This is Brandon Jennings
This is Brandon Jennings Words by David Vertsberger Art by Austin Gilmore Selfish. Arrogant. Only in it for the money. Brandon Jennings has heard it all, but at 26 years old, a little over a year removed from an Achilles’ tear and facing unrestricted free agency, all he can do is shrug at the misconceptions he’s carried since high school. “I just want to be remembered as the dude who just loved the game,” Jennings said. “People said I didn't love the game, people said I didn't really care for basketball like that. That's what really got me mad.” It’s easy to understand why. Jennings was born in Compton, California and started playing basketball at the age of three. He enrolled in Dominguez High School as a diminutive and lanky lefty point guard. His build was a fallacy in itself, an unthreatening body covering up lightning speed and killer ball-handling. He couldn’t dunk, but spent two hours a day jump-roping and did crosstraining after class throughout his freshman year. Come his sophomore year, he would routinely throw down windmill and between-the-legs slams. “He was just in the gym 24-7 getting better,” Dezon Otis, a teammate of Jennings’s at Dominguez, said. “He wanted to be better than everybody else. Growing up in where we came up from, you got a chip on your shoulder. You want to be the best and he wanted to be in the NBA.” It wasn’t long before Jennings’s talent shone enough for a professional future to seem
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inevitable. He was NBA-bound, but never acted like it. When Dime Magazine arranged a photo shoot with Jennings for its latest issue, the teenager did not want to get published alone, asking his teammates to join him for the picture. “He's very giving,” Otis said. “Everybody knew he was going to go to the NBA, and he would always give to our other less fortunate teammates who really didn't have that much.” Whether it be shoes or clothes, Jennings gifted it all to those who needed it more, despite his own struggles. Jennings’s father committed suicide before his tenth birthday, leaving his mother, Alice Knox, to care for him and his half-brother Terrence on her own. According to Jennings, the trio lived in four or five different homes around Los Angeles, which only strengthened their bond. Knox attended every game and tournament, while Terrence would take part as a ball boy. But Jennings, seeking tougher competition and an experience away from home, would live without his family for the first time when he transferred to Oak Hill Academy — a secondary school in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia — following his sophomore year. Upon his transfer, Jennings heard murmurs that he would return to California because the competition would be too much. At first, it took some time for Jennings to adjust to his new surroundings. During the first months after his transfer Jennings felt homesick, and had to sit out a game after lollygagging through a practice in his junior year. But once basketball season
picked up, Jennings got comfortable. He began waking up at 6 a.m. every day to practice before class, even mornings after a long road trip. “His thing was proving them wrong,” Quinton Watkins, a teammate of Jennings’s at Dominguez and on the AAU circuit, said. “I never played with a guy that had that kind of heart… If you were talking trash, he'd be like, 'okay!' And he'd go out and bust you, all day long.” Oak Hill had graduated Jerry Stackhouse, Carmelo Anthony and Stephen Jackson among other notable NBA players, but Jennings created his own legacy. He averaged 15.2 points and 11.5 assists during his junior year, leading his team to a 40-1 record. He shared the court with guards Nolan Smith, who played three seasons in the NBA, and Alex Legion, who would play at Kentucky.
