Dealing In

Fresh off the plane, right off the bat, I got to the hotel and was starstruck. Nemanja Bjelica was in the queue to check in. Sidy Cissoko was looking at his phone next to one of the in-house restaurants. Known gourmand, Death Cab for Cutie scholar, and open-denim-shirt enthusiast Rob Mahoney later told me that I am a sicko for recognizing Sidy. I told him it’s my business to know, and that I’m already feeling at home because summer league is the place where the sickos come to congregate. It’s the place where a Blake Hinson and Quincy Olivari heat-check duel breaks out. It’s the place where Miles Bridges can be seen roaming a casino floor in a jester hat (this really happened). It’s the place where a grown man can pump his fist in a Matt Maloney jersey and chino shorts … and the place where someone else will excitedly take a picture of him.

For those who’ve never been, there are two gyms at Las Vegas summer league: Cox Pavilion, which is smaller, and the Thomas & Mack Center, which is where UNLV plays. This place has some history. Team USA has held its tune-up games there for more than a decade. Kobe’s legendary hanging cross flambé of Antonio Daniels and posterization of Ben Wallace happened in this gym back in 1997. In this third–annual Vegas summer league diary, I will again bounce between these two gyms and write about what I saw with my own two eyes, boots on the ground. And before we get started, I’d also like to announce that I didn’t eat the chicken tenders at the arena this year. On to the action.

Thrown to the Wolves

Rob Dillingham, Minnesota Timberwolves
Terrence Shannon Jr, Minnesota Timberwolves
Jordan Hawkins, New Orleans Pelicans

Straight story here: The energy at this summer league was a notch below what we’ve seen in the past two or three years. It’s still a popular event; there’s likely no going back on that front. But there was a time—pre–Lonzo Ball, pre-Lakers fan summer hysteria—when you could sit in the front row without issue. The days of seeing a Kevin Durant make his debut in Cox Pavilion with patches of empty seats all around are over. For the first game of the day, I trekked up to the top to find an open spot. There was a line on the concourse that stretched probably 30 or 40 yards, and an usher in the bleacher aisle was signaling numbers to another usher at the door for how many people could enter.

That said, the star power was definitely down, and you could feel it in the chatter among media members. Someone asked me who I was excited to watch. I said a couple of names and paused, and then “I guess” became the preface for every other player I name.

Still, the first gotta-see-it matchup for me was Minnesota vs. New Orleans in Thomas & Mack. This one delivered some classic Vegas scenarios in one backcourt matchup: The Wolves’ Terrence Shannon Jr. (27th pick in 2024) and Rob Dillingham (eighth pick) are electric and kinetic scorers who I expected to be eager to make a splash in their debuts, while Pelicans sophomore Jordan Hawkins was likely to treat summer league as a lab in an effort to broaden his offerings after a rookie season that had started strong but fizzled into a routine of sparse minutes.

Hawkins confirmed this hypothesis from the get-go by operating on the ball, something he’s done sparingly in the past three years, dating back to college. His game is driven by speed and lots of comfort in shooting the ball while someone is trailing him. Jordan is just dipping his toe into the pool as a ball handler. The seven pick-and-rolls he ran in this game were the most he’s run in any game since his sophomore season at UConn, and most of those were quick handoffs that flowed into screens. (Hawkins would run eight pick-and-rolls a couple of days later against Orlando.)

It looked about the way you would think a non-handler’s reps would look. He was hurried in the lane and bothered by the on-ball physicality of Daishen Nix, at one point flaring out to the corner on a disadvantageous straight line drive. He avoided contact when finishing. He acknowledged this in a postgame interview.

Dillingham shot the ball within the first 16 seconds of the game. I pumped my fist like Ron Swanson as it clanked off the front rim. Eleven seconds later, he got nonchalantly discarded by Hawkins—also a skinny guy—in a handoff, allowing a step-in 3. In that single two-way sequence, you could see some of what worries the Dilly Doubters. But with those people, I feel like someone who’s showing a friend a movie and asking them to keep waiting for the good part.

