sprained wrist. Andrew Bogut is one of the toughest guys in the NBA. He has that Aussie blood running through his veins that allows him to feel very little pain. However, throw all of those injuries together into one horrible fall and you’re left with the situation the Bucks are in.

It’s eerily reminiscent to the Houston Rockets situation from last season. With Tracy McGrady on the shelf already, the Rockets lost Yao Ming deep into their playoff push against the Lakers. The Rockets were already in the playoffs and in the middle of a Round 2 showdown with the eventual champs. After Game 3, we found out Yao Ming had a hairline fracture in the same left foot that had sustained three significant injuries throughout his career. It was completely deflating for all basketball fans that didn’t root for the forum blue and gold. When you have a scrappy team with the odds stacked against them, you don’t want them to lose their best player in the middle of what could be a special run.

Would the Rockets have beaten the Lakers in the second round of last year’s playoffs? Would the Bucks have advanced to the second round or the Eastern Conference Finals on the shoulders of the biggest, toughest man in Milwaukee? Unfortunately, we will never get those answers. We’re left to guess and hypothesize instead of get a definitive yes or no to the situation.

Much like the Rockets, the Bucks were already without their best wing scorer – a fate they have grown accustomed to and are used to dealing with. They know life without Michael Redd just the same as Houston knew life without Tracy McGrady. It was something you could sort of prepare for and make due with. Any NBA wing player (outside of Sasha Pavlovic or Sasha Vujacic or anybody named Sasha) can get hot and carry his team for an extended period of time. But like that Rockets team, this Bucks team has always been praying the bad luck wouldn’t once again trickle down into the post and befall their franchise big man.

What’s left of the Bucks is an aircraft carrier with no anchor. The Bucks are left with Ersan Illyasova playing the role of a much younger Luis Scola, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute playing the role of Shane Battier, John Salmons as a heavily medicated Ron Artest and Brandon Jennings as the flashier and more swaggerish version of Aaron Brooks. And I sort of hope it works.

What we need now is this Bucks team to rally around this adversity. We need them to accept this horribly dealt hand and bluff their way into winning a pot.

I often get labeled as a Brandon Jennings “hater” because I believe Tyreke Evans is not only the better player but is far more deserving of the Rookie of the Year award. The truth is I’m crazy about Brandon Jennings. Just because I believe Tyreke is better and more likely to receive the hardware doesn’t mean I’m not a Jennings fan. I’ve always been a fan of point guards first in this league. I’m drawn to them for some reason. Honestly, I would love nothing more than Brandon Jennings to go NOVA for the entire playoffs and give the opposing defenses more than they could ever hope to handle.

I want Brandon Jennings to turn back into the Pterodactyl With Wings of Fire. I want him to find the jumper that eluded him for too long this season. I want the three-point shot to snap through the bottom of the net. I want the runner to fall, the pull-up jumper to splash and the dribble to be so succinct and elusive that defenders are left confused and trying to recreate the scene of the crime to figure out how their dignity was taken from them on Jennings’ way to the court. I want chalk outlines of defenders’ ankles on the court and William Petersen brilliantly piecing the whole thing together with his creepy beard.

The Bucks may be deflated with the loss of Andrew Bogut for the rest of this campaign but this is a new Milwaukee team. Hopefully they can show the innate toughness that their coach and defensive centerpiece have infused into Bucks basketball.

Fear the Deer.

Hit The Breaks, Watch Them Fly Right By

February 25, 2010 in by with 5 Comments

High five. From Compton, California to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Sante Fe, Argentina to Yaonde, Cameroon to Melbourne, Australia, this starting lineup couldn’t have come from much further apart. And yet, in just their second start as a fivesome ever, Jennings/Salmons/Delfino/Mbah a Moute/Bogut looked like a crew that grew up ballin’ on the same block, late into the night, sky is as dark as the pavement, hoop dimly lit by that light across the street, an hour and a half past when mom said i’s time to get in house.

