Vegas Summer League - Day 4

[Uncia03]

I’m sorry for the delay on this. Had a serious case of paralysis by analysis after Monday’s games and I just couldn’t seem to sit down and focus my thoughts on all the basketball I’d seen during the course of the day.


Tuesday was a full non-basketball day, and I only really had a chance to start working on this an hour or two ago. So, though it is delayed, here are my observations from Day 4 of Vegas Summer League 2009.


Today there were six games being played. I was only able to watch four of the six. One of the games (Portland vs Toronto) I did watch most of the 1st quarter before moving over to the next game. So I’ll just give a few thoughts on what I saw there.


The games I saw were:
NBA D-League vs Timberwolves
Suns vs Mavericks
Trailblazers vs Raptors (1st quarter only)
Lakers vs Clippers
Kings vs Bucks

Game 1: NBA D-League vs Timberwolves


This was the first game of the day, and I had not seen either of these teams play. I was trying to pay close attention to the D-League team as I am not really familiar with the players, and since we are playing them on Wednesday, the more information I had on these players the better I could contrast their game played against us vs. what they did against the Timberwolves. In addition, I was going to get to see Jonny Flynn in action, so I was curious as to how he was going to look, especially since he seemed to be in the running for our 4th pick.


D-League: Trey Johnson


Trey Johnson was the first player from the D-League team which stood out to me. He started off with a nice move to get into the paint, but missed a 10ft shot. Then a minute or so later he drove into the lane and had a great dish to a big man who missed his shot.


That seemed to be the norm for the rest of the game for Trey. He ended the game with 12 points on 4/12 shooting and only 1 assist. It was clear that he’s a shooting guard, but I have him making three nice set-up plays in the first quarter, and in all three instances, the other man failed to convert for the basket. After those failures, he decided to stop that, and spent most of the rest of the time in the game looking for his own shot. As you can see, he didn’t shoot the ball all that well, but he did have success getting into the lane.


So though he was the first to stand out, he didn’t have as good of a game as I’m sure he would have liked. I would like to see Tyreke on him on Wednesday, to see how well he can defend the 6’6 Johnson.


D-League: Otheyus Jeffers


Otheyus played the SF position and didn’t spend a lot of time handling the ball. He, however, ended up having a much stronger game than Trey. The first note I have for Jeffers was a strong drive to the hoop and a lay-up with his off hand, it was well done.


He did most of his scoring driving to the hoop and either pulling up for a 10 ft. shot, or getting to the rim for the bucket or the foul. He went to the FT line 10 times, and went 8/10 for a very solid line. He was also very good on the offensive glass. Box score has him with 3 offensive rebounds, and I have in my notes two offensive rebounds which he pulled down in a lot of traffic.

He only had one assist, and I have in my notes that he made a nice drive to the rim with a drop-off to a big man which wasn’t converted, but for the most part he looked to score more than set up his teammates.


There were also a few times he ended up guarding Jonny Flynn on the switch, and he did very well keeping Flynn out of the lane and playing solid D.


D-League: Gary Forbes


Forbes did not start, but he quickly became the best offensive player for the D-League team in this game. He was very athletic, running the floor well, and had at least two alley-oop dunks. He shot the ball well (9/16), and made a lot hustle plays to keep the ball in bounds and active for his team. I was surprised to see the box score listing him with only 4 rebounds, as with his hops and aggressiveness I would have guessed him to have more by the end of the game.


He was more of a catch and finish type of player, aggressive around the rim, but also willing to make the extra pass to an open teammate. He ended with 2 assists, and I have some notes on some failed conversions on a couple of nice passes to teammates.


D-League: Walker Russell


Russell did not start the game, but to me he had the best game for the D-League team, and I hope to see more of him when we play the team on Wednesday.


He is an undersized (6’0) point guard, with good quickness and handles. I have multiple notes indicating a nice drive and drop-off or drive and kick to open teammates. He was guarded by Flynn and did a very nice job getting into the lane and then making the right play. He didn’t really look for his own shot going 3/6 for 9 points. He also preferred to get into the lane and make the pass instead of taking the ball to the rim as evidenced by only 2 FT attempts. Considering how much time he spent in the lane, he could have had a lot more had he taken the ball strong to the rim instead of looking to make the pass.


He did have problems getting through screens while guarding Flynn, but did a decent job at containing Flynn and keeping him out of the paint.

Minnesota: Jonny Flynn


Flynn did very well in the early part of the game when he was being defended by Curtis Stinson. He was able to get into the lane and get the ball into spots where Ellington and Pecherov could score. Pecherov is one of those 7’0 centers who can hit the set 3 pt shot, and in the first quarter Pecherov hit 2 or 3 of them, before the D-League team realized they had to play him tight out there. So Flynn probably had a number of assists in the first quarter due to Ellington and Pecherov hitting the outside set shot.