Once they graduated, the team was all Jennings’s, and he blossomed. In his senior season, Jennings averaged 35.5 points per game, including a 63point outburst, both school records. He was named the 2008 Naismith Prep Player of the Year. So much for succumbing to tougher opposition. “Wherever we went when we traveled the gym would be packed,” Bryan Meagher, an assistant coach at Oak Hill, said. “People just wanted to see Brandon play.” As his stardom grew exponentially, he remained grounded. He once received a shipment of 40 brand new pairs of sneakers, which he gave away to teammates and random students passing by. He would call his mother whenever he could, and carried his competitive streak in everything from card games to softball. Jennings committed to the University of Arizona, but when members of its basketball staff stepped down, he was left without a clear path forward. Stuck awaiting his SAT scores, Jennings heard Sonny Vaccaro, a basketball sneaker mogul and major influencer of NBA-bound prospects, talking on the radio about the possibility of a high school player competing in Europe or another professional league for a year before
20
joining the NBA. This interested Jennings, who called Vaccaro, leading to a workout in Las Vegas. He impressed enough to get offers from coaches overseas, and decided to skip college to play a season for Pallacanestro Virtus Roma in Rome, Italy, earning $1.2 million dollars. “I got bashed,” Jennings said. “I kind of got a bad perception from it. I feel like because I did something different, people looked at me as 'oh he's one of those guys, he won't listen, he's going to do whatever he wants to do.'” The move was controversial. On a smaller scale, it reinvigorated the massive debate brought on by Kevin Garnett skipping college for the NBA in 1995, which sparked the prepto-pro generation. The weight of Jennings’s decision didn’t hit him at first. “Back then I was just like, fuck it I'm going to Rome,” Jennings said. “It didn't really sink in until later.” American columnists and fans thought he was greedy, dumb, big-headed or all three. European coaches thought he was too American on the court, lacking fundamentals and looking to score for himself too much. He was being squeezed from both sides, but didn’t look at the season as just a pit stop. “He was just like ‘I'm just coming here trying to win,’” Allan Ray, who played with Jennings in Italy, said. “He's like ‘I know y'all guys [have] been here, been playing, I'm trying to learn from y'all and I'm just trying to do whatever I can do to help the team win.' That was his attitude.” His discipline was tested immediately. Head coach Jasmin Repesa would berate Jennings and kick him out of practice. Jennings often wouldn’t get paid on time. He started in just 18 out of his team’s 43 games, averaging 18 minutes a night, all while adjusting to living on a new continent. He became frustrated and had thoughts of leaving, but the team’s veterans and his family helped keep Jennings composed. “There were some times that he really wasn't playing that much,” Ray said. “He never complained about it or lost focus. He just always stayed the same way all the time, never let anything bother him and I think that was partly because his mother and his
keep him sane.” Jennings’s mother and half-brother lived with him during his season in Italy. Knox would routinely cook for Jennings’s American teammates and drive him to Virtus Roma’s two daily practices. With the backing of his support system, Jennings powered through. Off the court, he remained magnanimous, donating $50,000 to a relief fund for an earthquake that rocked central Italy. On the court, he began looking at practice as his means of measuring up to pros in the face of sporadic playing time. “He became more mature,” Ray said. “You go to college, you're playing against college guys. Playing overseas, he was playing against some professionals… I definitely think he matured as a player from the time he got here, just playing against bigger and older guys.”
“I heard a lot of stories about him before he got there,” Sampson said. “An AAU player, a little bit wild, shot selection. You hear it all.” It didn’t take long for Jennings to convince Sampson of his work ethic, love of the game and character. The two lived in the same apartment complex, and Jennings would often invite Sampson over for dinner or ask him to go work out. One particular instance stood out to Sampson: when Jennings texted him wanting to practice on the night of his 20th birthday. “He didn't come in there as a know-
it-all or act like he was some kind of boy king,” Sampson said. “Brandon did a great job of listening.”
The hard work paid off for Jennings, who had to shake off doubts about his game and personality. The latter would take time, but he quickly put the former to bed. In As the NBA Draft arrived, that maturity Jennings’s seventh NBA game, he scored 55 came into question. Jennings had survived the rigors of Italian ball, but found himself in points on 21-34 shooting from the field and 7-8 shooting from deep against the Golden headlines after calling Ricky Rubio — the State Warriors and a point guard named draft’s prized point guard prospect — “all Stephen Curry. The double-nickel tied a hype” in front of reporters. Bucks rookie record held by Kareem AbdulJabbar, and the performance overshadowed “Yeah, definitely regrets,” Jennings Curry, who was selected three spots ahead of said. “I was in the competitive spirit. I Jennings.
was hungry. I was angry. A lot of things were going through my head because I didn't play [in Italy] all year.”
“A lot of veterans don't know who these rookies are,” Sampson said. “But when he scored 55? That's when he got on everybody's scouting report, and everybody started guarding him different. People talked to him The Milwaukee Bucks sought a point guard, and after Jennings outperformed Ty Lawson, different.” Jeff Teague and other prospects in workouts, The questions of whether he belonged in the they selected him tenth overall. Soon after, NBA and whether his detour to Europe was Jennings was caught cursing out the Knicks worth it were put to rest. Jennings was named for passing on him in a phone conversation to the All-Rookie First Team with averages of with rapper Joe Budden. Unbeknownst to 17.1 points and 6.3 assists. Milwaukee made Jennings, Budden had the point guard on the playoffs for the first time after a threespeakerphone while live streaming online. year drought. His flashy style of play and He was back on the bad side of fans and the shot output still skewed his image to some, media. but those close to him knew better. “That was another step to where people were like, ‘this guy, he doesn’t get it, he’s just an asshole,’” Jennings said. Bucks assistant coach Kelvin Sampson was not ignorant to the criticism surrounding Jennings.