The Bucks have tried plenty of starting lineups this season, but they needn’t try any more.

via Recap: Bucks 115, Hornets 95 – Brew Hoop.

The Bucks and Bobcats are headed in opposite directions, and the trade deadline has a lot to do with it. It’s  a gamble, every time. We act like just adding pieces or replacing them will automatically improve the team, but you’ve got to look at it from a chemistry standpoint. That’s obvious, right? But it’s not as simple as “this guy’s a complainer” or “this guy’s got an ego.” It’s just about guys clicking. The Bucks? They’re clicking, folks. It’s rare that I’ve seen a traded player fit in so seamlessly on the floor as Salmons.

Most of that is a function of the fact that essentially, Salmons is just sliding into Redd’s spot. Salmons on the court isn’t trying to force himself into a leadership role, he’s just slashing and shooting. And it’s one of those trades where you look at it, and you can’t really believe you didn’t see its impact before.

Bogut is dominant right now. I’m not exaggerating. DOMINANT. There was nothing the Hornets could do last night, and they were bringing Okafor and a double team for large stretches of the game. Bogut’s combination of size, savvy, and touch is just not something teams are able to handle right now. They have a point guard tandem that can score in bursts or manage the game (Ridnour,  who’s also shooting the lights out, even though he’s the Mike Bibby to my J.E. Skeets). They have a defensive stalwart  in Mbah a Moute, and all of a sudden Carlos Delfino matters again. They’re playing smart, and well. For all the crap Scott Skiles has gotten over the years, he has this team playing really well and in line for a playoff push.

The Bobcats, on the other hand, are in trouble. Bonnell points out how essentially the Bobcats pushed past the really useful point of expecting to win and into the dreaded ‘entitlement’ phase. They’ve come to a standstill as long as you lock down on CapJack. Losing Flip Murray was a significant loss for them, one which Larry Brown should have anticipated. Adding Thomas helps you inside, but losing Murray brings that offense back a step when it had just become decent. Thomas scored 20 points last night, and maybe he really is becoming the guy most of us want him to be. But even with the injuries to their frontcourt, the Bobcats have to figure out how to get cohesive in a hurry.

David Kahn… A GM Ahead of the Curve? Or A Bonehead That Completely Screwed Up. Oh, Wait, That One’s Already Been Answered

December 22, 2009 in by with 0 Comments

What’s this? You mean all the people who questioned what the heck David Kahn was doing when he drafted two point guards back to back and signing a third in free agency, might end up eating crow??? Imagine that. In fact if the Wolves were to, gasp, win the lottery and the John Wall jackpot, they would all of sudden find themselves fully cornering the market on young point guards.

Hopefully now you have a better idea of why David Kahn is all about acquiring “assets” in the early stages of building a contender out of our beloved T-Wolves. It may not fill a need now or help them get a W tomorrow night, but they have a very good chance of paying off quite well for the team in the future.

via David Kahn… A GM Ahead of the Curve? | Howlin’ T-Wolf.

I love Howlin’ T-Wolf. I do.

But this is madness. Did he “stock up” on point guards, or did he take a lower value point guard who’s only been mediocre this season (and that’s with an astronomical usage rate) first, and then gamble on a kid who obviously didn’t want to go to their team, resulting in only getting .75 of a point guard, while Tyreke Evans (who was already go gone but c’mon, you don’t think the Kings would have taken the 4th and 5th for the 2 and a player?) and Brandon Jennings, and Ty Lawson, and Eric Maynor, and Jeff Teague all reveal themselves to be excellent picks and hey! They actually PLAY IN THIS COUNTRY.

What, the Wolves are stocked at point guard? All that means for them is they have three middling assets (because they’re screwing up Sessions) they can’t do anything with and the ability to pursue what this year? More forwards? They have Al Jefferson and Kevin Love for God’s sake!

