In game four of the Bucks vs. Hawks series, Brandon Jennings show a variety of finishes on the way to scoring 23 points.
Being a point guard in the NBA, you are going to need a lots of different finishes to avoid getting your shot blocked. Steve Nash is a master of this. iHoops dedicated an entire article to this very thing, finishing.
As you’ll notice in the video clip, Jennings uses a mixture of floaters and runners to throw off the timing of shot-blockers.
For being such a young player, it is impressive the skill that Jennings has when it comes to finishing. What you may notice, however, is that in these clips, all of Jennings’ finishes come with the left-hand. Also there may be a tad bit of over-dribbling, although Jennings seems to make that style work for him.
Either way, let’s take a closer look:
All three of these finishes we’re going to examine came in the highly pressured second half. This first one comes late in the third quarter.
After coming back from a panned shot of the crowd, Jennings has the ball with his dribble already active. I’d like you to just count how many dribbles Jennings uses before finally releasing his shot (you don’t really have to count, I did for you, the answer is 21!). After 21 dribbles of defense probing, Jennings finally settles on the wing with an isolation against Hawks forward Marvin Williams. After a series of crossovers, Jennings is able to get a step on Williams going left and releases what I could best describe as a one-handed runner. What’s really amazing, is that he actually banked the shot in. If you take a look at the picture below:
The angle of Jennings’ body, plus his angle in regards to the back board make this an extremely difficult shot to bank. Add in the fact that Marvin Williams is there ready to swat the shot away and you’ll know why this is a pretty impressive finish.
Brandon’s next two finishes come in the fourth quarter. In the first one, Jennings get a chance isolated on the wing with a live dribble against Hawks forward Josh Smith. After nearly slipping and falling, Jennings maintains his dribble and goes across the middle of the lane with the ball in his left.
With shot-blockers Al Horford (in front to his left) and Josh Smith (behind him) Jennings disallows them to time his shot, by two ways. One he doesn’t take a normal path to the basket. At the point he is at in the picture, Jennings could continue going vertically towards the basket, but instead he is pulling up and leaping off two feet. He then uses a short, quick, floating finish, before either Horford or Smith could react.
Finally, in the third finish, Jennings again finds himself matched up against a bigger Hawks player, this time its Horford. He has him isolated at the top of the key and begins driving by him moving left. This finish is in my opinion the prettiest. Jennings again, to avoid the timing and shot-blocking of Horford and Smith, uses a running floater, which he swishes.
If nothing else, Jennings is showing young guards the importance of being able to finish creatively around the rim.
Let’s see those three live:
Justin DeFeo is a contributor to SirCharlesInCharge.com.
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