Victor Wembanyama is playing in the NBA Summer League for the Spurs, and while already more notable for a dust-up with Britney Spears, he’s likely there, as John Feinstein posited to the Junkies Friday morning, for the publicity and television presence of the league.
Well before welcoming in Feinstein, though, the Junkies wondered exactly how much stock anyone can take in anything that happens in Summer League, given it’s usually a rabble of mid draft picks, undrafted rookies, and younger players looking for any chance to crack even the back end of an NBA roster.
“I watched Summer League again yesterday, and I’m kind of out on it, because the ‘stars’ play one or two games, and then it’s just bums,” EB said.
“When I do watch it, it looks like bad pickup basketball,” JP fired back. “There’s not a lot of structure there.”
“It’s Summer League, they just kind of threw them together and they’ve never played together,” Bish added, before Valdez threw in the notion of players having to be selfish just to make the dregs of an NBA roster as noted above.
“So many of these guys are great players and athletes, but how do you get noticed?” EB came back with. “It’s like you have no shot and they already know – most of these guys are going to end up in Europe or the G League.”
The other problem? One or two bad performances can label you a bust early – sort of like No. 2 pick Brandon Miller, who has committed 15 fouls in two games since you can’t really foul out.
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“Kind of hard to label him a bust so quickly,” Bish said. “I saw he didn’t score much, but the fouls aren’t very encouraging. He was a great player in college but you don’t know how they’ll translate to the NBA – and these aren’t even the guys he’s going to be playing against.”
“Stay out of foul trouble and he’ll play no defense, just be a scorer,” EB replied.
The Spurs and Wizards play each other on Tuesday, so maybe we’ll see Wemby vs. Coulibaly?
Listen to the Junkies’ entire discussion about summer league above, starting about six minutes into the audio clip!
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