Celtics Win The Utah Summer League Championship In Dramatic Fashion
Jesus Kevin if you wanted a ring so bad I guess we should have said you could play for our Summer League team during the meeting this past weekend. There’s a lot of Banner 18 talk around these parts, pretty awesome it came just four days after they started playing. That has to be some sort of record. Prepare to have your day filled with hardos who will be quick to point out summer league doesn’t matter. You know what that sounds like? A loser. Sounds like someone butthurt their team didn’t win a Summer League title. Winning is a culture, a mentality, and you built those things through experiences. The Celtics take the court and they win, no denying that. Undefeated, two of the wins coming without Brown and Hunter, and the fact that this championship came against SA makes it all the more sweet.
The year, 2015. The score 93-93. The time 2.5 seconds. A trip to the Finals on the line, you know what happened
Terry’s ridiculous fade away out shined, and probably stuck in his mind all year. So, as the leader of this year’s team, averaging 19 points 6.3 rebounds 5 assists on 46%/33% splits this summer, when the Celtics found themselves with a chance to steal this game, Terry made sure this one stuck
When your brain is telling you to remain calm, to not overreact, sometimes it’s better to follow your heart. I’m in, we’re seeing progression right before our eyes. Everything about Rozier’s game this summer has screamed confidence. It’s almost as if he’s a completely different player. All of the sudden everything is under control, but still at a great pace.
Listen, Isaiah is by far the best player on the roster at getting to the rim, but you know what, Rozier isn’t that far behind. Spin moves, shammgods, floaters, it doesn’t matter. Most impressive is probably the floater, as we’ve seen with Isaiah if you can have a strong floater game as a quick athletic guard, it’s lights out. When you talk about seizing your opportunity, can’t do it much than Terry’s time in Utah.
Stepping up while guys are out has been the theme of the summer so far, and with Brown and Hunter out Rozier was fortunate to not have to carry the burden himself. All he had to do was look to his backcourt-mate and see a guy who’s rapidly jumping up my summer league crush list. Demetrius Jackson turned in his best performance of the summer, and by the end of the night was a team high +9. It must suck to be Marcus Thornton because let me tell you. If Jackson is going to shoot the ball like this, Danny gets a steal. What we’ve seen from Jackson is that from a body standpoint he certainly doesn’t get overpowered, which at the very least Summer League tells you right away. A defense first guard with good size who when you look really really fast on this one play he kinda looks like a mix of Tony Allen and Marcus
I’ll be honest with you, it’s tough to find someone who didn’t play well. Sure Young could have shot the ball better, but at least he hit a couple threes. Remember this team needs shooting. And what else is there to say about Yabu other than I’m two more good games away from being ready to give him NBA minutes. Throw him to the fire and watch him most likely get overmatched but maybe only by a little. What we’ve seen from him over the last two games has been much more efficient, he’s moving well, he’s active (2 steals last night) and he’s big enough to hold his own on the glass. Three years from now, who knows?
Everything I just said about Yabu, is true for Ben Bentil’s performance in Utah. He had his moments, but what impressed me was how consistent he was. Players like Jackson and Yabu and Bentil are what make summer league great. Much like those two, our first impression of Bentil is that he didn’t appear to be really overmatched. Looking back on the Celts time in Utah I think most of us are pretty happy. Each of our rookies showed us some things, we saw progression from Rozier and Young, they showed that they can come from behind and execute down the stretch of a tight game, and best of all, they never lost.
We now turn the page to Las Vegas. Next up comes a date with Chicago on Saturday, and I’m excited to see Brown vs Valentine. Would have been nice for him to drop a few and we could have had them both. Ah well.
UPDATE: