Dunn is looking every bit worthy of the #5 pick. I still can't say that I like his selection but through the first game he's looking good. Active hands leading to several steals; an aggressiveness, attacking the basket on offense. He was able to play along side Tyus pretty well but also with the ball in his hands. Finishing as the highest scorer in the game was a great thing, and will be all the better if it translates into the next season! Last but certainly not least, that crossover was pretty filthy! But it's not all about the Rook, how did some of the other fella's look?
Tyus clearly looked better then the competition. His ability to stay in front of his man on defense is still a work in progress but his distributing and scoring looked requisite of an NBA player. Amazingly he had the most rebounds of anyone who played in the game. The asterisk is the level of competition that they all were going against. Many of these guys will never make it in the NBA but the Nuggets have some very high end guards so it's actually a pretty good litmus test for him and KD, I think!
The other notable player was Adreian Payne. The dude missed an open dunk in the first quarter. It's embarrassing. All things being equal, he did have some nice rebounds and put backs. 5 total rebounds is a paltry total though. The two steals are nice, though they both came early in the game.
So that's the summer big three but how about the rest of the guys?
Wait and see!
The other guy that I had my eyes on is Toure Murry. He's had a pretty good amount of NBA experience for a summer leaguer. He's also got good size at 6'5" but how did he do? He played the fifth most minutes in the game, which may be significant since he didn't start. He only scored eight points, but none of the "other guys" scored in double figures so read into that what you will.
The fifth guy of note is Coty Clarke. The people over at Canishoopus.com are obsessed with this guy but I'm not sold on him yet. Nothing, statistically or to my eye, popped out to me about him in the game. Well that's not true, he had some pretty weak efforts on defense that stuck out to me.
I don't think it's fair to draw any hard conclusions from the first game of summer league, but these guys only have so much time to prove that they deserve an increased shot in the Winter.
Saunders only went 8 players deep in the game so it'll be interesting to see how things are switched before the next game on Sunday afternoon. My guess is that Xavier Silas will be pulled from the starting line up and either Clarke or Murry will be inserted, depending on the matchup.
They weren't able to pull out the victory but all in all I'd say things went as they would have been predicted to go otherwise. The best thing I saw was Dunn's ability to play alongside Tyus at the shooting and point guards respectively.
What do you think? Did I miss anything?
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