After decades of misery, the 2023-24 season was revelatory for Minnesota. They have a realized identity that needs some added on-ball variability, and they might’ve added the two players in the draft who can provide the most of that. I could envision a scenario where Shannon pops quicker than Dillingham because his physical issues won’t be as pronounced—he’s f inches taller, about 50 pounds heavier, and almost five years older. But by the end of the year, Rob’s live-dribble polish, both as a passer and shooter, could have him pulling ahead so long as he can gain the strength to get to his spots and avoid getting thrown around. He couldn’t get into an offensive lather in this game, but he deferred well within the flow of what the Wolves were doing.

Rob has all the funky stuff in the middle of the floor that you like to see; the shot selection was just poor at times. Floaters off either foot with either hand. High-glass finishes where he cuffs the ball and climbs a tree. Reverse layups with absurd English. To fully utilize that arsenal he’s going to have to make a concerted effort to improve his core strength and lower body stability.

Also seen: Shannon dunked on Yves Missi in the classic Vince Carter 2000 Olympics style, in which there’s a turnover recovered in the open court and a wing is streaking toward the basket as the big quickly tries to turn and figure out what’s going on. One of the more forgivable posterization scenarios.

Reed Between the Lines

Reed Sheppard, Houston Rockets

As a Kentucky fan, it has been and continues to be bittersweet to watch Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham all smiley and kicking ass separately after college. Always going to be a wound, the way that one played out. They were the most entertaining UK backcourt duo since De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk, but instead of getting a classic conclusion in a regional final (shut up, Tate), we got a turd buffet, expertly curated by Jack Gohlke.

Reed and Rob are both dynamic on the ball, but they go about it in distinct ways. Rob earned “the shifts” by burning defenders with a much wider and lower dribble box—hang dribbles, head and shoulder fakes, cat-quick crossovers that atomize defenders. Honestly, he should start a chiropractic service where he cracks people’s backs by having them guard him one on one. Reed’s methods, on the other hand, seem to largely revolve around leveraging the anxiety his jump shot causes to pull defenders uphill. You don’t see him shaking people laterally and then using side-to-side footwork to get to his jumper as often, but during the opening weekend of summer league we did see some almost CP3-esque midrange creation from him. At Kentucky, he would enter the paint or come off a screen and get himself in trouble by picking his dribble up, so it was nice to see him really attack in this way.

For someone who was that productive without acting as a high-volume offensive hub at the college level, Reed has always blown me away with the overwhelmingly sane way he plays. I think that’s in large part because his batting average for making the right decision, even if that decision is relatively uncomplicated, is just exceedingly high, and a lot of those traits showed up immediately in Vegas. Each time he drilled a 3 or dropped a dime to a cutter you could feel a wave of surprise wash over the arena, a sort of amused conversion to belief as they witnessed this clean-cut kid who looks like a paper boy from a ’50s sitcom put on a show.

I suspect that it’s the result of being the son of two former college standouts, but Reed’s proclivity for making the right basketball play stretches back to well before he even played for Kentucky. This is a normal thing among high-level scorers/processors (often children of former players), but sometimes they need a hard nudge to hunt their own a bit more. Reed can definitely leave me wishing he would misbehave every once in a while and do something selfish as a scorer. The more he establishes that he will pull up from 35 if given the chance, the more respect he’ll garner and the higher that pick-up point will get, which is a valuable tool for Houston.

The nerds have loved the outlier percentages, and there is understandable concern that venturing beyond reasonable catch-and-shoot or obvious pull-up looks could take his percentages from “some of the best I’ve seen” to “pretty damned good,” which is what I’m assuming will happen. Increasing his looks would almost be like undeadstocking a nice pair of shoes—his shooting might not be perfect anymore, but it’d still be really good and much more useful. I think Sheppard has other levels of audacity to climb to that could severely raise his trajectory as a player and as an asset to what Houston is building. Sheppard was so-so off the bounce from 3 in Vegas, but was an ATM creating for himself around the elbows, particularly going right.

That audaciousness could also create opportunities for manipulative passing—however, I do see some challenges that could arise in his technique. It’s always caught my attention that Reed does have to gather the ball with both hands before he attempts to make a pass on the move, often when he’s hit a dead end in the middle of the floor. That could have an impact on his ability to exploit the types of playmaking windows that he’ll see in the NBA. He still had plenty of slick drop-offs to cutters, mainly Cam Whitmore.

