Everyone knows the story about how Brandon Jennings was the best basketball player in the world for one November night in 2009, when he scored 55 points.
Fewer people recall that over the span of 10 full November nights in 2009, Brandon Jennings was the best basketball player in the world.
The Bucks just signed Jennings to a 10-day contract. In honor, we are going to talk about three ridiculous things from each of the five games that Jennings played when he was the best basketball player in the world.
(Note 1: Similar to virtually every 10-day span over the past 15 years, LeBron James was really great during these 10 days too, and if you want to say that he was more great than Jennings during these 10 days? That is fine.)
(Note 2: Jennings is not going to be the best basketball player in the world during this 10-day contract.)
November 11, 2009
Ridiculous thing #1: In his sixth NBA game, Jennings thoroughly outplayed Chauncey Billups, who was coming off an All-NBA 3rd Team campaign (Tony Parker in arguably the best season of his career was the other All-NBA 3rd Team guard, to give a little perspective) and who was still an All-Star (he was named an All-Star a few months later) and who still very much Mr. Big Shot. Late in the fourth quarter though, it was Jennings who hit two triples in a row, and who iced the game with six straight free throws.
Ridiculous thing #2: He led the Bucks to a win that night against a Nuggets team that had in the previous season pushed the eventual 2008-09 NBA Champions, Lakers to six games in the Western Conference Finals, which was Carmelo’s best team ever. This was Carmelo’s second-best team (they went on to go 53–29). Jennings did this against a really good team.
Ridiculous thing #3: His statline was something out of James Harden circa 2018: 11–19 field goals, 2–2 threes, 8–8 free throws, 32 points, 9 assists, 4 rebounds.
November 14, 2009
Ridiculous thing #1: On this night, fellow rookie Steph Curry was coming off a game in which he had played two minutes, after being benched by Don Nelson in the game before that. To emphasize: While Jennings was coming off a superstar performance in which he straight gave it to Chauncey Billips, the future unanimous MVP of the league had in his previous two games been benched and then had played two minutes. This was the stage that was set.
Ridiculous thing #2: Jennings missed his first three shots, was benched less than five minutes into the game, and scored zero points in the first quarter.
Ridiculous thing #3: Then he scored 55 points in the final three quarters, including 29 in the third quarter. Below is where things started to crescendo, where he was in grab-the-rebound-and-come-down-and-hit-a-three mode.
November 16, 2009
Ridiculous thing #1: The only loss of these 10 days was to the 55-win Mavericks — in overtime, on a last-second prime Dirk Nowitzki game-winning jumper that bounced high off the rim and in. Come on:
Ridiculous thing #2: Still, Jennings went for 25/8/7, hit four three-pointers (out of nine), and was the only starter to really show up for the Bucks.
Ridiculous thing #3: Nonetheless, after the game he said, “I’m kind of taking this one to the heart, because I feel it’s my fault that we didn’t win that game.” This was not true! However, it is a nice segue for me to remind you here that when 20 year-old Brandon Jennings was the best player in the world for 10 days as a rookie, his starting backcourt mate was Charlie Bell.
November 18, 2009
Ridiculous thing #1: This Bucks win dropped the Nets to 0–12. Lawrence Frank went on to start the season 0–16, and the Nets cycled through three coaches (Frank followed by Tom Barrise and then Kiki Vandeweghe) during the season.
Ridiculous thing #2: This dreadful Nets team featured the motliest crew of former-or-future Bucks on one team in NBA history: Yi Jianlian, Rafer Alston, Chris Douglas-Roberts, Keyon Dooling, and Bobby Simmons.
Ridiculous thing #3: Jennings went for 19/4/8 while hitting 6–13 from the field, 3–4 threes, and 4–5 at the line, for a +16 differential. He led the Bucks, who by some were predicted to be the second-worst team in the East along with the Nets, to their fifth win in six games.
November 20, 2009
Ridiculous thing #1: Andrew Bogut got hurt in the previous game, the Bucks were still waiting for Michael Redd to return from injury, and Luc Mbah a Moute was out of the lineup too.
Ridiculous thing #2: With that, this was a thinned-out Bucks, and no one other than Jennings on the Bucks made more than five field goals in the game — Hakim Warrick shot 5–13 after beginning his night by inbounding the ball to Raymond Felton, which was troubling because Felton played for the Bobcats.
Ridiculous thing #3: Jennings, meanwhile, hit 12–23 from the field and went for 29/4/7, and another win. That capped his run as the best basketball player in the world for those 10 days. In the five games, he averaged 32.0 points, 4.8 rebounds, 7.4 assists while shooting 52.3 percent from the field and 59.4 percent on threes. I don’t know if it was more unfathomable then or if it is more unfathomable now.
Gary Dineen/Getty Images
When Brandon Jennings suits up for the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday, it will have been almost a year since he stepped on the floor in an NBA uniform.
The basketball world was intrigued when news broke in February that Jennings had signed with the Wisconsin Herd, the Bucks' G League affiliate. He was claimed off waivers after a brief stint in China.
They were intrigued because Jennings is not just another player.
