Mitch Cumsteen

I consider myself to be a connoisseur of Summer League. The first one I attended in Vegas was well over 10 years ago. I've made the mistake of falling in love with certain players based on their summer league performance, only to be heartbroken when they get to the real league and can't do shit (see Belineli, Marco going for 37 in his debut). Certain things translate. Certain things don't. Things that do NOT necessarily translate: scoring and shooting. Things that do: basketball IQ vis a vis moving without the ball, being unselfish, making the right pass, and creating shots for your teammates. And on defense making rotations, picking up cutters and helping out. Hustle and defensive effort translates. Having a nose for the ball and coming up with 50/50 balls translates. Athleticism only translates in its absence, if you are clearly outclassed physically. That is a bad sign, but even if you belong athletically or are a superior athlete, it doesn't necessarily portend anything good. It's just a baseline. All of this is an extremely longwinded way of saying that I don't give fuck one that Alex Sarr went 0 for 15 nearly as much as I do that he took a massive dump on the basketball gods with this bullshit:

Agreed on both. I never thought Il Sogno was that special. If Le Reve (another of Andrew Weissman’s restaurants) were still around, it would be the no brainer choice. Don’t think juicy burger is going to make the cut.

Mixtli is probably the surest best bet in San Antonio to get a star.

Cissoko has a real contract and counts against the 15. Notwithstanding the two-ways guys or an unexpected trade, this looks like what they're taking into the season: CP3, Jones, Castle, Wesley Vassell, Branham Keldon, Champagnie, Cissoko Sochan, Barnes, Mamu Wemby, Collins, Bassey Here's what I wrote at the beginning of the offseason: I think they addressed most of this stuff. They should be better off from the outside adding Paul and Barnes. It's still an area that needs addressing long term, but it should be improved at least. I don't know about the defense being better, though. Barnes seems to have taken a step back defensively, CP3 ain't getting any younger, and we will have to see how much of an impact Castle has. He could definitely change the calculus there. Having Paul should also help reduce their turnovers, but again, a lot of the turnover stuff will fall on Wemby's personal development. I saw him have a couple of really bad ones for France the other day that gave me some pause. They for sure upgraded the point guard position. They didn't add another bruiser -- hopefully Bassey can stay healthy and provide some bulk. And they 100% added winning vets. I don't know how much this is going to really impact the bottom line. The Vegas o/u is 35 and it doesn't seem far off to me. The conference is brutal. If they played in the east, it's a different story but there aren't going to be many off nights in the west. Depending on what Utah does, Portland is the only tanker right now. Forget about good teams missing the playoffs, there are going to be good teams missing the play-in. I'm looking at this season as a bridge. Unless Wemby does some superhero shit, which isn't out of the question, I think best outcome for this team is that they play some meaningful games down the stretch vying for the play-in, but ultimately fall short and collect one more round of ping pong balls before unleashing hell on the league.

Ingram gets one of them otherwise what a waste of a fairly high second round pick. They could have used it on Bronny. Can’t you have three guys on two way contracts now? Or did make that up in my head?

Both on vet minimums so they can still use the full mid level exception, although I think that maxes them at 15 roster spots. Not that they couldn’t unload somebody if they needed to.

Starts today… July 15 10 a.m. ET: Commissioner Greg Sankey discusses state of the conference 11 a.m. ET: LSU head coach Brian Kelly and players 12:35 p.m. ET: South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer and players 2:50 p.m. ET: Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin and players 4:20 p.m. ET: Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea and players Tuesday, July 16 10:05 a.m. ET: Georgia head coach Kirby Smart and players 11:45 a.m. ET: Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel and players 1:50 p.m. ET: Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables and players 3:20 p.m. ET: Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz and players Wednesday, July 17 10:05 a.m. ET: Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer and players 11:35 a.m. ET: Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby and players 1:50 p.m. ET: Florida head coach Billy Napier and players 3:20 p.m. ET: Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and players Thursday, July 18 10:35 a.m. ET: Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman and players 12:05 p.m. ET: Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko 2:05 p.m. ET: Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze and players 3:25 p.m. ET: Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops and players

Here’s some video that really shows this. He’s got such good pace and is really crafty in the pick and roll. It’s going to be deadly when they run it with Vic and they have to be conscious of the lob threat. I’m not worried about his shot. It’s confidence and decisiveness more than form. It will get better as he gets more comfortable in the offense and knows when and where the shots will come from. He’s got to think too much now. Just needs reps.