It’s hard to say just how involved Sheppard will be in his rookie year, but it’s fun and somewhat easy to imagine his integration into what Houston is already doing. Stylistically, he seems like an optimal fit. The Rockets were seventh in the league in made 3s generated by passes out of post-ups when the defense committed. Reed at the very least should be a closeout machine—there won’t be many instances when defenders risk asking themselves, “Oh shit, where is he?” Sheppard’s presence will widen gaps for Alperen Sengun, Jabari Smith Jr., and Amen Thompson, and discourage help from his side of the floor. The Rockets’ athleticism also made them one of the more prolific transition teams in the league; they were also one of the least efficient. Houston was meh from 3 and had a tendency to be yakety-sax attacking the rim on those looks. Sheppard relentlessly exploits hit-ahead opportunities.

Personnel-wise, I do think that the Rockets face short-term questions that could have long-term ramifications. When the Rockets are looking for plus lineups in both directions, how much will Sheppard have to be protected on defense? How will that affect his ability to play with Jalen Green or Fred VanVleet? Still, this is a fun roster where Sheppard mostly fits like a glove, and that glove could be slapping some unsuspecting teams in the cheek next season.

Is this kid bored by off-ball shooting royalty?!

The Hurley Boys

Stephon Castle, San Antonio Spurs
Donovan Clingan, Portland Trail Blazers

By 6 p.m. on day one, I’d already eaten the chicken tenders. I sighed so loud that one of the backboards shattered. I’m now the Darvin Ham–at–Texas Tech of self-loathing sighs.

Overrating NCAA tournament success is an annual pitfall of NBA prospect evaluation, and when a roster fits together as perfectly as Dan Hurley’s did this past season at UConn, you do have to take a beat and ask yourself: Am I overrating the impact of these players because their college coach seems to be light-years ahead of his peers in terms of building and utilizing a roster? That might be true about other players on that team, but I strongly doubt it’s the case with Stephon Castle (drafted fourth by the Spurs) and Donovan Clingan (taken seventh by the Blazers), who faced each other in their first summer league bout.

Right away in this game, we saw big pieces of the elevator pitches for both players. Castle attacked the rim and used that wide and sturdy base to move through traffic and find Nathan Mensah on a cut. Some rim protectors are like deadbeat dads—showing up late if they show up at all and making clumsy attempts to get involved. Donovan is so large and agile that he doesn’t even have to be a “reach for everything” defender to register a significant impact. He’s a legit 7-foot-2 with a wingspan that is pushing 7-foot-7. If he does his work early—that is, get positioned ahead of the developing play—he’s long enough to let drivers go by and eradicate their shot from behind.

You can project what Clingan and Portland’s handful of young guards might do together. His screening and simple passing were visible here, and that should be a valuable downhill tool for Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe, two scoring-tilted guards. The other aspects will take some time—craft around the basket has always been a question for me with Cling Kong. Against physical pressure around the rim, he was frequently just using his shoulder to go up and over defenders, which by and large worked at the college level. Since he’s not a dunk-everything type of player, catching and finishing in traffic in the NBA will require a more dynamic approach.

Big 2023 Jaime Jaquez vibes from Castle in this event, but there’s also some Justise Winslow in there? Both 6-foot-6, both toolsy facilitators before entering successful college programs where they did a little bit of everything. Both iffy shooters. Of course, everything in San Antonio comes back to the fit with Victor Wembanyama. Castle will be challenged to shoot the ball; it’s just very possible that he has every other necessary tool to take pressure off that challenge. He was a 56 percent finisher during the last 10 games of the season for UConn and we saw some of that in Vegas. I think he’ll roll right off the assembly line and be the best perimeter passer on the Spurs roster, which sends the mind reeling, imagining the inverted ball screens that Wemby and Castle could unleash.

Trust the French?

Zaccharie Risacher, Atlanta Hawks
Alex Sarr, Washington Wizards

What a time for the French! Four players in the first round of the 2024 NBA draft, three of whom were taken in the top 10, including the first (yet again) and second picks. Now we begin the process of vetting them on the court. I will admit that I came into the draft with skepticism—particularly about the two most-hyped French prospects. One quelled my worry; the other confirmed it.