I also have him making a nice split of the doubleteam for a kick out which missed, as well as a very strong move away from the screen where he finished at the rim for a + 1.


It seemed as if he slowed down somewhat after the first, and it might have been partially due to Russell being quicker than Stinson and playing him tighter. With that said, I have a few notes from each quarter showing strong takes to the basket for either a shot at the rim or a kick-out. He had a couple of bad passes in the lane, but all-in-all had a good game running his team.


He really looked to set up his teammates more so than going for his own shot which is played out clearly in the box score. (9 shot attempts vs 14 assists.) You can see how much he handled the ball with the 6 TOs, though a few of those were due to miscommunication with a teammate, or bad alley-oop passes.


On defense, he looked decent though he had a very difficult time fighting through screens.

Minnesota: Corey Brewer


He was injured for most of last year, so I wanted to see how his play looked, as he hasn’t yet seemed to play to the level expected of him.


He had a very, very poor game today.



In fact I have only 1 note for the 1st quarter, a nice drive into the lane with a drop-off pass to a big who was fouled. After that I have no notes for the 2nd or 3rd quarters.


He got a lot of playing time in the 4th quarter, and didn’t do much. He was 5/12 from the floor for 11 points, but 2 of those shots were in the final 30 seconds of the game.


He didn’t do much in his 26 minutes of playing time, and if he had been on the D-League team and I didn’t know who he was, he would have been entirely forgettable.


Minnesota: Wayne Ellington


Ellington had a good game. I was actually surprised because I was expecting almost exclusively a catch and shoot game from Ellington with set-ups from Flynn. And though there was a lot of that, Ellington was pretty aggressive with the ball and took it to the rim on a number of occasions.



He went 8/14 from the field and 4/7 from 3 pt land for 22 points. He didn’t have any assists, and I don’t have any notes where he tried to set up his teammates, though he did have one turn over where he drove in, left his feet and didn’t have anywhere to go.




Game 2: Suns vs Mavericks


I had really been enjoying watching Rodrigue Beaubois play, so I was very much looking forward to him playing another game, this time against the Suns. I had not seen the Suns play, but was hoping for a big game from Earl Clark.

Mavericks: Rodrigue Beaubois

Beaubois did not have a very good first quarter. He didn’t look as if he was very engaged and spent most of his time passing the ball along the perimeter instead of driving into the lane.



His second stint of the 1st half was good, and he had a decent 3rd quarter. In the 4th quarter he really picked things up, and looked more like the player I’d seen in previous games.


In the first quarter I have him with three drives into the lane, with two passes and one shot, none of them were converted for points.


Basically, his game is all about using his quickness to get into the lane and either finishing(he’s very athletic) or making the right pass.



His shot was decent (5/11, 2/4 3pt) but his passes were not being converted for assists and he ended the day with only 3. Once again he was active on defense, this time picking up 2 steals, and he pulled down 5 boards as well.
At the end of the game, hevwas at his best, as the team was down and he was controlling the ball and getting the lane time and again. Unfortunately with about 1 minute left, he banged knees with another player, was down for about 3-4 minutes, and was eventually helped off the court and taken to the locker room. I guess it isn’t going to be serious, which is good news, as he has shown a lot of promise.


This was the third game I’ve seen for the Mavericks, and no-one else really stood out to me Ahmad Nivins had a few nice offensive rebounds, and he was pretty strong in the paint getting to the line, but not much beyond that, other than poor defense against Robin Lopez.

Suns: Earl Clark

Unfortunately Clark did not play. I don’t know if he was injured or what was going on. It was a disappointment.

Suns: Robin Lopez

Lopez had a very strong game, and was probably the best player on the court in this game. He got good position in the paint against Ahmad Nivins, and had a very nice touch around the rim. Almost all of his shots were in the paint, and he was fouled quite a bit, when he wasn’t putting the ball in the bucket. He went 7/10 from the field and 10/12 from the FT line for 24 points.

In addition he was more active than anyone else on the boards on both the offensive and defensive end. He ended up with 16 rebounds, 5 of them offensive.

He ended up with 2 blocks, though I believe his very first defensive possession he had a block, and then with a minute to go had another block to keep the lead. I thought he had more than two, but perhaps it just seemed that way with him opening and closing the game with a block.

He just looked really good out there, showing more hustle than anyone on the Mavericks side going for boards, and using his length effectively on the offensive end to get his shot up and over Nivins.

