Believe it or not, the last Summer League I paid attention to was way back in 2000. That year, a 2nd round pick of ours impressed the hell out of me by torching teams with what I remember to be a couple of 30+ point games. Looked to be a pure shooter if I ever saw one. I hyped him up to all my friends and was super-excited. Then, the kid never saw the court in his short career in the NBA, making me look stupid. My question is to all those fans who have followed the Summer League each year. Do we have "Dan Langhi's" every year?? Players who really impress in Summer League, but don't do squat in the NBA? The relevance here is these rookies everyone (including me!!!) is so excited about - what's the likelihood they might suffer a similar experience as Langhi. I certainly hope not!!!
Succeeding in Summer League won't guarantee success in the NBA but failure in Summer League will mean failure in the NBA. It's basically a very preliminary assessment of how your rookies will perform. I remember when John Lucas III use to torch Summer League. He amounted to a very below average point guard.
The thing that's promising about the players this year is that the ball was spread around. No one was a volume shooter or getting their points just from throwing up a bunch of shots. The players showed great instincts and worked for their points rather than launching it every time they touched the ball.
The rooks are going to get playing time thou and as of now what we saw in the summer league is a big part of what we are going to be seing on the actual team. The only guys not playing in the summer league out of the whole team was Martin, Patterson, Parsons(because of injury), and now Lin........ The good thing is that we will see how good they are and can be.... Instead of trading away players with a big ??? lets see them perform... The "star" is prob already here....
This. And they each brought something unique in their games Lamb - effortless and efficient scoring Dmo - quickness and fluidity for a 7 footer, with good touch inside/outside and both hands T jones - jack of all trades, ability to defend both 3/4s and rebound/score/handle White - excellent court vision and playmaking/passing skills. We're really not talking shout someone who hit a lot of shots on inferior competition.
I have watched most of the Rockets SL games, will see the last one this even on DVR. What I have been looking at are the overall 'basketball-sense' plays, and which players exhibit those qualities. Judging from the SL games, I can say that all three rookies this year, plus Donuts AND Dragic, all displayed the qualities which we have come to value on the NBA roster over the years. And MAYBE Machado, we'll have to see if he gets a camp invite, and how well he competes with Douglas (assuming Morey has not made some other move by then to shore up the backup PG spot). All of them have good court awareness and vision, all of them appear to be instinctively unselfish, and not one of them lacks hustle. Defensively, none of them is NBA ready. But unless you are a natural instinctive defender (such as Parsons), defense is more about coaching and desire than talent. They TRY, but tend to, like most rookies, to follow the ball with their eyes and attention, and fail to block out, leading to lots of offensive rebounds for their opponents. And since we never really had a true 5 on the floor, there was no rim protection, so, coupled with a lack of any real team-defense cohesion, the SL team looked remarkably similar to the Rockets of last year: a constant layup drill for the opponents and a slew of offensive rebounds for the other team as well. So, offensively the young kids will be way ahead. But what will determine whether these guys see much floor time, and whether they really make an impact, will be how quickly and how well they can become solid contributors. This is another reason why Asik will be so important this year. A bonafide rim protector and strong rebounder will help to cover for these guys while they learn. SO, to answer the OP's question: yes, it is possible that some of these guys might never realize the potential they have flashed in SL this year. But I think there are really 6 guys from the SL team who at least show enough promise to be hopeful thay they do not turn into the next Langhi: Lamb, White, Jones, Motiejunas, Dragic and Machado. It'll be fun to watch unfold.
how about the opposite? Do top picks ever suck in summer league and then become great? I don't mean not play up to their hype, I mean get noticed for their bad play and lack a stand out game. Does that happen?
Good o Dan langhi.. i remember the rockets had an event downtown before construction began on Toyota, might have been Francis rookie or first couple of years. Dan was ballin at that open practice This had nothing to do with the rockets but has anyone watch derrick Williams in summer league? Dude is awful!!!
The chances that summer league performances mean nothing is pretty high. Obviously it's better to play well than to play poorly, but neither is an indicator of how things are going to go during real games. There is a good article here about past summer league stars. Every year there are players who look like all stars in the summer league and it never translates to the regular season. John Lucas III outperforming Amare Stoudemire, Brandon Roy and Kevin Martin in their rookie year, and outscoring Kevin Durant by hitting 60 last summer. Dante Greene scoring 40+ points. John Salmons out performing Lebron James during their rookie years. Derick Rose averaging 9.5 ppg with 8 turn overs while Micheal Beasley averages 19.6 and 7.4 rebounds. Adam Morrison averaging 20.8 ppg and 5 rebounds. Anthony Randolf averaging 26.8 ppg, 8.5 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2.2 steals per game! Jermaine Taylor was the Rockets top scorer in 2010 at 18.4 ppg and barely saw the court in the regular season. The 2010 summer league stat leaders included Joey Dorsey averaging 9.8 rebounds per game, which was actually a decline from the summer league leading 14.8 rebounds a game he averaged when playing for the Rockets. Reggie Williams (GSW) averaged 22.6 ppg, Jeff Pendergraph (POR) 9.5 rebounds per game, Sam Young (MEM) 19.4 ppg, and Dominic James (MIL) 6 assists per game. How many of those guys would you decline to include in a Dwight Howard deal because they had nice summer leagues? It's encouraging to see our rookies do well, but using that to predict whether they are likely to be future stars is not very reliable.
Maybe thats exactly what Orlando is thinking and is the reason why even if we package all those guys..it still may not be enough for Dwight.
Langhi is the poster child for why we need to temper our expectations based on SL performance, however, I do like Nero's analysis and really like what I saw from our rookies in Vegas. After playing pretty sloppy during the first few games, Machado seems to have improved his play in the last couple of SL games, whereas, unfortunately, Fortson just seemed to get worse and worse.
You do good... Ohhh it's summer league you do bad ohhh it's summer league! Blah blah... Did you guys check these guys track record in college, even in high school? We got two national champions on this team... Lamb a " natural" scorer.. And who can defend... I'm not surprised by what he has done... Get stronger get experience.. kid has a future!
On the other hand, SOMEONE has to play during the season. We know Lin will play. We know Parsons will play. That's literally all we know for sure as of this moment. There are going to be an awfully large number of minutes this year being played by inexperienced players. It's kind of like giving a whole handful of guys the same kind of opportunity that Lin got last year in NY. Under that scenario, at least the likelihood that we find out for sure, with the most clarity, is much greater this way. In other words, we were not able to discover Lin's demonstrated potential last year because he was too far down the depth chart. The rookies we have this year, that's going to be much less of a problem, so at least we'll find out more this way.
Jeremy Lamb is ten times more talented and skilled than Langhi.. his game translates better to the nba game than in college and we're seeing that against some pros/scrubs.. D-Mo will be more of an adjustment period to the pros, but thats every european player White will find his niche being a matchup problem for 4's TJones will be a silky smooth role player with versatility langhi wasnt nearly as talented as these guys
