Editor's Note: Before Brandon Jennings dropped an unworldly 55 POINTS against the Warriors last night, our buddy Rich was scouting him out in the summer leagues. Check out his always razor sharp thoughts and analysis below on young Bucks Jennings and the second year pro with Taiwanese roots.

-- Atma Brother #1

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NOTE: This post also appears on my blog, Poor Man's Commish, here.

Since the Warriors are playing the Milwaukee Bucks for the first time tonight, I thought I'd share some of the scouting reports I had for Brandon Jennings and Joe Alexander from NBA Summer League '09.

BRANDON JENNINGS:

The first thing you'll notice about Jennings is that he's small and skinny by NBA standards. However, he also happens to be lightning quick, plus he's left-handed. It takes defenders awhile to adjust to left-handers, so it's no surprise to me that he's making as big a splash in the NBA the past few weeks as he is.

Let's say you're right-handed, as the majority of us are. If you are guarding a left-handed player, especially someone as explosive as Jennings, Jennings is probably going to attack you with a left-handed dribble drive. This means that you must plant off your weak leg, your left leg, to stay in front of him. Not as easy to do for us right-handers.

I don't think any Warrior is going to be able to contain Jennings tonight, especially since none of the Warrior guards are left-handed. He's just too super, super quick. In my live-tweet of his Summer League games, I noticed he had a scar running downward on one of calves. Probably because he's bionic!

During Summer League, Jennings had the uncanny ability to get the ball to a teammate right under the hoop.  I don't know if it was because Summer League has poor interior defense, but the recipients of his passes got the ball right there, ready for a layup. No other point guard was quite doing that.

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The Warriors face the Minnesota Timberwolves for the first time this season tonight, so I thought I'd share my notes and observations from Vegas Summer "Glimpse" 2009, especially with the GoldenStateOfMind.com community, where I've been posting for three years (GSoM permalink), and since the Warriors often play defense like a Summer League team!

Note: Vegas Summer League is a complete misnomer. It's not a league. In a league, you have round-robin games that make sense and where you care who wins, you have playoffs, and you have a championship. Therefore, I call it Summer Glimpse.

Each year, new guys you didn't have time to watch in their college stints, or you never heard of from overseas, will turn heads in the Glimpse. In 2007, it was Marco Belinelli ('07 NBA Draft pick #18), which he followed up with two totally forgettable regular seasons including a drop-off-a-cliff Summer Glimpse '08 in between, although playing for the Warriors and a coach who plays mind games can probably do that to a young prospect.

In 2008, it was Jerryd Bayless ('08 #11), who will eventually break out in an NBA regular season, as soon as someone gives him playing time.

In Glimpse '09, only three months ago, it was...well, Blake Griffin ('09 #1), but you already knew that. The surprise glimpse had to be Jonny Flynn ('09 #6). Very similar to Bayless, during Glimpse '09 Flynn surgically dismantled whomever was guarding him. I was also satisfied by the play of Flynn's fellow Minnesota Timberwolves rookie, shooting guard Wayne Ellington ('09 #28).

Incidentally, I was impressed by Tyreke Evans ('09 #4) as well, albeit not as much as Flynn, but yesterday I was running 54 games in Dream League, so I didn't have time to blog about it. And I certainly don't have as much to rave about 'Reke as I do Flynn. Still, I'll save that and a glimpse of Spencer Hawes ('07 #10, yikes) from 2007, plus a quickie glimpse of Omri Casspi ('09 #23), for a separate "post-mortem post" (considering that the Warriors got blown out by the Kings last night), later today or tomorrow.

Hey folks, I posted this to our league participants, but only got one response. If you're free and in the SF area (Potrero Hill district to be exact), please let me know by leaving a comment or going to my original post below, which has more contact info.

They are looking for "ballers" (you don't have to be a good bball player, you just have to wear the garb) with the following ethnicities: Latino, Caucasian, or African-American. Need 2 more guys asap.