Suns: Alando Tucker

Tucker had a solid game for the Suns as well. He shot 5/11 for 11 points. Most of his points came off of slashing to the basket. He had 5 boards, and just showed some energy out there, which made me notice his game.

 

[Uncia03]

Game 2.5: Trail Blazers vs Raptors


As mentioned I only saw about the first quarter of this game. I didn’t take any notes, so I’m just going to quickly talk about what I did see which was notable.


Trail Blazers: Jerryd Bayless


Unlike the few games I saw of him last year in summer league, Bayless was looking to play the pass-first PG role in the time I watched him today. He split the double team at least twice with ease, and looked to make the pass to the open teammate on both occasions.



He only took a shot or two, during that period of time. He made one or two bad passes, but he looked far more like a point guard in today’s brief view than any other time I’ve seen him before.


Trail Blazers: Dante Cunningham


Dante looked very aggressive on offense. I believe he had around 8 points in the 1st quarter when I had to leave to go to the other game. He hit a jumpshot or two, and also attacked the rim, once for a bucket and another time for a trip to the foul line.


Raptors: DeMar DeRozan


Again, didn’t do much to impress me. I think he might have had one basket when I had to leave, and the basket he made was a very nice one, but he was taking and missing a lot of bad shots, and not doing much else to help the team in other ways.

Game 3: Clippers vs Lakers


I’m going to be honest here and say that I was not much into this game. I’m really tired of watching the Lakers play, especially since they have such a weak and uninteresting team. Unfortunately, this is the only Clippers game I’ll be getting to see, so since I wanted to watch Blake Griffen in action, I had to watch it.


The best part of this game was when I was looking for where my wife got us seats I happened to see Coach Westphal in the stands and dropped by to say ‘Hi’ and wish him luck for the upcoming season.


Clippers: Blake Griffen


His box score: 11/15 field, 1/1 3pt, 4/8 FT for 27 points. 12 boards, 1 assist, 5 turn overs.
I want to say that I was impressed with his performance on the court, but it’s hard for me to do that. Every time he got the ball in his hands, the crowd was going crazy, and for some reason my natural inclination is to not get caught up in all of the emotion.



In fact in the first minute or so, he caught the ball at the 3-point line and the crowd was cheering for him to shoot it. He took the shot and made the basket, and everyone went wild.


With all that said, he did have a very good game. Most of his baskets came from in the paint, and you can see he had very good success there. What was strange was that it was one of those games where I looked up and he already had 16 points, and I didn’t really remember him getting that many. He looked smooth going up for the shot and moving around the rim to get the ball up and in.


He also did well on the boards, and I have a number of notes where he was aggressive going for the offensive rebound.


With-out a doubt he is going to have to work on his face-up game. It seems as if he wants to incorporate that into his arsenal, but he ended up having five turn-overs and I believe four of them came when he got the ball, turned to face his man and put the ball on the ground and drove to the basket.

It looked as if he thought he’d be able to put the ball on the floor, but he was either getting stripped, or losing his handle on most of those plays. He was far more effective when he got the ball and either just put it up, or made the one dribble then put it up. When he went one-on-one he didn’t have nearly the success.


Clippers: Eric Gordon


Gordon also had a good game today. Interestingly enough, he was playing the 2-guard spot in today’s game. He’s undersized for that position, but he looks even stronger now than he did during last season.



His game basically consisted of driving to the hoop and using his strength either to finish, or get the foul called. He was 5/11 from the field and 11/12 from the FT line for 21 points. As he was playing the two guard he wasn’t looking to set up his teammates at all.


On defense he was matched up against Adam Morrison most of the time. He was able to easily hold his position against Morrison whenever Morrison tried to back him down in the paint. Unfortunately, due to his lack of size/length, Morrison had a pretty easy time getting his shot off while on the perimeter. As Gordon is 6’3 and Morrison is 6/8, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as it’s a huge advantage for Morrison in that situation.


Clippers: Mike Taylor


Taylor was the point guard for the Clippers in this game. I recall him playing a bit last season for the Clippers and thought he looked pretty quick out there.



Today, he was playing far too fast for his own good and way over-dribbling the ball.. It was one of those games where you’re playing at such a high speed that either you make the great play, or you make the spectacularly bad play for a turn-over. I’m surprised to only see him with 4 TOs for the game, as it seemed like double that with the amount of trouble he was getting himself into with the fast play and over-dribbling.



With Gordon and Griffen on the court, he wasn’t looking to shoot the ball at all, rather he spent most of his time trying to set up Blake Griffen for the basket. He ended up with 5 assists.


