Brandon Jennings's floater is a gorgeous, arcing, wisp of a shot; it darts just through and over a mess of limbs on its way up before dropping clean through the net, occasionally flying high enough to kiss off the top of the glass before coming back down. It's a perfect shot. There's nothing exactly like it in the league—not Tony Parker's sorta straight-up little number, or Chris Paul okie-doking big men into tying to jump for a ball he just looped over the scoreboard, or whatever hybrid, falling-down junk Derrick Rose throws up that always seem to fall. What makes it so perfect is that there's so little to it. He slides past his man (always left) toward the block, knifes the ball up in a motion that barely looks like he's shooting, and slides back out of the frame before it drops through. Sure, sometimes it lands a foot and a half off-target, and at times the rest of Jennings's offense looked a little closer to John Starks's than you'd feel polite telling him, but damn if that isn't one of the prettiest things in the NBA. And last night, it turned for just about the first time this season.


You can see what happened for yourself in the video up top. Jennings hit four of them while scoring 34 against the Raptors, taking the Pistons to 9-1 after cutting Josh Smith. We can talk about just what the hell is going on with the Pistons since Smoove left town some other time—and that's going to begin with what anyone's going to do with Andre Drummond now that he's unleashed, and exactly how exactly Greg Monroe, who moves around the defensive end like he's got a loaded diaper, has turned into such a monster, and Brandon really has been a whole heap better since the move—but let's make this one about Jennings.

He's having a strong year, but most of his killings have come on the back of his jumper; his percentages haven't really budged, but Jennings has lopped off a pull-up attempt per game (down from 7.4 to 6.4 per game) at his 35-ish percent rate, which helps. His turnovers are down, assists and shooting are up just slightly, and he's taking better shots; simple, really. But you've also got to be tighter-assed than St. Peter on a mule to watch Brandon Jennings games to see if he's going to keep his turnovers down.


Look, I don't want to be the guy telling you to watch more Pistons games; that's something you're going to have to come to on your own. What I can say is that if you dig the highlights above, Jennings and the Pistons are playing well enough that you can catch him in action without foregone knowledge that the rest of the game will drop anchor on any joy you'd find in a couple floaters. Anyway, for some background reading, you can catch a few here, at the 0:30, 3:30, and 4:05 marks of the video below—from the 2012-13 Bucks season, which happens to be my favorite Jennings vintage, him and Monta Ellis fucking around like they were going to be something, and then making the playoffs—or through NBA.com's shooting stats page (click on the linked makes or attempts numbers under Floating Jump Shots).