Despite his obvious allure as a smooth-moving 6-foot-9 wing, I worried that no. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher would lack a truly plus skill on offense. He operated heavily off the ball as a catch-and-shoot player for the past couple of years with JL Bourg Basket in the LNB Elite league and during his time on France’s U19 squad. Sometimes that’s a case of limited opportunity for a young player—JL Bourg’s touches in that area were mostly spoken for—but his game action there didn’t do a ton to inspire belief in me that he was an on-ball pressure cooker waiting for the right chance to explode. His handle was in need of growth, and his shooting, even off the catch, had been a trending-positive-lately sample that many people saw as potentially misleading.

Let’s riff on that for a minute, because it’s an area where I’m still a bit dubious. Seems like a great time for some quick and questionable shot mechanic/shot arc detective work. Before the draft, some analysts mentioned Trey Murphy as a sort of comparative benchmark for what Risacher might become, seeing as they’re similarly sized and served similar roles pre-NBA. Murphy is clearly the more explosive athlete, and his shooting stroke is close to, if not exactly, what you want from a pure spacer. (I hear this Derek Trucks solo when I watch clips of Trey shooting the ball. GOT DAYUM.)

Risacher, on the other hand:

The high point of the arc of Trey’s jumper peaks at roughly the top of the numbers on the game clock, while Zaccharie’s seems consistently lower–it peaks at the bottom portion of the shot clock. Again, it’s inexact, but I don’t think it’s a stretch or incorrect to point out that there’s an inconsistency in the way he powers (from load-up to finger tips) his release. Most of his Vegas makes from 3 have been rattlers, and at times you could see him leaning into it a bit to get that extra push.

I think there is some hope that Risacher’s energy transfer could get smoother, both with strength and some mechanical work, which will aid his adjustment to the NBA 3-point line quite a bit, as the LNB line that gave him his most promising sample is 39 inches shorter. I wonder whether he’ll ever become a knockdown shooter at the level of Murphy, but I do think Risacher has decent touch. Couple that with some power and he should improve.

Outside of the shooting, what really stood out to me in person is just how comfortable and capable Risacher looked in the spatial sense, particularly when he was attacking closeouts—converting funky midrange shots or connecting the ball to the second side of the floor. There’s a basic “this is happening; I do this” improvisational language to basketball that can be taken for granted when a player doesn’t understand it, and it’s likely that the “be involved and a positive, but do stay out of the way” training that Risacher received in Europe is contributing a lot to his ability in that area.

I know I said I’d stick to what I saw in person, but I have to at least acknowledge what Alex Sarr has done in Vegas. Look, man—Wizards fans are understandably tense about this. “Generational trauma” is a concept that comes to mind when you look at their draft history since the turn of the millennium, in which they’ve taken, like, four serviceable players (Jared Jeffries, Steve Blake, Rui Hachimura, and Corey Kispert), one high-quality role player (Otto Porter), one quasi-star (Bradley Beal), and one star (John Wall). For a team that has had very little playoff success, that fucking sucks, if you’re a fan. For that reason, I am going to start with the good: I do think that Sarr showed some real passing feel throughout his first couple of games.

That passing will need to be balanced by some rim pressure, though, and in Las Vegas, Sarr played with zero force. He nearly collapsed like Goofy assembling a camping tent at one point and in general looked flustered anytime he found himself in a crowd. He spun and faded more or less anytime he took contact inside the arc. On stick-back attempts, he floated backward and put up prayers that limply hit the rim. At one point he jab-stepped and caused Dylan Winder to fall down, and instead of attacking this clear lane to the rim, he settled for a horrendous 20-footer.

Some players will miscast themselves if you let them, and to me that is a large part of what is going on here. Every young big who can move well and handle it a bit sets their eyes on the loftiest (and most fun) prize: playing like Kevin Durant. The first issue with that is that people frequently ignore the fact that Kevin is a physical SOB attacking the basket. That has always complemented the (fantastic) shooting. The second issue is that Sarr doesn’t have either aspect of that polarity going on. He’s more of a stationary shooter—he did make a few 3s this way—who at this point has wild dreams of operating as a face-up player.