Clippers: DeAndre Jordan


Jordan came off the bench for Griffen for most of the game, though they might have shared a couple of minutes together on the court. As he demonstrated last year, he’s a powerful player and in this game he went 8/9 from the field, and at least 6-7 of those made baskets were dunks. He also went to the line 5 times, but missed all five of those baskets.


He needs to work on a lot of things with his game, but he showed good hustle and good movement around the rim to get set up for the slam. It seemed that when he put the ball on the floor he turned it over, so he tried to finish most of the time with-out putting the ball down. He only had 5 rebounds which was surprising as I thought he had more than that.


Clippers: Nik Caner-Medley


Since he was on our summer squad a few years back, I thought I’d just briefly mention him. He had the same type of game he did when he played for us. Very active, took good shots, and was strong on the boards.



He ended up with 12 points (3/5 field, 5/6 FT line) and 11 rebounds with no TOs. Just a very solid performance, and one which was typical when he played for us.


Lakers: Adam Morrison


Just a quick note on Morrison, as I’ve covered him a good amount during summer league. As I mentioned above, he tried to get some work done in the paint and had very little success getting into good position against Gordon. When he tried to back Gordon down, he was unable to do so, and ended up taking bad turn-around jump shots.


He did have a lot of success catching the ball and shooting over Gordon, and moving past a screen and getting a good shot off, as Gordon did not have the height/length to contest.

 

[Uncia03]

Game 4: Kings vs Bucks


I was really looking forward to this game, and was hoping that Tyreke would be matched up against Jennings so we could see them go at it. Much to my happiness, we did not start Jerel McNeal, but instead went with Wesley Mattews, and that allowed for the Evans/Jennings matchup.


On a different note, was anyone else just dismayed by our defense in this game? The way we handled the pick n roll, especially when we switched off, was probably the most poorly executed I’ve seen in all the games in summer league thus far. It seemed as if JT and Tyreke were not at all on the same page when switching off, and JT’s man was getting deep into the paint with Jennings finding him over and over again. It was just really ugly.


I’m going to keep my thoughts on the players pretty brief, as there was a lot of coverage of the Kings for this game.


Kings: Tyreke Evans


One of the most notable things about this game was his struggles getting the ball up the court against Jennings. And in watching the game, I don’t think it had as much to do with his ability to do so, but rather his perception of his ability. It seemed as if he didn’t think Jennings would be able to stop him, and so he wasn’t putting in the effort he needed to get the ball up the court. So I think if he takes it the job of getting it up the court a bit more seriously, and realize that if he isn’t careful he could lose the ball, he’ll do far better than what I considered a less intense approach during the course of this particular game.


When he gets his own defensive rebound, it seems as if you almost always expect an easy shot attempt for the Kings. He seems to get that ball and then push it up the court, and looks to be most effective moving north/south, and once he gets moving quickly he almost always gets to the rim or collapses the defense and kicks it out to an open shooter. That is a wonderful sign, and I hope that continues to be the norm during the regular season.


He was able to post up Jennings with ease, and it was something which I wanted to see more of in this game. It seemed as if most of his post-up attempts came when we had to inbound the ball under the opponent’s basket, and we would get the ball to him in the post where he could work. Hopefully we’ll design a few plays to get him moving into the post with-out the ball, and once he’s established good post position get him the ball and let him work against a smaller guard.


His free throw shooting was superb in this game. You can’t ask for better than 17/19 from the line, and really shows how aggressive he was on the offensive end. It was clear that Jennings and the Bucks did not have an answer for his strength and ability to get to the rim. This is the result we should see on a consistent basis in the regular season, especially if we are able to set the match-up so that the opposing point guard is forced to defend Tyreke.

And if opponents decide they want to guard Tyreke with their 2-guard, it will really free up Martin to have a great mis-match against a shorter opponent, and he should take advantage by getting a lot of good shots.


Finally, I thought he played good defense against Jennings, and he kept Jennings out of the lane for the majority of the game. Jennings only got to the FT line twice, and had a hard time penetrating against Tyreke.


Kings: Jason Thompson


Just a really bad game for Jason. Didn’t shoot it well (3/10 field, 3/8 FT line), didn’t rebound all that well (5 boards) and couldn’t keep control of the ball. (6 TOs)


In addition, though I don’t know how much of it was his fault, he was involved in a lot of switches with Evans and most of those went horribly awry.
He did play good man defense against Amir Johnson.
Not too much more to say, but I hope that he has a bounce-back game on Wednesday.


Kings: Omri Casspi


Casspi is struggling more than any other Kings player out there. This was his third game, and it was his third really poor game.


