Every blackjack dealer throws cards around with a style all their own. It’s their version of a jump shot. John, our vice-enabler Friday night1, had one of the more unusual deliveries I’ve seen. He grabbed the corner of every card between his spidery middle and ring fingers, flicking them effortlessly across the green felt expanse without even looking. It felt both performative and rote, something to impress (it did!), but also so memorized, so easy, that John didn’t even seem to notice he was doing it. Unconventional but effective. Big Kevin Martin vibes.
Vegas Summer League is always a trip — sometimes literally. It’ll be hard to forget the guy who stumbled while walking up to the urinal next to me, fell into it, and accidentally braced himself against the rather small and unobtrusive flush button. Disgusting toilet water squirted all over him. He screamed and (understandably) ran away. I’ll never know if he was under the influence, extremely unlucky, or some combination of the two, but I definitely approached the bathroom a little more cautiously after that.
There was an after-games meet-up with some friends that preceded unknowingly slipping into an open bar hosted by NBA Topshot. There was hearing about Victor Wembanyama and Keldon Johnson playing the $10 blackjack tables at Excalibur (and failing to find them). There was OKC’s Erik Reynolds winning a jump ball and then immediately scoring on the wrong basket (to the delight of his opponents and the crowd).
There was the lady behind me thoroughly dissecting her teenage son’s game to a friend for fifteen minutes. I was picturing the next Anthony Edwards (if only that jumper could come along!) before her husband showed up: “You talking about my baby? Nah, he sucks.”
Remember this: Summer League rarely sets players up for success.
Top picks are stretched to the point you might mistake the game plan for a torture rack. Khaman Maluach, the rookie center from Duke, is a perfect example. The 7’2” rim roller attempted just 16 three-pointers across 39 collegiate games. In his first Summer League performance, he jacked up six (making just one). The Suns’ coaches see potential in his jump shot, and the zero-stakes games of Las Vegas are the perfect place to throw him into the deep end. Whether his attempts to avoid drowning make him look good or not is irrelevant to his broader development.
Relatedly, number-one pick Cooper Flagg was the clear crowd favorite, with people oohing and aahing his every move. He struggled with his shot in Game 1 before finding it to a degree in Game 2, but like Maluach, he played far differently than he had in his college career. Coach Jason Kidd has discussed his desire to play Flagg at point guard on occasion, and the Mavericks’ Vegas staff followed through. Flagg made just three of his 14 three-point attempts and struggled initiating the halfcourt offense. However, the team instructed Flagg to stop making the right basketball play and just shoot the ball. He did! Pushing him out of his comfort zone is the entire point; there’s no gain without pain.
Flagg working on his pull-up jumper and his handle in traffic was never going to let him shine his brightest, and he played “one of the worst games of [his] life” in his first performance. But then, he looked like one of Summer League’s best players in his second game, dropping 31 points on 20 field goal attempts while only turning it over twice (and adding a couple of dunks and a nice swat, to boot).
Flagg will be an excellent defensive player from the get-go, but his offensive success will be partially dependent upon how the Mavs use him in the regular season. I can already see a future where a lower-than-expected FG% has box-score watchers crying foul on Flagg’s rookie campaign.
Speaking of players playing outside their comfort zones, the Lakers deployed Bronny James as their Flagg-stopper for several possessions in Day 1’s Mavs-Lakers clash. Bronny’s pedestrian production belied his status as Summer League’s second-biggest draw, and the crowd was never louder than in his one-on-one defensive battles with Flagg (which the much larger Flagg, predictably, generally won, although not without fight from Bronny).
Summer League’s third-most-popular player was Chinese sensation Yang Hansen. Hansen was the CBA Defensive Player of the Year, but his slick back-to-the-basket passes were the first thing that stood out. A large contingent of Chinese fans stayed for the late Portland games to cheer as Hansen dropped dimes and swatted shots. The loudest in-arena moment of my entire Summer League experience came on a twisting, turning drive to the basket for a graceful layup:
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The draft community considered Hansen to be the biggest reach of the first round, but I talked to two different people in the know in Vegas who swore that there were multiple other teams ready to take him if Portland didn’t (whether that’s true or simply team execs covering their rears is hard to tell). If Hansen can prove to be even a decent backup center, Portland will reap the business benefits from a basketball-obsessed Chinese fandom — Hansen jerseys are already flying off Blazer shelves. It’s too early to know if he’ll be good, but I’m confident he’ll have a robust highlight-per-minute ratio, and that’s enough for me to get excited.
While Flagg, Bronny, and Hansen were by far the crowd favorites, some of the best basketball came from relatively unheralded sources.
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