10 Winners and Losers From NBA Summer League
NBA Summer League has come and gone—this time, it came with rings for the Heat, who emerged victorious on a game-winning floater by Pelle Larsson in the Finals against the Grizzlies.
Basketball’s summer saving grace can be an accurate teller of what’s to come in the careers of players and it can also trick us into creating misconceptions about who will have great NBA careers.
The cliche would be to say that the Summer League is just pickup basketball and you can’t take any stock into it, but I actually believe that Summer League can be a decent precedent for players’ careers. For three years in a row, perennial All-Stars, Blake Griffin, John Wall, and Damian Lillard, won Summer League MVP. More recently, solid starters, Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart, and Keegan Murray won the award. Last year, Victor Wembanyama, Brandon Miller, and Keyonte George showed great signs in the Summer League and carried them over to their rookie seasons. Scoot Henderson, on the other hand, Scoot Henderson stuffed the stat sheet, but shot very inefficiently. That’s exactly how his first year in the NBA went.
Because I think Summer League is a good tell of what’s to come in the NBA, I will give you the 10 biggest things I took away from this year’s Vegas Classic.
Winner: Reed Sheppard
Though he went third overall, Sheppard has drawn lofty comparisons—namely to Steph Curry. Now, I was slightly skeptical of this since he was drafted behind Zaccharie Risacher and Alex Sarr who aren’t expected to be special, but he sure looked better than those top two picks in summer league.
He shot 50% with 20.0 PPG which trailed only Stephon Castle and Dalton Knecht among rookies. He excelled in other facets as well, averaged 4.8 RPG and 5.3 APG. Sheppard had success playing off the ball at Kentucky with Rob Dillingham running the offense for most of his minutes, but he looked very comfortable with the ball in his hands.
Sheppard only shot 5-18 from three in his summer league games and still earned high marks from me. His shooting will pick up and he will become one of the best players of his class.
Loser: 2nd Overall Picks
What did we learn about second-overall picks in NBA history in my draft pick mini-series? They have underperformed massively, especially in recent history. In the last 15 years, 2nd picks have been the 10th best pick out of the 14 lottery picks which is horrendous given the fairly large sample size.
It’s no secret that Alex Sarr had a bad summer league showing, headlined by his 0-point, 0-15 shooting performance vs Portland. But it’s worse than you think.
Sarr averaged fewer points and shot a worse field goal percentage than the top 15 players who played at least two games in the summer league (Devin Carter and Nikola Topic were injured, and Zach Edey only played one game). If you think this graph is unfair because the 0-15 performance drags down an otherwise good summer, you’d be wrong. That gold dot on the graph is Sarr’s statistics without the 0-15 game. He’d still have the worst FG% and the third-worst PPG.
This is another bad look for #2 overall picks.
Winner: Heat Culture
The Ringer’s scouting report on 15th overall pick, Kel’el Ware, said “Effort and focus have wavered going back to high school. He’ll disappear for an entire half. His desire to box out and play with physicality is a notable concern, and he’s been bullied by players of a comparable size to him.”
For these reasons, the Ware pick was a question mark for a franchise that prides itself on hard work, relentlessness, and a good attitude. After watching Ware in summer league, it’s clear that Heat Culture is real and that it’s already having an effect on the young Oregon alum.
The Heat went 6-0 in summer league and although Josh Christopher won Finals MVP, Ware was Miami’s best player all tournament. He and Sheppard were the only rookies to achieve All-Summer League First Team honors.
He will be locked into the backup center role for Miami going into the season with the way he played this summer and could potentially have a Dereck Lively III type of progression throughout his rookie year. Ware already looks like a hit.
Loser: The Milwaukee Bucks
I didn’t like the AJ Johnson pick when the Bucks selected him at #23 in the draft this season, and I still don’t like it after he shot 32.3% from the field in summer league. Johnson still looks years away from having any real impact, but he is not the real issue.
As a championship hopeful that probably has, at most, two seasons left with Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton in their primes, Milwaukee desperately needs one of MarJon Beauchamp, Andre Jackson Jr., Johnson, or Chris Livingston to emerge as a potential rotation piece, and year after year, they show they are unable to do so.
The Bucks went 0-5 in summer league. Beauchamp only shot 32.7% from the field and Jackson averaged 4.3 PPG. You can be as athletic as The Hulk, but if you aren’t scoring 5.0 PPG in summer league, you aren’t making an impact on the big league squad.
This is another discouraging bump in the road for Milwaukee, who can’t afford to waste another year of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s prime.
Winner: The NCAA
The last two number one overall picks have been from France and the top two from this year were both Frenchman. While the NBA is sitting back and enjoying its company globally develop like it never has before, the NCAA is watching its organization fail to produce the world’s best prospect like it has since the beginning of time. Players are coming from overseas and other guys are choosing the G League Ignite or basketball overseas over playing in college.
