NBA Draft: Re-drafting the historic 2009 NBA Draft

It was easy to fall in love with Brandon Jennings’ game going into this draft. The dude could get by anyone he wanted and could use his springloaded leaping ability to gracefully finish around the rim. But even with that in mind, there was still plenty of reason for skepticism. Again, here’s ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla:

"The former high school All-American who opted for Europe after not gaining academic eligibility at Arizona has had a season of mixed results. In his first season as a professional, there was no denying his outstanding athletic ability and great speed in the open court. That excites a lot of NBA teams. But his weaknesses showed in Italy’s Lega A, where he displayed below-average outside shooting and the inability to run a team in the half-court offense."

NBADraft.net’s most recent scouting report on him basically arrives at the same conclusion, noting that teams would duck under screens and dare Jennings to beat them with his jumper if that area of his game didn’t improve.

So it should shock no one that Jennings struggled with consistency throughout his NBA career. He had some incredible scoring outbursts, but for every game where he dropped 50 points, there would be three games where he would miss 15 out of 20 shots.

It would be easy to say that Jennings was merely playing a version of basketball that was beginning to die out, but that would do a disservice to guys like DeMar DeRozan who have gotten the “high volume shooter” label attached to their name.

At least DeRozan has made a couple of NBA All-Star teams and gets to the free throw line. He’s the mid-range assassin, but no one’s seen him pass up a layup for a contested mid-range pull-up.

The Milwaukee Bucks chose to use the 10th pick on a guy like that. It would’ve made more sense in hindsight to take him later, as the Minnesota Timberwolves would’ve done here, and used him as a sixth man.