Box Score/Recap

“Generally if anybody’s guarding someone I stick with them.”

-         Scott Skiles (Late 2009)

I don’t think Scott Skiles benched Brandon Jennings for the fourth quarter and overtime of the Hawks game to teach him a lesson, or because his defense was bad or for any other reason than Luke Ridnour was playing better.  It’s too late in the season for Skiles to be sending messages or do anything other than try to get wins.

But Wednesday night, Brandon Jennings looked like he took something out of it.

Jennings spent much of the first two quarters playing an aggressive pressure defense that he has rarely shown off this year.  Jennings is remarkably quick, his change of direction reminds me of a number of nimble insects, but that hasn’t resulted in much when he’s decided to pick up full court.  Wednesday Jennings was jabbing at the ball handler the way a boxer would when feeling out an opponent.  The Wizards point guards were taking them like body blows, staggering but never falling down as they committed just one turnover in the first half, despite losing their respective grips on a few occasions.

But in the third quarter, the Wizards point guards and the rest of the team for that matter, they went down.  Hard.  Looking tired from the hounding Jennings had been placing on them, Randy Foye, Shaun Livingston and Earl Boykins combined for six third quarter turnovers, including the ever so rare eight second call.  The Wizards themselves turned the ball over 11 times in the third and saw an eight point halftime deficit turn into a 17 point mountain that they would be unable to climb.

This was not one of Jennings finer offensive performances, in fact it ranks right up there with any as his worst when you factor his six turnovers into his 2-12 shooting performance.  Jennings ability to limit turnovers has been his saving grace as his shots have continued to fly towards everything but the bottom of the hoop.  Jennings seemed down trodden in the locker room, even when I mentioned the rarity of a forced eight second call in the league.

“Yeah, I mean, my offense wasn’t going so I had to fall back on something else and just went to the defensive end,” said Jennings.  “I didn’t have a good offensive evening and I was just trying to put pressure on the defensive end tonight.”

Skiles, who was visibly upset with his team’s performance (he referred to the game as “a step back”) stuck with Jennings in this one.

“We’re trying to win a game; that’s what we’re trying to do,” Skiles said after the game.  “Obviously he hasn’t had much luck finding the basket, but he was trying to apply pressure, he had good active hands.  He has his moments like that, he’s trying to find other ways to help and he did a pretty good job tonight.” (more…)