Biggest NBA Summer League Disappointments So Far
The NBA Summer League begs for overreactions.
The player pool often features guys getting their first or second tastes of professional basketball. The more seasoned ones are typically tasked with expanding their games.ย The swift schedule itself has a blink-and-you-missed-it feel, and guys competing for both roster and rotation spots can't leave much more than an immediate impression.
But we're trying to be as patient as we can be in this environment.
There's still a fire-take aspect of this exercise since we've barely made it beyond pool play. But we're at least forgiving wide-eyed rookies for a couple of stumbles and excluding them from consideration.ย (You're welcome, all you sub-40 percent shooting freshmen out there.)
The ones we're actually worried about are summer-league veterans who don't look the part. The five following players are the biggest disappointments for not only struggling during their second or even third appearances in this setting, but also because their woes might have regular-season ramifications.
Dragan Bender
The good news for Dragan Bender is he doesn't need to ask for directions around Sin City. He is playing his third season of summer league, which is concerning on its own.
But maybe if the 2016 No. 4 pick could dominate, it would boost his confidence for the varsity circuit. As a 7-footer with a career 37.8 field-goal percentage, he obviously needed some type of lift.
That isn't happening. In fact, he's basically the same inefficient, unsure player Suns fans have seen the last two seasons.
He's averaging more shots (7.0) than points (6.6) and converting just 37.1 percent overall. His lack of rebounding (5.2) isn'tย tooย worrisome since that's never been a strength. But his disappearing playmaking (two assists in five games) makes one wonder if he can carve a niche greater than oversized average shooter (33.3 percent from three).
"The guy I am most concerned about is Dragan Bender,"ย The Athletic'sย Sam Vecenieย wrote. "He has played at a level commensurate with the question, 'Should we actually pick up his fourth-year option?'"
The upcoming season will be the most critical of Bender's career. It's not only about his contract option; it's showing he can keep pace on a squad aiming to accelerate its rebuild. If he stumbles again, the Suns have enough frontcourt options that they don't have to keep waiting on him.
If he keeps struggling like this, they won't.
Henry Ellenson
Henry Ellenson looks so unpolished that this almost feels like we're picking on the new guy.
Except, like Bender, Ellenson is on summer league No. 3. He's not even three months younger than Devin Booker, who has already skyrocketed to max-contract status. Ellenson, meanwhile, is stuck on the launching pad, holding two-year averages of 3.7 points on 36.2 percent shooting and 2.1 rebounds in 8.3 minutes per game.
His counting categories are up in Vegas but only because the Detroit Pistons are giving him every opportunity they can. He's not only logging 30 minutes per contest, but he's also tied for the fifth-most field-goal attempts in the entire event (66 in four outings, 16.5 per night).
This approach has yet to pay off for the Pistons. He's putting up just 12.9 points on those 16.5 shots. His field-goal percentage is a comically low 25.8, the worst mark among players with 45-plus attempts. He has four made threes on 31 attempts (12.9 percent) and 19 turnovers already.
"He's chucking to an almost insane level, and it isn't working out," Basketball Insiders'ย Ben Dowsettย wrote. "... For a guy like Ellenson, the 18th pick in 2016, this just isn't good enough. He's 21 now, older than many of the guys he's playing against, and this kind of inefficiency is really concerning."
Ellenson is running out of time to impress the Pistons. They clearly think of themselves as a win-now clubโwhy else trade for Blake Griffin and hire Dwane Casey?โand as such won't have the most patience for a sub-37 percent shooting big man. This recent run offers little hope of Ellenson forcing his way into the 2018-19 rotation.
Terrance Ferguson
Terrance Ferguson only occupies a sliver of the Oklahoma City Thunder'sย historic payroll. But he plays a quietly significant role in the franchise's future.
At least, he will if he can prove capable of handling regular minutes. They often gave them to him out of necessity last season, and he couldn't take advantage.
He was supposed to be a three-point specialist (71.0ย three-point attempt rate), but he never shot like one (33.3 percent). He had gobs of defensive potential, but it never turned into anything (minus-2.45 defensive real plus-minus, 101st among 110 shooting guards, perย ESPN.com). OKC faredย 11.7 pointsย better per 100 possessions when heย didn't play.
The Thunder have given him the keys to their summer castle, as his development could be critical. He's the only first-rounder on the Las Vegas roster and the biggest hope for internal improvement on a club that's light on both financial flexibility and high-upside prospects.
So far, he's doing little to inspire confidence. He has 35 points on 40 shots. His 30.0/20.0/70.0 shooting slash looks like someone set the difficulty level too high. He has six assists and eight turnovers in 143 minutes.
Some of this is the result ofย experimentingย and asking Ferguson to step outside his comfort zone. But the hope in doing so is that he'll prove capable of adding something different to his game. Somehow, his skill set looks slimmer than it did during the regular season. At least he was knocking down shots back then.
Josh Jackson
It speaks volumes about Josh Jackson's second half that for all the new pieces since added to the Suns' arsenal, he still carried some of the most excitement into summer league.
After wandering aimlessly into the All-Star break, Jackson returned with a purpose. His attacks had newfound levels of focus, production and efficiency. His scoring spiked from 11.2 points to 18.7, further enhanced by a similar jump in field-goal shooting (40.6 to 43.8). He added almost two rebounds per game (4.1 to 5.9) and more than doubled his assists (1.2 to 2.5).
Las Vegas, Jackson said, would be his next springboard to even greater success.
"I think that should be every second-year player's plan to come out here and show that they got better," he said, per Bright Side of the Sun'sย Dave King. "I thought I did all right in summer league last year, but obviously I want to come out and blow my last performance out of the water."
Jackson's stats are all sinking, instead.
He was a nightly supplier of 17.4 points (on 42.5 percent shooting) and 9.2 rebounds during the last summer circuit. This time around, he's only providing 10.3 points (on 24.4 percent) and 2.3 boards. He has just one made three on 11 long-range looks and more than twice as many turnovers (nine) as assists (four).
Whatever clicked for him beforeโtheย long hair, maybe?โhas yet to surface this summer. That's not enough to lessen his importance to the franchise, but it suggests he has work to do to keep from getting passed over in the crowded wing rotation.
TJ Leaf
How early is too early to start worrying about a top-20 pick?
The Indiana Pacers aren't at that point with TJ Leaf, last summer's 18th overall selection. But they'd surely welcome more evidence suggesting he was worth the investment.
He struggled to find the floor as a freshman, and the Pacers were usually worse when he did (minus-9.7ย with him, plus-3.3 without). The 21-year-old looks no closer to making consistent contributions yet.
His 36.4/20.0/63.6 summer-league shooting slash is bad enough on its own, but it's brutal when considering how important shot-making is to his NBA identity. Reliable spacing is his potential ticket to floor time, as that's the one area Thaddeus Young and Kyle O'Quinn can't cover.
If Leaf looks like this, though, then neither can he.
"Last year's first-round pick doesn't look sure of himself shooting,"ย J. Michaelย wrote for theย Indianapolis Star. "Opponents either are not running at Leaf or using short closeouts because they expect a miss so they can be in position to rebound."
Leaf was always going to be fighting an uphill battle for a regular-season rotation spot. The frontcourt is congested with Young, O'Quinn, Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis, and that's before factoring in small-ball minutes for Bojan Bogdanovic and/or Doug McDermott.
If Leaf can't shake his shooting funk, he'll be out of the frontcourt competition before it even starts.
Statistics used courtesy ofย Basketball Referenceย orย NBA.comย and are accurate through July 13, 2018.
Zach Buckley covers theย NBAย for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter:ย @ZachBuckleyNBA.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