That’s why it must have been a relief to watch Sheppard, Ware, Knecht, Donovan Clingan, Bub Carrington, and others excel in summer league and foreign or non-college players such as Sarr, Tidjane Salaun, and Matas Buzelis struggle to adjust. Of the 10 players on the first and second teams for the All-Summer League teams, all 10 were college players. Summer League MVP, Jalen Wilson, is one of the best college players in recent memory, playing four years at Kansas and winning the championship in 2022.
Typically, foreign forwards like Zaccharie Risacher, Sarr, Salaun, and Buzelis take a bit longer to develop into NBA form and struggle early in their careers. Take Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic for example. However, so far in 2024 which included Duke’s Dereck Lively III making a meteoric rise in the playoffs, the college route looks like the way to go.
Winner: Young Grizzlies Players
I wanted to pick one player for this section, but GG Jackson and Scotty Pippen Jr. both played so well in summer league that the whole young core of Memphis warrants praise.
Pippen had arguably the best stat line of the tournament, posting 21.5 PPG, 5.0 RPG, and 8.7 APG in his six games while having the third-best +/- of any player. His 23-point triple-double in the Grizzlies’ one-point semifinal victory against the Clippers was just the sixth triple-double in summer league history.
Pippen is becoming a revelation for Memphis at this point, but GG Jackson is a player that they had high expectations for going into year two, and he did not disappoint in summer league. The 19-year-old led the team with 22.0 PPG and 8.5 RPG while shooting 37.5% from three—range that the Grizzlies desperately need next season.
Jackson played all six games but still looked as good as other second-year players like Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Brandon Miller who didn’t belong in summer league at all.
If these two guys can come along next year (especially Jackson), Memphis could pose a threat in the Western Conference.
Loser: Hunter Tyson
Tyson is a player I’ve had my eye on Tyson as the next man up in a Denver rotation that grew much thinner when the Magic stole Kentavious Caldwell-Pope from them in free agency. He’s an athletic 6’8 forward and led the Nuggets summer league team in scoring (20.8 PPG) and rebounding (6.0 RPG) in 2023.
In 2024, his scoring slipped to 15.2 PPG and he shot just 31.9% from the field. Not only did teammates, Julian Strawther and Trey Alexander, likely pass him on the depth chart, but he was nearly outplayed by undrafted rookie PJ Hall.
I thought Tyson had great potential after being selected 37th by Denver, but things are looking gloomy after a terrible showing in Vegas.
Winner: Colorado College
Colorado had not had a player of theirs drafted in the top 10 since Chauncey Billups in 1997 until Cody Williams was taken by the Jazz with the 10th pick in the 2024 draft. When the Jazz selected Tristan Da Silva with the 18th pick in the draft, 2024 became the first year since 1981 in which two Colorado players were drafted. To top it all off, the Hornets selected K.J. Simpson with the 42nd pick in the draft.
As you can see from the Sarr graphic, both Williams and Da Silva had productive summer leagues, each scoring at least 15 PPG and shooting over 54%. Williams is already showing shades of his brother Jalen Williams of the OKC Thunder which is a great sign for the young Buffalo.
As with any college program—Kentucky guards are a great example—, the more success your players have in the NBA, the more high-level players you will be able to recruit. The early success of Williams and Da Silva is a great sign for Colorado.
Loser: Alex Sarr
Yes, I already wrote about how bad Sarr was in summer league, but technically that section was titled “Loser: 2nd Overall Picks,” so I’ll take this opportunity to explain to you how terrible Sarr really was. All you have to do is watch this video.
At 7 feet tall, Sarr took seven threes in the game. Six of them were contested threes and two of them were a stepback or a fadeaway three. He took two midrange shots when he had a clear path to the basket against smaller defenders. When he got in the paint, he was either stripped or flailed into a tough, acrobatic shot.
Those last brand of shots—the ones in the paint—are most concerning to me. Sarr is a big, tall, athletic player and has no business getting bodied by smaller defenders in the paint. I understand that defense is his calling card, but geez, that was one of the worst offensive performances I’ve ever witnessed.
Winner: Cooper Flagg
First of all, Flagg’s electric performance in the USA Olympic team scrimmage against the Select Team was enough to take the attention away from the 2024 class and shine it onto him. NBA fans are ready for some real talent to come through the draft after what was one of the most melodramatic build-ups to a draft in history in 2024. I believe that Flagg could’ve gone number one overall in this year’s draft if he was eligible.
With Sarr looking abysmal, Risacher not playing much, and no other top pick making a massive splash, all eyes will be on Flagg this year and he will be considered a revelation once he reaches the draft process in 2025.
Flagg has his freshman season at Duke ahead of him which will test whether he is ready for the bright lights after spending most of his childhood playing in Maine. The “Capture the Flagg” sweepstakes have already begun.