It starts at 12p but might start a little late. Probably ends at 3p. Again, in SF.

Here's some more detail from the producer...

It is a spec commercial for Doritos. It is about a 70 year old asian lady that eats Doritos and schools all of the young guys at pick up basketball. It is very important that everyone wear dull colors like grey, brown, black, white and that they have clothing that doesn’t have brand names and logos on it.

For the original post, click here.

via dreamleague.org

I see that this was posted in a previous FanShot from GSoM'er Precise Film Productions a few days ago, but I thought I'd do a little clipping and bring it out front and center in a FanPost.

Giving credit where credit's due, it's from Kurt Snibbe of ESPN.com in his Page 2's new and improved NBA logos article. Pretty funny!

There's also more "improved" logos that are kinda clever too. I especially like the Minnesota Timberwolves one paying homage to the (ex-?)bespectacled Kurt Rambis.

Dear GSoM community,

I know that Fantasy Junkie and Atma Brother ONE have been Twitter-averse in the past, but I actually got their permission to try and see if we can find new value out of live-tweeting. I thought doing this from their very own Row 8 season tickets would be the perfect setting to do this.

I'm no expert on Twitter, but I do think there is more to it than when Atma says, "The world dumbed down to 140 characters." (haha! Maybe true, but...?) On the flipside, I think it could actually enhance your real-time game experience.

Now, for those of you who are avid Game Thread commenters, I'm not sure that Twitter adds a whole lot of value to what you're already doing except if the guy who is tweeting is actually at the game vs also watching the game on TV, but remember what you're doing: you're typing on a computer while watching the game on TV, or online, or radio, or similar. It's great that GSoM will get like 2,000 comments tomorrow night, but I don't know, I tend to think that Game Thread commenters are actually a minority of all GSoM'ers, and 500+ will already be at the game.

I know that there's http://mobile.goldenstateofmind.com, but I just think commenting on any website using my smartphone is just kind of clunky. For me, I'd need to make sure I'm tapping the right place on my smartphone browser -- just too much work. The Twitter way of sending a text message is a lot easier.

I'd like to find out how the community feels about this, but first let me explain Twitter in the easiest way possible, at least as I know it (after the jump!)...

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I've been live-tweeting from Vegas for the past 3 days (today is my last day) and here are my favorite observations...

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  • Blake Griffin is as good as advertised and should be a regular contributor highlight-wise to ESPN SportsCenter this season. I feel blessed to have seen his monster dunk putbacks and alley-oops up close from Row 2 the other day. If that was the only game I saw all week, it would have been worth the trip to Vegas alone. One of my tweets was this: If he works on his full-court end-to-end dribbling, we may be looking at a 6'10" version of young Charles Barkley. CLIPPERS VS WIZARDS TODAY AT 5:30PM, WOOHOO!!
  • Jonny Flynn is my favorite draft pick. He's like my last summer's report on Jerryd Bayless: he can penetrate into the paint anytime he wants. He's fun to watch. He's having fun playing. He (and Bayless) epitomizes the reason why I come to NBA Summer League every year -- that diamond in the rough. I'll definitely do a more detailed analysis of his game, but I already tweeted (you have to hunt for them) the various incredible moves he made.
  • Watching Anthony Morrow drop 47 was a treat. GSW starters beware. If Morrow can avoid a "Belinelli" (heretofore basketball's equivalent of a Mulligan) and play with the same confidence in the Association, the franchise better be prepared to sign him for big money very soon. Alas, I missed Anthony Randolph's 42, as I arrived in Vegas the day after, but I'm sure that was well-reported here on GSOM.
  • Austin Daye is not bad, not bad at all. Hella skinny and I mean HELLA. But kid has got some moves to be envious of. He's the ying to Anthony Randolph's yang in the world of skinny 6'11" guys who got skillz. Daye's worth a blogpost.
  • Joe Alexander will become a solid player, but it's too bad Milwaukee spent a lottery pick on him. I'll look at the list and see which players they should've picked ahead of him. But again, he's pretty solid. I'll write on him too.
  • Intriguing: Jonas Jerebko, Jodie Meeks, Chase Budinger, Coby Karl, Omri Casspi (barely), Brandon Jennings, DaJuan Summers, Wayne Ellington, Tyreke Evans (although his stock gets trumped by Jonny Flynn). I might be forgetting a player or two more here.
  • Meh: Jordan Hill, Jason Thompson (GSOM collective sighs of relief!), Jeff Pendergraph. Again, I'm probably forgetting a few more here.
  • Ex-Warriors playing well, but not necessarily getting playing time nor making a huge splash: Richard Hendrix, DeMarcus Nelson.
  • Disappointments: Hasheem Thabeet, Acie Law (sorry!), Andray Blatche, Dominic McGuire, Danny Green, and, dare I say: Stephen Curry.
  • So to top it off: I'm a little concerned with Stephen Curry. I'll write about this in another summary post.

