NBA Summer League: 7/12/08

19'9" is in Vegas all week for the NBA Summer League. Here are my impressions from Saturday's games(a little slow in getting them up, but hey, I'm in Vegas). I hope to get Monday's games up soon.

Sacramento 93, Toronto 86

Jason Thompson looked nothing like the 12th overall pick, or even a first-rounder. He was completely lost on both ends of the floor for a large portion of this game.

Fortunately for him, I thought that Glen "Big Baby" Davis looked lost during the first few games of last year's Summer League, and he looked good in his finale and then contributed during stretches of his rookie campaign. If Thompson can prove to be as quick a study as Davis, he might be okay.

Charlotte 81, Los Angeles Clippers 66

Eric Gordon didn't impress during his first game on Friday - 5 of 17 shooting - and he wasn't anything special in his second game, either. He went 4 for 10 from the field, and his jumper certainly has not, as yet, looked as advertised. He also left the game in the fourth quarter with a leg injury. They may very well have been keeping him out just as a precaution, but it's not a great sign for someone who spent a large portion of his lone college season hampered by injury.

One thing about Gordon, though; the baby fat he carried at Indiana is gone, as is the t-shirt he wore under his jersey as a Hoosier, often a sign that a player doesn't have an "NBA body." He's still short for a shooting guard, but he definitely has the arms and chest of an NBA player.

Denver 99, Philadelphia 85

The Sixers put in a horrible defensive effort despite having the best several players on the floor. Denver won convincingly despite having a roster full of marginal NBA talent.

Jason Smith played awkwardly, and we may quickly be seeing why Philly signed Elton Brand and drafted Marreese Speights, though Smith is big enough that he should get some minutes backing up Samuel Dalembert at center. Speaking of Speights, he, like Gordon, appears to have shed weight since college, and he too looks like an NBA player now.

Memphis 88, Milwaukee 79

The most entertaining part of this day came in the warmups to the day's final matchup, when Milwaukee's Joe "Vanilla Sky" Alexander and Memphis' Brent Petway held an impromptu informal dunk constest. Alexander had what a buddy of mine who worked at the scorers' table of home games for the Vancouver Grizzlies for three years called one of the best warmup dunks he'd ever seen (a windmill that I missed because I was watching Petway on the other end). My favorite of his was an alley-oop where he caught the pass at chest level when he and the ball were still on their way up, the extended it high above his head while gliding in for a jam. Think of a weightlifter doing a clean and jerk, and that's similar to the effect. Petway, for his part, may even be a better leaper, and his jam where he stuck his whole forearm in the basket, Vince Carter style, was sweet.

I've never been high on Alexander, and he certainly didn't change my mind with this performance. He made just 2 of 13 shots and grabbed three rebounds in 33 minutes. They played him in the post a little bit, and while the pro of this is that he is athletic enough to get off a turnaround jumper, he's not a good enough shooter to make it. The ball doesn't get up to the rim particularly softly, and he was offline more often than not.

Other quick thoughts from Saturday's games:

-Watching Mike Conley Jr. go head-to-head with Ramon Sessions made it clear why Conley was the fourth overall draft pick in 2007 and Sesssions went at 56.

-O.J. Mayo is a small dude. Not just short, which we knew, and not necessarily lacking definition in his upper body. He just doesn't have a particularly think torso and upper body. He's also something of a turnover machine who doesn't have the handle yet to play point guard in the NBA. But man, can he shoot. Hands down, he has the best looking shot of anyone I've seen in the first two days of games I've watched. I'm not talking about his form -- who cares about his form when his ball looks as good as it does? High-arcing, soft on the rim. A thing to behold.

-Poor P.J. Tucker. He's a terrific player and the kind of guy who will always kill it during Summer League and against less competition because of his effort and savvy, but he's too small to play four in the NBA and his skill set just doesn't translate to the three (and even there, he's undersized).