Throughout Brandon Jennings’ outstanding debut season in the NBA, the first reaction among American audiences was one of high surprise enough to raise the question “Why was this guy drafted so low?”
After letting the B.J. effect sink in and watching the Milwaukee Bucks inexorable rise to contending playoff team, the question – especially as posed to BallinEurope – morphed into “How much did playing in Europe help this guy?”
Today, thanks to an interview with the former Lottomatica Roma player over at NBA Fanhouse, we get the answer right from the horse’s mouth. When prompted to “talk about your experience in Italy,” Jennings replies immediately:
As BallinEurope closes the book on the 2009-10 basketball season, it’s time to take stock of the year that was with the clarity of history. Without further ado, let’s retrospect on the top 10 Eurocentric basketball stories of the season.
Though not quite completely settled yet, most devotees have a pretty good idea of the pool for this year’s suddenly distinctly non-European flavored 2010 NBA Draft. BallinEurope’s man in the U.K., Sam Chadwick, revisits the official BallinEurope NBA Mock Draft once again with updated prognostications for the first 15 choices in round one. 
Fans of European basketball can take great pride in the achievements of its players recent to the NBA. Going into 2009-10, ten players from The Continent were entering their first or second season in the big league; throwing in Brandon Jennings (who BallinEurope will go down forever as believing that the youngster’s lone season with Lottomatica Roma was absolutely essential to his overwhelmingly on-the-face-of-it rookie year with the Milwaukee Bucks) and Ersan Ilyasova 2.0 (really, we can forgive/forget the mistakes of a 19-year-old and his overenthusiastic agent, can’t we?) gives us an even dozen or one active NBA roster.
It’s not that BallinEurope is obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota, but … all right, i am obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota. Still, when BiE finally got around to reading this week’s patented “Mailbag” column only to see no. 1 best-selling author The Sports Guy take an incorrect swipe at the poster boy for European basketball’s future on the international stage, well, BiE had to come to the defense of Rubio, especially since the sparring partner in this debate will never actually see this column, heh heh.
parallel universe (n.): A universe or space-time continuum that exists alongside ours, and which may possess different physical laws or a different history. 
