Lakers Summer League Player Grades: Bad start, great finish
After a Summer League that saw them start slow before finding their groove in Las Vegas, let’s grade their performances between the two events.
It was a wild couple of weeks for the Lakers Summer League team across San Francisco and Las Vegas. After looking awful in the California Classic and in the opening games of Las Vegas, the Lakers eventually found a rhythm and won a handful of games down the stretch.
There were some big positives, namely in Dalton Knecht, and some big negatives. While it’s important to take Summer League with a bit of a grain of salt, it’s still also fair to evaluate how things played out.
So, with that in mind, let’s grade the Lakers, who finished 3-5. To avoid grading some players with no future with the franchise, we drew a line at needing to have played five games, with one exception in Moses Brown.
As always, grades are based on expectations for each player. A “B” grade represents the average performance for that player.
Dalton Knecht
28.9 minutes, 18 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 36.7% FG, 34.2% 3PT
Knecht pretty much embodied the Lakers Summer League path. In The Bay, he struggled. But once he got to Vegas and got a better feel for things, he excelled. To that point, he averaged 21.3 points on 39.1% from the 3-point line in Las Vegas.
The best-case scenario for a team is their rookie looking like one of the best players on the court in Summer League and that was absolutely the case in Vegas.
There are still some concerns, but his role will look a lot different with the Lakers this season than it did this summer. And the things he’ll be asked to do with the actual team were areas he succeeded this summer.
All in all, a huge success for Knecht.
Grade: A
Bronny James
25.2 minutes, 7 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1 steal, 32.7% FG, 13% 3PT
Look, the Bronny discourse is pretty toxic and, honestly, pointless. It’s very rare that the 55th pick looks good in Summer League. It’s rare 55th picks even regularly play in Summer League in some instances.
Bronny is a long way away from contributing at the NBA level. But he also showed that he is a very good defender and has a legitimate path to the NBA. And in the final games of Summer League, he really started to find a groove.
I’m excited about his future, even if his summer was more bad than good.
Grade: C+
Maxwell Lewis
23.2 minutes, 9.6 points, 4 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 32.1% FG, 21.7% 3PT
To a similar point about wanting your rookies to stand out above the others in Vegas, you want your second-year players to just look leaps and bounds better than the rest of the competition. You want them to reach a point where they’re shut down before the end of Summer League because they’re too good.
That did not happen with Lewis. He struggled a lot. To the point that I think the Lakers should strongly consider using him to incentivize a team into a salary dump trade.
Lewis has all the looks of an NBA player but it just hasn’t clicked for any meaningful stretch.
Grade: D
Colin Castleton
24 minutes, 11 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 0.9 blocks, 53.1% FG
On one hand, Castleton looked a lot like he did last season, and that’s a good player for Summer League. He was a good anchor at the center position.
However, he still was below average defensively and he still didn’t show much range offensively. The rest of the summer is going to be big for him, especially to improve his game offensively. Otherwise, there’s a pretty low ceiling on his game, and that’s as a good G League player that won’t be able to do much in the NBA.
Grade: B+
Armel Traore
16 minutes, 6.9 points, 4.8 rebounds, 48.7% FG, 22.2% 3PT
Traore’s game is pretty limited, but he is a great energy type of big man. At 21 years old, he still has some time to grow and I think he could be an interesting player with some development.
Grade: B-
Blake Hinson
20.8 minutes, 10.9 points, 2.5 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 34.1% FG, 32.8% 3PT
Hinson started and ended Summer League with strong performances, scoring 42 points on 10-21 3-point shooting in those games. In the six others, he managed just 45 points on 11-42 shooting from range.
There’s a clear way for him to contribute, which is as a shooter. But if his shot isn’t falling, he doesn’t offer much else.
Grade: C
Tommy Kuhse
22.9 minutes, 9.3 points, 4 assists, 2.4 rebounds, 2.3 turnovers, 40.6% FG, 30.3% 3PT
While Kuhse was a fun story, partly because he looked like this site’s former editor-in-chief, his game was unfortunately not all that much better than Harrison’s either.
Jokes aside, Kuhse is a fun player but one that is very far away from ever being an NBA guy. This Summer League team struggled largely because the players running the offense were pretty subpar, Kuhse among those.
Grade: C+
Moses Brown
14.1 minutes, 9.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.5 blocks, 54.2% FG
Considering he’s been in the year for many years, Brown looked like someone who was physically too much for lots of Summer League bigs to handle. Still, he provided a big boost to the team and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s brought into training camp, though.
That being said, the Lakers don’t have much of a way to add him to the roster and looking good against Summer Leaguers is a lot different than doing it against NBA guys.
Grade: B+
Sean East, Quincy Olivari
The final two guys are grouped together because neither stood out, particularly. Both look like decent enough potential South Bay Lakers guards but neither really look like anything more than that.
Grade: C-
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.