Basketball Times
December 2009
The basketball world is buzzing about Brandon Jennings and his spectacular NBA debut. Fifty-five points in his eighth career game. Only Wilt, Earl the Pearl and Rick Barry scored more points as a rookie. It’s even more fascinating given his nontraditional path to the NBA, which cast him as a lightning rod for everything that is either right or wrong with basketball in the United States.
Several writers ripped Brandon for his decision and everything he supposedly represented. Others (me included) applauded Brandon’s decision and thought Brandon would be well served going to Italy.
I thought he would be a good NBA player, but no one thought he’d be this good, this soon. Jennings already is one of the most fascinating guys to enter the League since probably LeBron James debuted in 2003.
Jennings’ journey to the NBA also serves as a great study in punditry and talent evaluation.
When Jennings decided to go to Europe rather than go the traditional collegiate route, several pundits offered their thoughts. Ordinarily, these predictions would be quickly forgotten. How easy would have been to indict the American-to-Europe approach had Brandon flopped?
Philip Tetlock, a Stanford research psychologist, recently wrote “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?,” a book that examines the business of predictions. He looked at 82,361 predictions by 284 experts. Are some people, perhaps because of intelligence and education, better able to see the future? The book’s conclusion: A resounding no. “The best predictor, in a backward sort of way, was fame: the more feted by the media, the worse a pundit’s accuracy.”
But pundits have a platform to say whatever they want, typically without much notice if they happen to be wrong.
When Brandon signed with Lottomatica Roma, basketball analyst and lawyer Len Elmore said Jennings “is neither a pioneer blazing a trail for other young men to follow nor a hero” and wrote him off as “simply another impressionable young man, susceptible to the hawkers and hangers-on who tell him what he wants to hear instead of what he needs to hear.” I am friends with Jennings’ alleged “hawkers and hangers-on” who filled his head with ... really good ideas.
Even respected Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim was unkind, saying “(Jennings is) only doing it because he’s desperate … I’m not even sure he’ll be that wanted in Europe. He’s a thin, little guard, and European basketball is pretty good these days. It’s not like he’s going to go over there and be a star.”
One pundit who got it right was ESPN’s Doug Gottlieb. He offered up a Nostradamus-like prediction, circa July 2008: “In the long run, (Brandon) might end up a lower-rated NBA prospect but a better player and more well-rounded, grounded person.” Spot on.
Let’s look at the 2009 NBA draft and why Jennings might have slipped to the Milwaukee Bucks, who selected him with the 10th pick.
Clarence Gaines, the former Chicago Bulls scout and son of legendary college basketball coach Clarence “Big House” Gaines, is my go-to guy for even-handed basketball analysis.
Here’s a sampling of what he said:
“Brandon Jennings appears to be the steal of the 2009 NBA draft. The question is why? When you’re in the draft room, it’s a lot different than analyzing it from afar and especially after the NBA season has started.
“Brandon’s off to a great start, but it’s still very early in his NBA career. After reading several articles and talking to a lot of people about Jennings, it’s obvious that NBA decision makers did not really understand this kid. He’s tougher, more determined and works harder than many believed. He’s also more talented – he’s a better shooter and a better scorer than scouts thought.
“But when it came down to drafting Brandon Jennings, there were some missing pieces in the evaluation process. ESPN’s Chad Ford wrote about poor workouts for teams and red flags on psychological evaluations. A lot of people underestimated Brandon Jennings as a basketball player and as a person. That’s what makes the evaluation process and the NBA draft so fascinating. A GM, not Jerry Krause, once told me that you have to separate basketball character from personal character. I used to confuse the two. The more time you can spend with a player, the better.
“We’re looking to uncover information to improve the odds of making the best pick possible. But it will always be huge leap from to go from college or from Europe to the NBA.
“Brandon was a high-risk pick. He didn’t put up numbers. There wasn’t much footage. There wasn’t much, if any, real hype. All he was doing was getting better. I wonder how many NBA teams scouted him in Italy. In the future, there’s no doubt NBA teams will devote more resources to scouting players who follow Brandon Jennings’s path.”
Drafting players out of college is not easy. Drafting them out of Europe is even more difficult. Earlier this year, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating piece in the New Yorker on predicting successful NFL quarterbacks based on their college performance.
Gladwell’s thesis: ”The problem with picking quarterbacks is that (a college quarterback’s) performance can’t be predicted. The job he’s being groomed for is so particular and specialized that there is no way to know who will succeed at it and who won’t. In fact, (there is) no connection between where a quarterback was taken in the draft – that is, how highly he was rated on the basis of his college performance – and how well he played in the pros.” NBA talent is probably easier to identify than NFL talent, but it’s far from an exact science, as we’ve learned with Jennings and so many players throughout basketball history.
In the end, we can debate the failures in the system that led Jennings to being drafted 10th by the Milwaukee Bucks. But, things happen for a reason. And it’s not where Jennings starts. It’s where he finishes. Just ask NBA stars such as Paul Pierce, Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, who were drafted 10, 13, 15, respectively. And if money matters (and it should), the NBA is about the second contract, not the first. As fans, we can all enjoy Jennings’s fantastic journey.
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what kind of character tests do these guys go thru? Character seems pretty consistent in all endeavors of your life;you can't really compartmentalize.
Jennings learned last year what he didn't know the year before--that you have to work your ass off,take initiative, and learn to create for teammates to play. Contrastingly,Iverson had no other offensive talent on a young immature GTown team with 18-22 year olds and had carte blanche to take every shot,play every minute, and drive at will past any opponent (so never had to learn the value of the mid range J)
Posted by: andy fine | December 04, 2009 at 03:30 PM