Basketball Intelligence for 7/18/24
Underdiscussed teams, questioning Summer League's value, and more!
LEAGUE AND OLYMPIC STORIES
The 7 most underdiscussed NBA teams this offseason
Zach Lowe, ESPN+
NBA Summer League 1st-half takeaways: Reed Sheppard, Matas Buzelis lead early standouts
Krysten Peek, Yahoo Sports
Men’s Olympic basketball teams at 2024 Paris games, ranked by gold medal chances
Ricky O’Donnell, SB Nation
Summer League is far from helpful
David Thorpe,
Back then, getting into the gym was the only way to see the games at all, but getting tickets was easy. Now you don’t dare go to the bathroom; if you leave your seat, hundreds of people are waiting to fill it. Summer League has come a long way for fans. It’s a full stadium, and people are having fun. That’s great.
But it has all come at a giant cost to player development. Summer League used to be a great place to gather reference points for improvement. Summer League has become almost detrimental to development. Ask yourself why players get 10 fouls before being disqualified here. Who is that helping? Certainly not the player, who needs no more than six fouls to learn lessons.
Takeaways from Team USA’s Abu Dhabi swing: Who’s scoring, Kevin Durant’s progress and more
Joe Vardon, The Athletic
NBA Summer League: Standout players from Day 11
Staff, NBA.com
In France, former NBA guard Tim Frazier embraces the overseas experience
Marc J. Spears, Andscape
NBA summer league buzz: Intel, reaction from Las Vegas
Staff, ESPN
"I was never in the group of people that thought this was a historically bad class," one NBA executive told ESPN this week. "Young players nowadays are so specialized from an early age and so exposed to high-level training and competition against their peers and college and NBA players. ... None of these guys are afraid of NBA players anymore because they've matched up against them in open gyms for years. The level of competition in college basketball and internationally is higher than it's ever been."