Sampson was doing film work one night when he peered over into the gym and found Jennings playing pick-up with 15-20 teenagers. “Brandon, who are these guys?” Sampson asked.
21
asked.
first season as a Piston in 2013-14.
“They’re just hoopers man,” Jennings responded. “We’re just hooping.”
“He wanted to be good,” Bibby said. “He didn't come in saying 'I know everything. I'm Brandon Jennings and I know everything.' Never said anything like that. He was like this little young sponge who wanted to soak up everything he could.”
This wasn’t a one-time occurrence. Jennings would often scrimmage with local high school and college players.
“When he got traded from Milwaukee to Detroit, I'm sure that broke a lot of kids' hearts because it's a big deal for those kids to play with an NBA player,” Sampson said. “But Brandon never looked at it like that, he just loved to play.”
The following year, Jennings was at his most efficient scoring the basketball and recorded a career-high assist rate despite an entirely new coaching staff. But it wouldn’t last, as he went down with an Achilles’ tear midway through the season.
After four seasons with the Bucks, Jennings was shipped to the Pistons having only led Milwaukee to the playoffs twice. His reputation preceded him.
“It happened when I was playing the best basketball of my career,” Jennings said. “Me not being able to play basketball all summer is kind of like, 'so what do I do now?'”
“I didn't know him until he got to Detroit, and I just thought that the kid was an asshole the way he played on the court,” Henry Bibby, an assistant coach with the Pistons, said. “This is on the outside looking in, so I guess you can't judge a book by its cover. After seeing him everyday, and seeing that professional attitude that he brought in, I respect him more than ever… He is one of the nicest gentlemen I've ever met in the NBA. One of the most respectful basketball players I've met in the NBA.”
Jennings returned to action this season after months of rehab, and slowly regained his footing before getting traded once again, this time to the Orlando Magic. Jennings now looks toward free agency, where he says he wants to sign with a team that believes in him, that doesn’t doubt he can return to his pre-injury self. Thinking the injury would rob him of his athletic prime or stop him from trying to confound expectations would be the latest of a long list of mistaken perceptions.
Jennings’s production never fluctuated much in Milwaukee. He was that shoot-first point guard that certainly belonged, but whose ceiling looked less and less promising over time.
“Whatever happens in my career is gonna happen,” Jennings said. “As long as I go out there, give my all every night and just get the respect from my peers, that’s enough for me.”
“Brandon's been to the playoffs but he hasn't won a playoffs series, and when that happens you get the misconception that you're not a winning player, or that you don't play winning basketball,” Sampson said. Jennings was set financially and could realistically sleepwalk through the rest of his career, but he wasn’t satisfied. He formed a bond with head coach Maurice Cheeks, who played point guard in the league for 15 years as a defender and floor general. The two would spend four-hour film room sessions together, to which Jennings would never complain. The results were evident. Jennings averaged a career-high in assists during his
22
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inevitable. He was NBA-bound, but never acted like it. When Dime Magazine arranged a photo shoot with Jennings for its latest issue, the teenager did not want to get published alone, asking his teammates to join him for the picture. “He's very giving,” Otis said. “Everybody knew he was going to go to the NBA, and he would always give to our other less fortunate teammates who really didn't have that much.” Whether it be shoes or clothes, Jennings gifted it all to those who needed it more, despite his own struggles. Jennings’s father committed suicide before his tenth birthday, leaving his mother, Alice Knox, to care for him and his half-brother Terrence on her own. According to Jennings, the trio lived in four or five different homes around Los Angeles, which only strengthened their bond. Knox attended every game and tournament, while Terrence would take part as a ball boy. But Jennings, seeking tougher competition and an experience away from home, would live without his family for the first time when he transferred to Oak Hill Academy — a secondary school in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia — following his sophomore year. Upon his transfer, Jennings heard murmurs that he would return to California because the competition would be too much. At first, it took some time for Jennings to adjust to his new surroundings. During the first months after his transfer Jennings felt homesick, and had to sit out a game after lollygagging through a practice in his junior year. But once basketball season
picked up, Jennings got comfortable. He began waking up at 6 a.m. every day to practice before class, even mornings after a long road trip. “His thing was proving them wrong,” Quinton Watkins, a teammate of Jennings’s at Dominguez and on the AAU circuit, said. “I never played with a guy that had that kind of heart… If you were talking trash, he'd be like, 'okay!' And he'd go out and bust you, all day long.” Oak Hill had graduated Jerry Stackhouse, Carmelo Anthony and Stephen Jackson among other notable NBA players, but Jennings created his own legacy. He averaged 15.2 points and 11.5 assists during his junior year, leading his team to a 40-1 record. He shared the court with guards Nolan Smith, who played three seasons in the NBA, and Alex Legion, who would play at Kentucky.
