Brandon Jennings New Under Armour Commercial

Ricky Rubio (left) and Brandon Jennings

I found this Brandon Jennings' Under Armour commercial at dimemag.com (which I put a link to on the left). Jennings was made the 10th overall pick in June's NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, but he turned heads much earlier than that when he became the most highly touted and recruited high school basketball player to play overseas for a year instead of going to college. He didn't have a great year playing in Rome (stats: 27 games, 5.5 points, 1.6 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 1.5 steals in 17.0 minutes per game) but he can't be too upset with the result (10th overall pick? millions of guaranteed dollars?).

This brings up the obvious issue of whether the NBA's age limit is driving talented high school players who want to play professionally right away into playing in Europe instead of college (Jeremy Tyler recently decided to skip his senior season of high school to play in Israel). But for me, following Jennings' career up until this point and in the future is much more personal.

Jennings is a SoCal guy, like me. Much to everyone's surprise I'm sure, I didn't grow up in Compton so I didn't play at Compton Dominguez High School (high school that produced Tyson Chandler and Tayshaun Prince) like Jennings (and probably wouldn't if you paid me), but I did play his squad on multiple occasions in high school. I know I've told many people this story because, well, it is truthfully one of the most memorable moments of my high school basketball career (other than briefly injuring OJ Mayo's leg on a breakaway dunk...seriously), but while the chances Brandon Jennings remembers the following encounter are terrible at best, I consider Jennings one of my sworn basketball enemies. Hilarious, I know, but if you know my game, you know, that like most white guys blessed with average athleticism, I need to get an edge somehow and get under some people's skin on the court...I'm not an asshole, it's just how it is. One of those guys happened to be Brandon Jennings.

In a high school summer league game, Compton Dominguez's entire high school team entered what was supposed to be a club showcase in front of college coaches. Something fishy about that right? Anyway, my team, to be honest, sucked, at least in comparison to Dominguez who boasted at least 7 high D1 players on their team. One of them was Patrick Cristopher, who is now a senior at Cal. Within the first 5 minutes of the game, Cristopher had a breakaway. Now, in club games, it's usually frowned upon to give hard fouls...everyone's just trying to play well for recruiters, no one wants to get hurt, and the atmosphere is a little more laid back, so some of the conventional rules of basketball (like don't give up a free layup without giving a hard foul) don't apply. Despite all of that, I knew we were huge underdogs to the guys from Dominguez so I wanted to show we, or at least I, was there to play and not intimidated by them (even though I might have been a little indimidated by their hometown). So I chased Cristopher down from behind and as he was about to try to do a ridiculous 360 windmill tomahawk blindfold ala Cedric Ceballos dunk, I wrapped him up and gave him a pretty good foul. No flagrant, just a good clean foul.

Then out of leftfield (literally from nowhere near the play) Brandon Jennings comes running in to defend his boy and pushes me and starts chirping in my face. I don't blame him for coming to the aid of his pal, but he said some pretty ridiculous things to me like "Ima hit you so hard blah blah blah" and the classic "Ima **** you up white boy". Alright Brandon. I tried to reason with the little guy saying something along the lines of, "Just shut up and walk away dude (I call everyone dude), it's part of the game", but he kept barking until the ref showed up and told him to knock it off. In reality, it wasn't anything except a little trash talk, but he was so out of line (this whole time I think Christopher was just laughing and getting ready to shoot his free throws) that I felt obligated to consider Brandon Jennings my mortal enemy from that point on.

Even though he is my enemy, and he has proven himself to be a supremely cocky guy since he got back to the US (he's already bashed Ricky Rubio to reporters and been caught on tape discussing with rapper Joe Budden about how he should be given the the Bucks starting PG over Ramon Sessions) this Under Armour commercial is pretty legit and makes me respect him a little bit more (even if all the working hard while your opponent rests stuff is BS). Here's the commercial...