Remember, these are just some thoughts off the top of my head from the past 3 days. I'll also try to make a team-by-team list. Still another full day of action, so I'm out! Feel free to comment below if you have specific questions on various players (listed or not listed).

NOTE ON TWITTER: I'm sensing that most of you don't know about Twitter's ability to get you info realtime by connecting to your cellphone for text messages. So after you sign up, setup your account so that "tweets" get sent to your cellphone realtime, then "follow" @poormanscommish. Then as things are happening at NBA Summer League and I type those on my smartphone into my twitter account, you will be texted these updates in realtime.

UPDATE: Twitter stream from Saturday's, Friday's and Thursday's games (including Anthony Morrow's incredible game) have been posted below. Most intriguing player of my 3 days thus far has been Jonny Flynn.

I plan to do a full analysis of Jonny Flynn, Joe Alexander, maybe Brandon Jennings, maybe Blake Griffin, and summarize the Warriors' summBer league squad overall (with the exception of Anthony Randolph, which I think we don't need to talk about anymore)...

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Hey folks, for the 3rd straight year, I'm happy and thankful for GSOM providing a platform for my coverage of NBA Summer League in Vegas. You can search on "dreamleague" in GSOM's archives (and click on my FanPosts for a list of previous Summer League info), or just click on this convenient URL for my coverage the past two years...

http://www.goldenstateofmind.com/search?btn=Go&order=date&q=dreamleague&type=FanPost

It's kind of hard to believe that Twitter wasn't even mainstream last summer, but thanks to this wonderful technology (well, except for archiving as you'll see below), I'm able to give you guys some live-tweeting this year. My twitter account is @poormanscommish.

http://twitter.com/poormanscommish

PLEASE VOTE IN THE POLL BELOW IF YOU LIKE MY LIVE-TWEETING BETTER THAN TRUEHOOP'S DAVID THORPE...SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST (OR HIT CTRL-END)!

I've already posted a ton of tweets from yesterday's (Wed July 15) action! Hit the jump to see it copy/pasted in this post...

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Sorry for the delay in summarizing my 3-day excursion to Summer League, in which I will list things out by team, for easier reading. There's also my analysis of DJ Strawberry and Dominic McGuire (links are below in the Phoenix and Washington sections, respectively).

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While compiling the notes for the New York Knicks for my forthcoming Summer League team-by-team summary, I noticed that the tidbits I had on the Knicks were all kind of quirky. Adidas grassroots power player Darren "Mats" Matsubara once told me that the NBA is like a circus. We got to talking because I run one of the bigger Asian American recreational leagues in the nation (I've also run Women's Leagues and Open Leagues). At the time, he told me that it is inevitable that we will see an American-born Asian in the NBA someday, because the NBA "is like a circus".

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I still have a man-crush on Dominic McGuire. Curiously, he's listed at 6'9" and last year's program had him listed at 6'8". I still think he's more 6'7-and-a-half with a long wingspan. So I wouldn't say he's a 4 so much as a 3, although he can cover 4s. Plus, on offense he plays more like a 3.

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