The defense had moments, but that aspect of his game concerned me too. One of my wisest basketball friends once stressed to me the importance of differentiating shot blockers from rim protectors, and ever since I’ve felt those words reverberating in my brain, calling to mind every bad take about defensive bigs I’ve ever heard. Nerlens Noel. Jarvis Varnado. Mo Bamba. Willie Cauley-Stein. Time will tell on this front, but my gut feeling is that Sarr is more of a perimeter assignment type than someone you build an entire defense around. There were plenty of instances when his recovery ability and reaction time wowed the crowd. You could see the vision.

For some positivity, consider another player in this very event: Kel’el Ware. Ware is almost exactly a year older than Sarr, and entered the 2022-23 college season as a consensus top-10 player. He played his freshman season at Oregon and faced similar criticisms—uneven motor, a tendency to disappear, a bit too much love for his face-up game—while having nearly identical measurements to Sarr. But measurements do not make the man.

CBB Analytics

CBB Analytics

In one calendar year, Ware cut his above-the-break attempts dramatically and bolstered his presence at the rim on offense, while also seeing a gigantic jump in efficiency. All of that is to say that Sarr has some time to figure out where the tension and release should be in his game, and a lot can happen in a year. Will it happen? No idea. Very well might not, in which case there’s a strong possibility that Ware (drafted 15th by the Heat) will end up the better pick. But a big, athletic player who looks graceful going to the basket, passes it fairly well from inside to outside of the arc, and can hit the occasional stationary 3? That’s a job in the current NBA. Cut the “spinning every time somebody touches you” stuff, man. Extend those limbs and make these dudes foul you. Be a vertical spacer! We saw literally zero of that in summer league.

Conspiracy theory (and thanks to Joe House for incepting this idea), but this could be one of those situations where the Wizards knew that this would happen, and now they can point to this experience and do the Bobby Duvall from Days of Thunder routine: You ran 50 laps your way and melted the tires. Now we can run 50 laps the other way. Maybe. This is me being hopeful.

Cashing Out

• Tyler Kolek was arguably the best pick-and-roll player in the 2024 NBA draft, and he proved that in a frequently disorganized setting like summer league, the organized mind is king. Some guards scramble like option quarterbacks and dance until an immovable object strains their ability to make a good choice, but Kolek has that alluring rhythmic trait that you love to see in lead handlers: His pace is unfailingly deliberate—steady like a fuckin’ metronome (I’d put him at about 75 BPM) and able to cruise and methodically engage defenders and bait the hook in the middle of the floor in order to create easy looks. He reminds me of that Bud Light commercial where the guy pours a perfect beer and his buddies are blown away and ask him, “How’d you learn to pour like that?” Circumstances don’t seem to affect Kolek’s pace at all. Drag him behind a horse, perch him in a tree and whip him in the nuts with a cane … he’s still going to navigate a ball screen and survey the floor with a clear head. I know Tyler is smaller and left-handed and works his ways to his spots, but the Jalen Brunson comparison is tough for me. Kolek is a born distributor, whereas Brunson leans in the near total opposite direction as a scoring machine. It’s a little harrowing to think about what this Knicks SL roster would look like without Kolek. The defining question here will be whether or not he can throw it in the ocean, because despite being a near 45 percent shooter off the catch during his senior year at Marquette, that part of his game was absent through two games in Vegas. If it reappears, his maturity and production could quickly become a steadying force that battles Cam Payne for backup minutes. The most damning variable here is that he didn’t play for Villanova, so sadly you can throw all that positivity out the window.
• Josh Christopher, who was quickly squeezed out of the conversation in Houston a couple of years ago and has been a G League journeyman since, went on a heat-check run in which he scored 16 points in roughly five minutes during the fourth quarter of Miami’s ass whipping of the Thunder. Two of those buckets were dunks and the other four were from 3, the last of which prompted him to trot past the seething Thunder bench looking for a high five that never came. He then pulled up from 30 in transition and bricked one with Kel’el wide open under the basket. You could almost see the ghost of Josh Selby egging him on. It was especially beautiful because he missed.

