In an incredible and unprecedented move, Brandon Jennings has decided to skip college to go play a year of professional ball overseas in Europe. In case you’re unfamiliar with Jennings, he’s the top rated point guard in the country, and he had committed to Arizona. Unfortunately for Arizona, Jennings recognized that his future is as a basketball player and not a scholar, so won’t be around to help their team. While Arizona certainly didn’t want to lose Jennings, they’re at least lucky to have Chase Buddinger back next year who originally declared for the draft. Still, losing Jennings hurts — remember what Rose did with Memphis? Exactly.
So what kind of flood gates will this open up? I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen now. I bet plenty of other 18-year-old talents would have preferred to play a year of pro ball elsewhere instead of going to college, but I’m guessing most hadn’t even thought of it. I’ll admit the idea never even occurred to me until I first read about it. While I do have to say that I’ll miss not having one of the better American players playing at one of our colleges, I don’t think Jennings is making a bad move. I also have to say that this does help keep integrity in the college game instead of having another jock mock the student-athlete system. I really wonder how many other players in the future will follow Jennings’ lead and whether or not the NBA will try to amend their rule to curb the exodus. Mostly though, I’m just going to miss not seeing that hair for an entire year. Does it get any better than Jennings rocking the Kid hi-top fade? I think not.
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I AM A HUGE ARIZONA WILDCATS FAN AND ALL I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS IS **** YOU BRANDON JENNINGS. I HOPE THAT YOU FALL INTO THE 2ND ROUND OR GO UNDRAFTED. GOOD LUCK FINDING SOMEONE TO PAY AN UNTESTED HIGH SCHOOLER THE HALF MILLION YOUR LOOKING FOR.. YOU SIR (MR JENNINGS) HAVE NO INTEGRITY WHAT SO EVER! BE A MAN OF YOUR WORD AND PLAY FOR LUTE OLSON. I GUESS YOUR SHOULD HAS LISTENED TO FORMER WILDCAT AND CURRENT EURO LEAGUER JOE BLAIR WHEN HE TOOK YOU TO TASK ON EVEN CONSIDERING THIS MOVE.
Gotta love U of A wallowing in mediocrity. Just how it should be. That’s what Lute gets for recruiting sketchy kids. My guess is he knew he would never pass the SAT so he announced that he was leaving to avoid embarrassing himself. If you look at his high school bio he says his favorite class is lunch (and he probably barely passed that with a C-).
Good riddance mildcats….the only thing you are good for is bringing down the academic integrity of the PAC 10 (along with w/U$C).
The NBA would likely not have to amend it’s rules to stop this because many leagues overseas have limits on how many American players you can have on a team.
There will be a trickle but I can’t see a flood
He said his favorite class is lunch? That’s awesome, lol. When was that class, right after nap time?
that dude could not qualify to enter school. Lord knows U of A has easy requirements but even his were too low.
There’s no time to be sad. This is America’s best chance of exporting the Kid N’ Play haircut to Europe since Dominique went to Greece.
THE DRIVER,
ARE YOU A SCUM DEVIL?????????????
[...] extremely confident that the European game won’t threaten the health of the NBA. Sure Brandon Jennings electing to play pro ball in Italy instead of going to college at Arizona was a major turning point, and Josh Childress [...]
[...] been a ton of crazy stuff going on lately with basketball players going European. We had Brandon Jennings spurn Arizona for Europe, Josh Childress go Greek, LeBron say he’d consider Europe, and Kobe say the same [...]