Once they graduated, the team was all Jennings’s, and he blossomed. In his senior season, Jennings averaged 35.5 points per game, including a 63point outburst, both school records. He was named the 2008 Naismith Prep Player of the Year. So much for succumbing to tougher opposition. “Wherever we went when we traveled the gym would be packed,” Bryan Meagher, an assistant coach at Oak Hill, said. “People just wanted to see Brandon play.” As his stardom grew exponentially, he remained grounded. He once received a shipment of 40 brand new pairs of sneakers, which he gave away to teammates and random students passing by. He would call his mother whenever he could, and carried his competitive streak in everything from card games to softball. Jennings committed to the University of Arizona, but when members of its basketball staff stepped down, he was left without a clear path forward. Stuck awaiting his SAT scores, Jennings heard Sonny Vaccaro, a basketball sneaker mogul and major influencer of NBA-bound prospects, talking on the radio about the possibility of a high school player competing in Europe or another professional league for a year before
20
joining the NBA. This interested Jennings, who called Vaccaro, leading to a workout in Las Vegas. He impressed enough to get offers from coaches overseas, and decided to skip college to play a season for Pallacanestro Virtus Roma in Rome, Italy, earning $1.2 million dollars. “I got bashed,” Jennings said. “I kind of got a bad perception from it. I feel like because I did something different, people looked at me as 'oh he's one of those guys, he won't listen, he's going to do whatever he wants to do.'” The move was controversial. On a smaller scale, it reinvigorated the massive debate brought on by Kevin Garnett skipping college for the NBA in 1995, which sparked the prepto-pro generation. The weight of Jennings’s decision didn’t hit him at first. “Back then I was just like, fuck it I'm going to Rome,” Jennings said. “It didn't really sink in until later.” American columnists and fans thought he was greedy, dumb, big-headed or all three. European coaches thought he was too American on the court, lacking fundamentals and looking to score for himself too much. He was being squeezed from both sides, but didn’t look at the season as just a pit stop. “He was just like ‘I'm just coming here trying to win,’” Allan Ray, who played with Jennings in Italy, said. “He's like ‘I know y'all guys [have] been here, been playing, I'm trying to learn from y'all and I'm just trying to do whatever I can do to help the team win.' That was his attitude.” His discipline was tested immediately. Head coach Jasmin Repesa would berate Jennings and kick him out of practice. Jennings often wouldn’t get paid on time. He started in just 18 out of his team’s 43 games, averaging 18 minutes a night, all while adjusting to living on a new continent. He became frustrated and had thoughts of leaving, but the team’s veterans and his family helped keep Jennings composed. “There were some times that he really wasn't playing that much,” Ray said. “He never complained about it or lost focus. He just always stayed the same way all the time, never let anything bother him and I think that was partly because his mother and his
keep him sane.” Jennings’s mother and half-brother lived with him during his season in Italy. Knox would routinely cook for Jennings’s American teammates and drive him to Virtus Roma’s two daily practices. With the backing of his support system, Jennings powered through. Off the court, he remained magnanimous, donating $50,000 to a relief fund for an earthquake that rocked central Italy. On the court, he began looking at practice as his means of measuring up to pros in the face of sporadic playing time. “He became more mature,” Ray said. “You go to college, you're playing against college guys. Playing overseas, he was playing against some professionals… I definitely think he matured as a player from the time he got here, just playing against bigger and older guys.”
“I heard a lot of stories about him before he got there,” Sampson said. “An AAU player, a little bit wild, shot selection. You hear it all.” It didn’t take long for Jennings to convince Sampson of his work ethic, love of the game and character. The two lived in the same apartment complex, and Jennings would often invite Sampson over for dinner or ask him to go work out. One particular instance stood out to Sampson: when Jennings texted him wanting to practice on the night of his 20th birthday. “He didn't come in there as a know-
it-all or act like he was some kind of boy king,” Sampson said. “Brandon did a great job of listening.”
