Statistics can be misleading and lead to faulty measures when assessing players at the NBA Summer League being held in Las Vegas. Each team’s objective varies; each team’s development plan is designed for their specific needs and vision of constructing a championship roster, so a player’s 3-point shooting percentage or efficiency rating for guarding ball screens isn’t definitively revelatory.
The Knicks’ squad lacks a player who has distinguished himself as a surefire mainstay of new Head Coach Mike Brown’s rotation next season. However, there’s still hope that second-year point guard Tyler Kolek; 24-year-old small forward MarJon Beauchamp (the 24th overall pick in the first round by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2022); or Kevin McCullar Jr., a 24-year-old shooting guard who had a stellar college career at Texas Tech and then Kansas before being selected by the Phoenix Suns in the second round (No. 56 overall) and traded to the Knicks on draft night, can emerge as reliable bench depth — a weakness for the team last season.
It’s still debatable but moot as to whether there was a talent deficit among the reserves, or if former Knicks Head cCoach Tom Thiboeau seemingly self-destructively lacked trust in players who could have been effective contributors. It became a source of contention — albeit briefly — between him and starting small forward Mikal Bridges in the second week of March during a West Coast road trip when Bridges, who was averaging nearly 38 minutes per game, suggested to Thibodeau that he use the bench more.
“Sometimes it’s not fun on the body,” said Bridges at the time. “You’ll want that as a coach, but [I] also talked to him a little bit, knowing that we’ve got a good enough team where our bench guys can come in and we don’t need to play 48 (minutes), 47.” As Bridges elaborated, “We’ve got a lot of good guys on this team [who] can take away minutes, which helps the defense, helps the offense, helps tired bodies being out there and giving up all these points. It helps just keeping fresh bodies out there.”
Even with signings of free agents Jordan Clarkson, a shooting guard, and Guerschon Yabusele, a power forward, the Knicks, with justifiable championship aspirations, need more reinforcements.
Conversely, the Brooklyn Nets, whose summer league squad was 0-3 after a 97-93 loss to the Knicks on Tuesday night, is on a vastly different timeline than their fellow New York City franchise. They are taking an approach similar to the newly crowned NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder: to accumulate numerous draft picks, and maximize and leverage their value. They used three of them last month in the NBA Draft to take guard Egor Demin (No. 8), guard Nolan Traore (No. 19), and 7-0 forward/center Danny Wolf (No. 27).
The Nets, who won just 26 games this past season under Jordi Fernandez in his first year as a head coach, are being prudently patient in understanding that the Thunder went from 24-58 in the 2021–2022 season to a league title three years later.
The Knicks’ opportunity is now. The Nets’ chance will come later, but perhaps not much later. Yet the summer league is not an indicator. It’s simply a glimpse.