Two weeks into his NBA career, Brandon Jennings scored 55 points in a game. He did it while shooting 21-for-34 from the field, while frequently being guarded by fellow rookie point guard Stephen Curry, while leading the upstart Milwaukee Bucks to a victory and a 5-2 start to their season.

The 2009-10 Bucks won 46 games, 12 more than the year before. Andrew Bogut’s renewed healthy was a huge factor, but Jennings was the visible face of change. This skinny kid from Compton had spent a year barely playing in Italy before being drafted 10th overall, and he finished third in Rookie of the Year voting. He was 20 years old, charismatic, talented and playing with a serious chip on his shoulder.

After eight seasons and $40 million earned, Jennings’ time in the NBA may be over. He told The Undefeated that he is signing a one-year deal to play in China, with the hope that he can return to the NBA after that. Maybe he can, but as we’ve seen with Stephon Marbury, Gilbert Arenas and Steve Francis, making this cross-Pacific leap doesn’t always come with a return trip, as it did for Michael Beasley.

Jennings has played for four teams the past two seasons — though he had his moments — since tearing his Achilles tendon in 2015. The most painful part? He was playing the best basketball of his career immediately before the injury: He had led the Detroit Pistons on a 12-4 run while averaging 19.8 points, 7.0 assists and 1.3 steals a game and shooting 43.9% from the field and 39.4% on 3s. It’s the type of run that even inspired YouTube mixtapes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8LY2xznyGI

Achilles injuries are devastating. CBS Sports’ Chris Towers wrote about them in 2015, when Jennings was one of several players to tear his tendon. The basic theme was that even a young player will really struggle to return to form after one. Ask former Jennings teammate Jonas Jerebko, who tore his Achilles after his rookie season at age 23 and really never caught back up in what could have been a promising career.

But Jennings’ hurt in a deeper way. He had been poorly managed for most of his NBA career, spending his first three-and-a-half years allowed to do whatever he wanted on offense for defensive-minded coach Scott Skiles. That led to frustrating inconsistency and gruesome shooting percentages. The trade to the Pistons was a fresh start, except the team was going through its own upheaval in his first year.

Enter Stan Van Gundy, the one coach who seemed to properly realize how to build around a talent like Jennings. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was coming into his own as a defender, which helped Jennings in the same way Klay Thompson has helped Curry. Center Andre Drummond, then 21, had arguably the best season of his five-year career, and Jennings’ play in December and January was making up for an early-season slide and positioning the Pistons into dark-horse playoff candidacy. The Achilles tear happened on Jan. 24, 2015, in a loss to the Bucks.

But even that version of Jennings, the best one we saw in the NBA, failed to fully evoke what many basketball lifers saw in him early on. It’s hard to forget his performance at the 2008 Jordan Brand Classic. Jennings put up an event-record 14 assists in a 124-114 victory where something happened seemingly every time he touched the ball.

Jennings was damn cool. The flat-top, the ridiculous passes and dunks, the “Doobie Doo” nickname, the Compton roots. He was a superstar personality, and he had the talent, too.

That Jordan Brand Classic performance came while Jennings was matched up against Class of 2008 rival Kemba Walker, who went to Connecticut. Walker is now an All-Star for the Charlotte Hornets, but consider this: Through the first four seasons of each of their NBA careers, Jennings was the better player. He simply never had the health, coaching and support that Walker has.

(Stunning context for Jennings’ age and development: JaMychal Green also was a five-star recruit in 2008. The now-Grizzlies forward made his NBA debut a week before Jennings blew out his Achilles.)

As of the Jordan Classic, Jennings had yet to announce that he would not be attending Arizona and instead heading over to Italy. When he did, the decision rocked the college basketball world, which inspired many to wonder if the entire system might change until he sent back a warning to those considering the overseas route.

Jennings was a tastemaker in the truest sense. He was a person who mattered in the basketball world, a player whose potentially seemed limitless simply because of his swagger. Now he’s headed to China. Brandon Jennings is 27 years old.