Sioux Falls Skyforce Summer League Assessment

Lonzo Ball, Markelle Fulz and Jayson Tatum had the most eyeballs trained on them during Summer League. It’s worth recapping how the Sioux Falls Skyforce entrants fared.

Four players are under NBA contract and they got some serious work done in their time on the hardwood this July. The other seven had varying degrees of influence with a couple in particular rising above the rest. From this statistical overview, please note that the games are 40 minutes in length as opposed to the 48-minute duration for normal NBA games.

Among the call-ups, Okaro White played in seven summer league contests averaging 33 minutes per game, the former Florida State grad shot 39.4 percent from the floor, 40 percent from downtown and 83 percent from the line. White also accumulated 1 double double while averaging 18.6 points and 8.1 rebounds.

Call-up number 2 is Briante Weber while in 5 games with Charlotte across 27.3 minutes, his point production reached twin figures (11.6 points) on 42 percent shooting while doing a lot of damage at the foul line. Throw in 4 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.8 steals per outing and Weber looks to training camp as the next opportunity.

Last year’s pair of first rounders on assignment from Denver also made some headway. Malik Beasley piled up the points in his 5 games in NBA Summer League (19.4 per game with 5 rebounds) and Juancho Hernangomez appeared in 3 contests and tried hard to match (16.3 points, 7.3 rebounds).

Four others with previous NBA experience each stated their own case for a return to the Association. Jarnell Stokes seemed fully recovered from last year’s injury to play in 11 games for Indiana and Portland with production (12.8 points and 7.4 rebounds) and some range (2 of 4 from deep). Larry Drew II hit a game winner for Philadelphia and over the 6 games for the Sixers had a well rounded stat line of 8.3 points and 5.7 assists. Luis Montero also did double-duty with Dallas and Sacramento and showed an impressive outside stroke (14-26 3 point shooting) and also averaged 1.9 steals over his 10 games. Keith Benson continued his consistent play by averaging 6.7 points and 6.2 rebounds in 6 outings with New Orleans.

The final two were a little more limited in their Summer League production as Bubu Palo focused on running the point with Indiana in three games played. Stefan Jankovic did not score during two brief appearances for Orlando. Credit does to Palo who signed with Promitheas Patras of the Greek Basket League on July 11.

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