Castle was impressive again. The shot is still a work in progress but it’s not horrible. He missed some easy middies kinda badly but some improvement there will go miles. He’s going to be able to get to his spots regardless. Great handle, great pace, he’s crafty in the pick and roll, and he’s smart beyond his age. He’s also very strong and physical on both ends, surprisingly so for a 19 year old kid. He will never be accused of playing soft. He’s going to make winning plays on both sides of the court. One sort of throwaway play stands out. It was the end of the quarter and Portland had the ball. He was standing in the corner guarding his man at the three point line. There was a driver who was also covered heading toward him as the clock was ticking down. Castle stuck to his man until the last beat when he knew he could jump over to double team and force a more difficult shot but it was safe to leave his man because if they passed to him he wouldn’t have time to get the shot off. The little things, he understands them innately.

Bad contracts definitely still exist. I would argue that they’re even more critical as contending teams try to stay out of the second apron. In the grand scheme of things the Brooks contract isn’t that awful. But if Denver had $20 million, they would have given it to KCP. And the reason they are losing their supporting cast is because they gave MPJ a max deal that he isn’t worth. That is the definition of a bad contract.

Fredericksburg road, a couple of blocks off of 10.

I’m sure the Rockets front office would be too. They would probably have to send out a first round pick to move off of him. It was a dumb contract when they gave it to him and it’s still a dumb contract that has three years left on it. Beware of summer league and small sample sizes and all that… And I only saw highlights of Sheppard, but that shooting and range shouldn’t surprise anybody. He’s one of the best shooters to come into the league I can remember. The question is whether he can stay in front of anybody and not die on screens. That will determine his ceiling but at a minimum he’s going to change the dimensions of the spacing on offense just by standing at the three point line. Add in his movement and it should really open things up.

Horrible break for Holmes and Denver. He was likely going to be in the rotation. The nuggets have had a pretty rough summer.

Does Charles think cable is free?

I've made the argument before that Garcia's is the best restaurant in town. Not the best Mexican food, the best restaurant, period. So, so good.

Wemby and Jokic going at it right now live on NBATV for those of you interested. https://www.nba.com/watch/event/france-vs-serbia

This is a lot of cabbage for a 6th seed with no bench.

Yeah... that's a head scratcher. Love me some Derrick White, but objectively Brown is a better player. Brown thinks he got snubbed because of Nike. He's currently playing without a shoe deal and called Nike out for their ethics when they dropped Kyrie. https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/jaylen-brown-nike-tweet-explained-beef-usa-olympics-snub/d9579f85999119dc4b30492a#:~:text=When Brown was drafted by,for the past three seasons.

Same. Also, thread title still checks out.

Yeah... it's going to be interesting to see how LP shakes out after this but I promise you I'm not buying yet another streaming service in Peacock just so I can watch hoops on Monday nights. Fuck all that. I'm also interested to see what happens to the local games with all the Ballys bankruptcy stuff. I know Amazon bought part of them, so are they going to try to charge me extra for that, too? Fucking ridiculous.

In general I agree with you, but their playoff run wasn't exactly a gauntlet. 19 games with lots of rest in between. They played 20 the year before when they didn't even make the finals.

Aeshtray Targaryan

Suck for Luck. Don’t think that one will ever be topped.

Cooper Flagg was apparently beyond impressive in Team USA scrimmages. Unlike 2024, this is a deep, deep draft and there's even a small possibility that Flagg isn't the first guy selected. For a decent portion of the league, the 2025 season is going to be a race to the bottom, the likes of which we haven't seen since all the way back in 2023. It looks like we will have probably 8 teams (6 of them in the East) actively not trying to win. And Flagg isn't the only prize here. Looking at the potential tankers, I have Brooklyn and Washington at a tie for 1st (last) place playing completely abhorrent basketball. Both these teams are relatively new to the tank and will embrace it with extreme gusto. It's going to be ugly. In the next tier, I've got Detroit and Portland. Both have put together some solid tanking the last few years, but don't have much to show for it. They should both still be terrible. In the third tier, I have Chicago, Toronto, and Charlotte. They all have some decent young roster talent that will fuck around and accidentally win some games. Nothing would be more hilarious than Chicago finally embracing the tank only to have Zach Lavine come back to play 82 games at an all-star level, them still not being able to move his contract, and the Bulls getting back into the play in. And finally, I have Utah. They need to pick a lane and embrace the tank, but they can't fully do it without unloading Markkanen and they aren't going to give him up for nothing. The West is so loaded that there are going to be some competitive teams that get pushed into the lottery. The Spurs won't be outright tanking unless Wemby misses some significant time, but even a 15 game improvement only gets them to 37 wins.