This is a big year for Brandon Jennings, and the Milwaukee Bucks point guard knows it.
After making the playoffs (and a quick first-round exit) during his 2009-10 rookie season, Jennings’ Bucks have turned in two straight sub-.500 campaigns, as the combination of injuries and lackluster offensive production have kept coach Scott Skiles’ team on the outskirts of Eastern Conference postseason contention. With the Bucks in a late-season fight for a playoff berth last year, general manager John Hammond made a somewhat controversial move, shipping oft-injured franchise centerpiece Andrew Bogut and shot-happy swingman Stephen Jackson to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for scoring off-guard Monta Ellis, sophomore big man Ekpe Udoh and the immortal Kwame Brown.
The move was intended to give Skiles some added firepower as the Bucks looked to vault past the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers into the seventh or eighth spot in the East, but while Milwaukee went 12-9 in 21 games after importing Ellis, the Bucks again found themselves on the outside looking in come playoff time. Now, less than two months before players report to training camp for the 2012-13 season, the Bucks find themselves again faced with the question raised by many at the time of the trade: Can Jennings and Ellis, two explosive but small guards who both need the ball to succeed, fit together well enough to push Milwaukee back into the postseason?
Jennings, for his part, seems eager to prove the doubters wrong. From Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel :
“I really want it to work just personally, because everybody is doubting it,” Jennings said in an interview at his youth basketball camp at Homestead High School on Sunday.
“With everybody doubting it, I think it’s important that me and him, we just work together to show everybody it can work.
“Everybody knows we both can score like crazy. But I think everybody thinks we can’t win together. That’s going to be one of our biggest challenges. I’m up for it and I know he is.”
It’s cool that Jennings and Ellis are up for a challenge, because a look at the statistical profile the two put together after Ellis came to Wisconsin suggest that it’s definitely going to be one.
Aug 202012