• The Pacers’ Johnny Furphy could end up being one of the real steals of the draft. There are certain archetypes of players whose visible impact is diminished by their environment, and players with off-ball skill sets like Furphy fall into that category. Kansas had an uncharacteristically bad ball-screen roster this past year (0.682 points per possession), and although Furphy still did plenty of eating in spot-up situations (42.9 percent from 3), there wasn’t enough creation to shovel touches into his mouth. That description came off gross but I’m leaving it.
• It’s fascinating how optimism can be so drastically different for two similar players who are the same age. Isaiah Stevens and Kira Lewis Jr. are both 23 years old, both roughly the same size. Stevens spent four seasons and a COVID year in college, steering the ship for a Power Five roster and sharpening his repertoire. He kicked ass in Vegas, both shooting it and distributing. The other was on the draft radar exceedingly early, jumped to the league by age 19, and four years later he’s playing 10 minutes per game on Houston’s summer league roster. Maybe players are who they are regardless of circumstance, but it does make me wonder how disruptive it can be to a young player’s development when we eagerly pull them up into the cutthroat environment of the NBA.
• I have this wildly unearned pride about waking up at 5:30 a.m. when I’m in the Pacific time zone. I look at the clock and think, “Welp, rise and grind. The only other people awake right now are the drinkers and gamblers who never actually went to bed, but that’s just the life of discipline I choose.”
• The reality is that your boy’s biological East Coast dad clock forcibly wakes him up when he’s out this way. There’s not a disciplined thing about it. In fact, “discipline” and Las Vegas are a comedic pairing. I’m not saying there aren’t disciplined people here, away from the Strip and grinding out whatever craft they’re into, but the entire existence of the place (literally) banks on a lack of self-control. Per usual, I saw some weird shit on this trip.
• At midnight on Thursday I stood at an intersection and watched a dad with a slushie (this is the stealth slushie capital of the galaxy) that looked like it had to be in the several dozens of ounces range pushing his passed-out toddler son down the Strip in a stroller. I watched a middle-aged woman more or less doing interpretive dance in a sea of empty cocktail tables to the sounds of a country cover band that absolutely butchered Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee”—a felony offense in my part of the world. I saw a woman in a Denny’s uniform sobbing a few feet away from a person in a Jigsaw mask excitedly playing the steel drums.
• That said, some things just have to be seen.

• For some of these games, there should be some kind of ceremonial effigy that is destroyed so that the game is not allowed to continue. Overtime is normally exciting, and maybe even in the summer league setting I could see that being true. If a couple of top-flight talents are squaring off and the vibe is perfect? Fine. I would be down for that. But those squads have a very different energy in Vegas than the franchises that are quivering in fear of the second apron. The difference is almost like the one between traveling-team parents and hometown intramural parents. One is attentively watching and hoping for marked improvement every game, while the other is shrugging their shoulders after every turnover and missed layup and saying, “The most important thing is that you have fun.” When the latter teams are slugging it out, Warren LeGarie should have the option to step through a giant paper hoop with the Vegas skyline painted on it, dancers on both sides, and emerge from smoke to reveal a bedazzled shotgun (we could use one of those immobilizing-bean-bag ammo things—safety first), with “Viva Las Vegas” pumping, and run to center court to execute the game. I’m serious, the crowd would go crazy.
• On Sunday afternoon, I ate the chicken tenders again. Son of a bitch.
• Shout-out to the cab driver who drove Tyler and me from our hotel to dinner on Saturday night. She could best be described as an extremely bleak Iranian version of the sloppy Joe lunch lady from Billy Madison. We shuffle into her van and our opening exchange goes something like this:

CAB LADY: Do you know where you are going?

TYLER: Uhh yeah, headed to dinner.

CAB LADY: I think you guys have eaten enough!

So we’re off to a great start. We laugh and defuse, but she is clearly going to be laughing at everything she says. Light chitchat transitions into her telling us that Vegas used to be great but now it’s not, which somehow leads to her telling us that she wishes humanity could start over, but her lighthearted wording is, “I wish we could kill everyone.” She is wheeze-laughing. Tyler tells her that he’s deciding what her tip should be and sarcastically raves about how great this ride has been. She says she is going to find us later in the night and force us to ride with her. Tyler is not laughing. I am nearly in tears I’m laughing so hard. Never a dull moment here.