2014 Summer League rosters – Indiana
July 6th, 2014
Lavoy Allen – Allen was the third part of the Danny Granger/Evan Turner trade, but has barely improved in three years. He is still one of the most inefficient scorers in the league – he can hit a mid-range shot, but he only takes them, and there’s nothing efficient about a mid range jump shot. You have to hit 50% of them just to score a point per possession, with very few foul shots in the process, and Allen has yet to add the three point range to it. On the plus side, the rest of his game outside of scoring is very solid. He picked up his rebounding rate last year, still passes well, and defends through physicality, temperament and IQ rather than length or athleticism. Allen is said to already have agreed a deal to re-sign with the Pacers, which makes plenty of sense, because he is a very solid backup power forward. They can now waive Luis Scola, save money, and lose little. Eric Atkins – Atkins is very hardy, playing huge minutes in almost every game. In those minutes, he is a very steadying presence, sporting an assist/turnover ratio of slightly over 2.5 to one and making very few mistakes. The trade-off is an absence of dynamic play. Reasonably big for a point guard, but not especially fast or athletic, Atkins does not has the speed to consistently penetrate the first line of the defence and collapse it. He racks up his assists through feeding the post and moving it around without making bad passes, rather than through drawing the defence. Atkins is not a particularly bold or audacious ball handler, either, but he keeps the dribble alive and rarely loses it, partly because he rarely takes it into traffic but also because of the same […]
2013 Summer League rosters, Orlando Summer Pro League – Miami
July 9th, 2013
Jackie Carmichael Carmichael would likely have been drafted were he from a bigger school. He scores around the paint with good touch, rebounds the ball, and protects the rim without fouling. He’s big enough, athletic enough, skilled enough, to make the NBA. But he just wasn’t seen enough. Ian Clark Clark is this draft’s designated point guard shooter, an efficient one with sufficient size and wingspan to project as a capable defender of the position, even if he hasn’t the playmaking skills to ever be a “true” one. It is odd, then, that he was not drafted. The league always needs shooters, and it just passed on one. Just like the similarly overlooked Carmichael, then, Young has to make it in the hard way. And he might. Vincent Council Council is a markedly poor shooter who takes a high number of shots. To be blunt, his shortcomings are really, really short. Council can’t shoot, but he does. He can pass, and will, but he can’t consistently run a halfcourt. He can steal the ball, but he can’t keep opponents out of the lane. And he can be dynamic in transition, yet it’s heavily undermined by his poor decision making in all facets. There are too many holes in Council’s game to justify him making it as an uptempo third point guard specialist. There are other candidates without them. Dewayne Dedmon Dedmon is about to turn 24, and was seemingly too old to be drafted as a prospect. But a prospect, he is. Last year for USC, he averaged 6.7 points, 7.0 rebounds and 2.1 blocks in only 23 minutes per game. He’s old in relation to his level of development, a touch thin, and raw on the ball skills, but is he really any further behind the curve than Saer […]