The good news is that he was able to limit his turn-overs to only 2 in his 17 minutes of play. The bad news is that he limited his TOs by basically not handling the ball, not passing the ball, and basically being a non-factor out on the court.



He was not very aggressive at all going to the rim (One of the two qualities I had liked of his game, the other being his ability to make the nice pass) and shot the ball poorly going 1/5. He also had 3 boards, and only 1 assist.


All in all, it was probably his worst game. At least in the other two games he was making some nice aggressive drives to the rim, and making some wonderful passes. He was far too tentative today.


Kings: Donte Greene


I get the feeling that he was told to modify his game a bit for today.



In the previous game against the Warriors he was very aggressive attacking the hoop, and put up 17 shots. In today’s game, he came off the bench and in the course of 15 minutes only took 1 shot attempt.



It seemed as if his mindset was that of a role player, getting the rebound, and helping keep the offense moving smoothly by making the controlled pass. I thought he played well in that role. He had 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and no TOs in this game.

He just looked like a solid piece out there, not making any really big plays, but not hurting the team either.


Kings: John Brockman


There was a lot to like from this game, as well as a few concerns. In my opinion this was his best game so far. He played 22 minutes and collected 12 rebounds.

He did shoot poorly going 2/6 from the field and 3/8 from the FT line, but hustle and actively on the glass was immediately apparent.

There wasn’t anyone in the game who could match his hustle on the boards and he made an impact on both sides of the court with his 5 offensive rebounds and 7 defensive rebounds.


The biggest concern in this game was that he was guarding Joe Alexander, and Alexander did pretty well scoring against Brockman, as Brockman did not have the quickness to keep Alexander from either getting to the rim, or getting to his spot for the pull-up.


So that will be the biggest question for Brockman. I think he’ll be able to rebound well in the NBA, but whether or not he’ll be able to stay on the floor will mostly likely be dependent on whether he can defend his man, and that may end up being on a case by case scenario.


Kings: Marcus Landry


Once again Landry looked pretty good out there. I just don’t think there is any place on our team considering how clogged our 3 spot is. I do hope that he ends up on a team somewhere though.


Bucks: Brandon Jennings


Didn’t look all that great starting off, and only had 2 assists for the first quarter. In the second quarter Szewcyzyk came into the game and Jennings got 3 quick assists in about 3 minutes from him when our guys were not playing defense on him, and Szewczyk was able to hit the 3-ball.


Played aggressive pressure defense against Tyreke and had a lot of success picking up 3 steals I believe.
He picked up his play quite a bit in the 2nd half, and did a very good job finding the open man, especially on screen and rolls.


Though he hit that final shot of the game, just does not have a good looking shot, and will need to work to improve it. He also had problems penetrating against Tyreke, but had no issues getting off a nice pass to a teammate, setting them up for a scoring opportunity.


Bucks: Jodie Meeks


Had another good catch and shoot game for himself. He’s very active running to free himself off of screens so he can catch the ball and put up a clean shot. He went 8/12 from the field for 20 points, and does well in the catch and shoot role.


Bucks: Joe Alexander


He had himself a good game today. I was sort of surprised to glance up and see he had 15 points on the scoreboard. He ended up with 24 on the day, and I didn’t recall him getting so much done on the offensive end.



With that said, he shot the ball well going 8/13 from the field and was aggressive getting to the line 10 times. He really had a mismatch going against Brockman and was able to use his quickness to get to his spots. He was also active on the glass and pulled down 7 rebounds in the game.


Bucks: Luc Mbah a Moute


Another poor game for Luc. 3 points, 3 boards, 2 TOs. I just haven’t seen him do much so far in these games.


Bucks: Amir Johnson


He had two blocks, but one of them was clearly a goal-tend. He didn’t look to shoot all that much and went 4/7 from the field, with one of them being a nice fast-break slam. Solid game, but not too much really stood out.

 

[NME]

Thanks a lot for all the great reports!

 

[Kingsguy881]

OMG, Blake Griffin had 5 turnovers. He's just not going to make it.

 

[kingsnation]

Clippers: Ben Gordon


Gordon also had a good game today. Interestingly enough, he was playing the 2-guard spot in today’s game. He’s undersized for that position, but he looks even stronger now than he did during last season.

I didn't know Ben played for LA..

Thanks for all the reports Uncia! They are a great read.

 

[Kingsguy881]

Thanks so much for the report, forgive my first sarcastic reply. I'm lovin' the reports.

 

[Uncia03]

I didn't know Ben played for LA..

Thanks for all the reports Uncia! They are a great read.

Fixed that for you, thanks for catching that.