Before Emmanuel Mudiay skipped college to play pro overseas before coming to the NBA, long before LaVar Ball took sons LiAngelo and LaMelo to Eastern Europe, Jennings did it first. His decision to forgo his college eligibility to play professionally in Europe with Lottomatica Roma in 2008 was a bold move.
That was not the only thing that set Jennings apart. Before Under Armour went all in on Steph Curry, it hitched its first basketball wagon to the 19-year-old Jennings. UA signed him to a $2 million contract before he began his lone season in Europe. It was a deal that paved the way for UA to become more of a household name when Jennings began his NBA career one year later. He was taken 10th by the Bucks in the 2009 draft.
When he entered the NBA as a 20-year-old, Jennings was a dynamic scorer who could penetrate with lightning-quick speed and create for teammates. This was a guy who averaged 16.6 points through his first five-and-a-half seasons, including a 55-point explosion seven games into his rookie year. He could get buckets seemingly at will.
But that promising start to his career was interrupted January 24, 2015, when Jennings, who had been traded to the Detroit Pistons in 2013, tore his left Achilles in a game against the Bucks. He would have surgery to repair the tendon and began rehab not long after.
Darren Hauck/Associated Press
"That was my first serious injury," Jennings recalls to Bleacher Report. "I tried to rush myself back because I was on the last year of my contract. I was trying to show people that I was the same player, but I still wasn't comfortable."
What happened next was a two-year odyssey that saw him split time between Detroit and Orlando during the 2015-16 season and New York and Washington the following season. His court time dipped to around 20 minutes per game, and his production took a hit. Jennings averaged seven points per game during that stretch and scored a career-low 3.5 per contest in his 23 games as a Wizard.
He still didn't feel 100 percent, and that affected his confidence. When his contract expired at the end of the 2017 season, Jennings had some big decisions to make.
"I told my agent I wanted to go to China," Jennings says. "China was my decision. I felt it was a good place for me to get back into the flow of things. I could find myself again and be who I am."
Packing his bags and catching that plane to Taiyuan to play for the Shanxi Brave Dragons in the Chinese Basketball Association put his career back on track. Having not worked out much the summer before he left, Jennings used the relative isolation of his new team to get back into shape.
"The Achilles injury was one of the toughest times of my life," Jennings says. "I couldn't really do the things I was able to do before. Being in China … being away from the world just helped me out. It was my second time playing outside the country, and I … was able to get back to playing basketball and having fun again and not worrying about anything."
Jennings seemed to find the fun in his game again. In his 13 games in China, he averaged 27.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, 6.8 assists and 2.7 steals in 35 minutes per game. Due to league rules regarding non-Chinese players, he came off the bench but still put up starter stat lines. He hung 29 points, six rebounds and eight assists in his Brave Dragons debut. Two games later, he put up a 36-point, eight-rebound, six-assist, five-steal performance. That was followed a couple of games later by a 42-point performance against Stephon Marbury's team, the Beijing Fly Dragons.
Jennings had five games of 30-plus points in China and looked unstoppable. His confidence restored, he was ready to make another move back across the Pacific. He received his release from Shanxi in December and returned home to California. Then came the G League offer from the Bucks.
"I knew coming back from China I'd have to work my way back up," Jennings says. "The Bucks gave me an opportunity. A lot of guys wouldn't even want to play in the G League because of ego." But Jennings just wanted "to play … to prove that I can still score, I can still pass, I can still go get it and I can still run a team."
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Having averaged 21.4 points and 7.6 assists in seven G League games, Jennings says he's ready to take full advantage of his return to the NBA. With both Matthew Dellavedova and Malcolm Brogdon out with injuries, and with 40-year-old vet Jason Terry the lone true backup in the backcourt, Jennings could be thrust into the rotation immediately.
Since more teams are shooting from deep and playing at a faster pace, a trend that suits his game, Jennings can't wait to go all out now that he's back to his old self. At the same time, he's being realistic. He knows he's going to have to find his place on the team, like he had to as a rookie. And he's perfectly happy with that.
"I know for sure I'd probably have to come off the bench, but I'm better able to deal with that now, which is fine," Jennings said while still with the Wisconsin Herd. "As far as being a starter, I don't know if that will ever happen again. … Whatever a team needs, I'm down for it."
Whether this stint leads to a more stable situation for Jennings with Milwaukee or another NBA team is unclear. His play will largely determine that.
But for the time being, Jennings is happy to be back in the NBA.
Photo: Brandon Dill (AP)
Brandon Jennings started his 2017-18 season in China; this winter, he moved on to the D-League; one of his sharpest performances of the year, across all those leagues and locales, came tonight—in his first game of a 10-day NBA contract, back with the team that drafted him.
Back in a Milwaukee Bucks uniform for the first time since 2013, Jennings flirted with a triple-double on 16 points, 12 assists and 8 rebounds in tonight’s win over the Grizzlies. Coming off the bench for 24 minutes, he looked almost like his old self for a bit there:
In nearly a month with the Bucks’ D-League squad, Jennings averaged 21 points, seven assists and four rebounds before being picked up by Milwaukee yesterday. He filled the roster spot left open by forward Mirza Teletovic, who was waived this weekend after spending months sidelined by blood clots in his lungs. If he can keep playing like this, maybe he’ll keep it.