The hard work paid off for Jennings, who had to shake off doubts about his game and personality. The latter would take time, but he quickly put the former to bed. In As the NBA Draft arrived, that maturity Jennings’s seventh NBA game, he scored 55 came into question. Jennings had survived the rigors of Italian ball, but found himself in points on 21-34 shooting from the field and 7-8 shooting from deep against the Golden headlines after calling Ricky Rubio — the State Warriors and a point guard named draft’s prized point guard prospect — “all Stephen Curry. The double-nickel tied a hype” in front of reporters. Bucks rookie record held by Kareem AbdulJabbar, and the performance overshadowed “Yeah, definitely regrets,” Jennings Curry, who was selected three spots ahead of said. “I was in the competitive spirit. I Jennings.
was hungry. I was angry. A lot of things were going through my head because I didn't play [in Italy] all year.”
“A lot of veterans don't know who these rookies are,” Sampson said. “But when he scored 55? That's when he got on everybody's scouting report, and everybody started guarding him different. People talked to him The Milwaukee Bucks sought a point guard, and after Jennings outperformed Ty Lawson, different.” Jeff Teague and other prospects in workouts, The questions of whether he belonged in the they selected him tenth overall. Soon after, NBA and whether his detour to Europe was Jennings was caught cursing out the Knicks worth it were put to rest. Jennings was named for passing on him in a phone conversation to the All-Rookie First Team with averages of with rapper Joe Budden. Unbeknownst to 17.1 points and 6.3 assists. Milwaukee made Jennings, Budden had the point guard on the playoffs for the first time after a threespeakerphone while live streaming online. year drought. His flashy style of play and He was back on the bad side of fans and the shot output still skewed his image to some, media. but those close to him knew better. “That was another step to where people were like, ‘this guy, he doesn’t get it, he’s just an asshole,’” Jennings said. Bucks assistant coach Kelvin Sampson was not ignorant to the criticism surrounding Jennings.
Sampson was doing film work one night when he peered over into the gym and found Jennings playing pick-up with 15-20 teenagers. “Brandon, who are these guys?” Sampson asked.
21
asked.
first season as a Piston in 2013-14.
“They’re just hoopers man,” Jennings responded. “We’re just hooping.”
“He wanted to be good,” Bibby said. “He didn't come in saying 'I know everything. I'm Brandon Jennings and I know everything.' Never said anything like that. He was like this little young sponge who wanted to soak up everything he could.”
This wasn’t a one-time occurrence. Jennings would often scrimmage with local high school and college players.
“When he got traded from Milwaukee to Detroit, I'm sure that broke a lot of kids' hearts because it's a big deal for those kids to play with an NBA player,” Sampson said. “But Brandon never looked at it like that, he just loved to play.”
The following year, Jennings was at his most efficient scoring the basketball and recorded a career-high assist rate despite an entirely new coaching staff. But it wouldn’t last, as he went down with an Achilles’ tear midway through the season.
After four seasons with the Bucks, Jennings was shipped to the Pistons having only led Milwaukee to the playoffs twice. His reputation preceded him.
“It happened when I was playing the best basketball of my career,” Jennings said. “Me not being able to play basketball all summer is kind of like, 'so what do I do now?'”
“I didn't know him until he got to Detroit, and I just thought that the kid was an asshole the way he played on the court,” Henry Bibby, an assistant coach with the Pistons, said. “This is on the outside looking in, so I guess you can't judge a book by its cover. After seeing him everyday, and seeing that professional attitude that he brought in, I respect him more than ever… He is one of the nicest gentlemen I've ever met in the NBA. One of the most respectful basketball players I've met in the NBA.”
Jennings returned to action this season after months of rehab, and slowly regained his footing before getting traded once again, this time to the Orlando Magic. Jennings now looks toward free agency, where he says he wants to sign with a team that believes in him, that doesn’t doubt he can return to his pre-injury self. Thinking the injury would rob him of his athletic prime or stop him from trying to confound expectations would be the latest of a long list of mistaken perceptions.
Jennings’s production never fluctuated much in Milwaukee. He was that shoot-first point guard that certainly belonged, but whose ceiling looked less and less promising over time.
“Whatever happens in my career is gonna happen,” Jennings said. “As long as I go out there, give my all every night and just get the respect from my peers, that’s enough for me.”
“Brandon's been to the playoffs but he hasn't won a playoffs series, and when that happens you get the misconception that you're not a winning player, or that you don't play winning basketball,” Sampson said. Jennings was set financially and could realistically sleepwalk through the rest of his career, but he wasn’t satisfied. He formed a bond with head coach Maurice Cheeks, who played point guard in the league for 15 years as a defender and floor general. The two would spend four-hour film room sessions together, to which Jennings would never complain. The results were evident. Jennings averaged a career-high in assists during his
22