If the Wolves were smart, they would trade all of those prospects to get the first overall pick and take Wall. Because he’s going to be infinitely better than all the “assets” they’ve managed to acquire.

Yeesh.

Growing Pains For The Young Buck

December 3, 2009 in by with 0 Comments

You don’t need to jump very high to block Earl Boykins.

I am typing to you, not some giant NBA’er.

And so another rookie lesson learned. Brandon Jennings was caught with his feet off the ground, caught with his defensive judgment just off with a second to go in a tied game.

Whether a preseason-pessimest or offseason-optimist, we all figured it would be an up-and-down adventure on this Jennings ride, and it was just that in the final ten seconds of regulation: After all, the rook’ had just nailed a clutch three to tie the game prior to his foul.

Still, on a night when he was outplayed by his backup (about him…), Jennings wanted the ball, the shot on his team’s final possession. And he made it count.

But while much of the pregame focus centered on Washington’s Big Three, Bogut, and Jennings, everyone looked right past and right over old friend Earl Boykins. So Boykins worked the fourth quarter pick-n-roll with Brendan Haywood into a win.

via Recap: Wizards 104, Bucks 102 – Brew Hoop.

The shooting woes will even out, and somehow, someway, he’s still getting buckets late in games. All of the things you see Jennings struggling with are things he can work through. I’d be concerned with him developing into some sort of gunner, except he’s still averaging 6.4 assists per40 in his rookie season.

The other thing BrewHoop talks about here is the impact of Luke Ridnour. Luke Ridnour, through no fault of his own, has become my most hated of point guards. Because he’s constantly, and fairly, getting minutes over dynamic point guards. Last year it was Ramon Sessions. This year it’s Brandon Jennings. He’s playing well, which is a boon for Skiles being able to turn to a capable veteran to run the squad, but a drag for the rest of us. It’s like going to the zoo and seeing the tigers napping. Sure, it’s still a really big cat, but you’re looking for them to roar or something.

Respect The REKE

December 2, 2009 in by with 1 Comment

Tyreke Evans has been the better player between the two so far this year. Is it close? Absolutely. But is it in question either? I don’t think so.

Jennings gets more highlights for sure and sometimes that’s what it takes to win this award. It happened in 2001 when Mike Miller beat out Marc Jackson 2003 when Amare Stoudemire beat out Yao Ming for the award. And yes, his 55-point game is still the best performance of the year if you forget the fact that the majority of his points in the second half came off of open jump shots from the nonexistent Warriors defense or Mikki Moore. It was the equivalent of putting up good scoring numbers at a shoot around.

But when you look at the numbers, the impact of the records for each team, and the overall play, Tyreke Evans is more the favorite when you put it all together (or at least he should be).

via Cowbell Kingdom.com – A Sacramento Kings Blog.

Harper makes a strong case for why Evans should be ROY favorite at this point.  From my perspective, Jennings has shown more potential to be elite, but Reke has shown more consistency. It’s difficult to completely remove Evans from a game entirely unless Westphal yanks him. With Jennings, even if he gets points, you can force the ball away from him for long periods of time.

Additionally, for all the talk about Evans not being a point, I feel like he’s a more integral part of the Kings’ offense than Jennings is to the Bucks. If you get Jennings the ball and the defense doesn’t swarm him, he’s going to make plays. But they almost feel independent of the rest of the offense. Conversely, Evans seems to be trying very hard to work in the flow of the offense and contribute in a team context.

I will say that Jennings looks like a better scorer and a better passer. We’ll have to see if he keeps the ability to get to the hole now that defenses are aware of him, or if he shrinks back to mid-range jumpers. Because even if he hits them at a good clip, that’s going to limit his effectiveness, and the Bucks’ offense. Reke, on the other hand, cannot be stopped.   He’s too big, too fast, too quick.  If he learns a set of NBA finishing moves, it’s over.

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