Team: A Lillard, Leonard, Nolan Smith, and possibly Babbitt are rotation players. When you have that many rotation players on your team, your team better do a lot of winning, and they did (4-1). I think that the team figured out that Smith can be a rotation player and that Babbitt should not be a rotation player. Lillard: A Whenever he had a problem, he fixed it. Shot poorly the first half of game 1, shot well for the rest of summer league. 7 turnovers in on game, only 2 a game after that. Completely erased doubts about level of play. Someone pointed out the VSL is basically a college all-star game and he proved he can dominate college all-stars. None of the players picked above him can say that, but not all of them were given a chance. Leonard: B I am discounting game 2 where he was ill. He was who we thought he was Obvious flaws in his game, some of them are easy to fix, others are harder - but they are all fixable. So, it may take some time. Barton: B Improved every game. It was probably a matter of his comfort level increasing every game. High ceiling, high variance - hard to figure out how good he'll be in 2 to 3 years, but it could be very good. Scored 27 points on 17 shots in the last game which was impressive because they didn't just pass him the ball and say "make plays." There was a lot of passing. Tired of people mentioning that he was drafted in the 2nd round, he probably should have been draft at around 20. Babbitt: C- Can't defend college all-stars. They tried to play Babbitt in the high post in an attempt to expand his game a bit and it didn't really work out. Missed many open 3s. It's understandable to miss a lot of contested shots, but if he wants to make it in the league he has to his more than half of this open shots because he's giving up so much on the other end. Nolan Smith: A/B/I Didn't play enough really for an adequate analysis. As a shooting guard, his grade is an A shooting well over 50% and around 25 PPG for 1.5 games. As a PG, he showed he was competent but it's clearly not his strength, which at 6'2" it needs to be. However, after losing confidence last season and now showing much, he definitely showed he's an NBA player. Others: B Bost, Ibekwe, and others showed that they've got some NBA game and if injuries or a massive trade happens they'd be fine. Bost showed he could run the point and hit the 3. Ibekwe is a sad story just missing out as the last cut in training camp a couple of times, and now he's getting older.
So Babbitt, who led the team in +/-, was by far the worst player on the summer league roster according to you, even after finishing in the Top 40 in ppg, and the top 20 in rpg, and not being a primary offensive threat. 13/7/2/1, and his team was 3-1 and won the most with him on the floor. LOL Useless thread.
Useless post. I recommend everyone ignore this post, so this thread doesn't become about PapaG, and actually become useless.
Everybody else is at least a "B", and Babbitt is a "C-"? Useless thread. Was I supposed to nod my head and agree when the OP made this thread all about his summer grades? Argue Babbitt being the worst player, by far, this summer on the Blazers, or don't. That was one thing on Wizard Mentor's "Summer Grades" thread that I disagreed with, and I'm posting about it. You two are making it about me. I didn't start a thread with my summer grades, did I?
I agree with VanillaGorilla, this is a useless post. Why don't you man up and actually give a grade for Babbitt. My grade: C- Jaynes grade: D Timmay from Blazersedge grade: Missed Expectations MM grade: D Again, what's your grade, and who is the outlier here? p.s. PapaG, please consider changing your Avatar subtitle from "Some Call me the Best in the Game" to "King of the Outliers"
I give him a solid B. Led the team in +/-, and averaged 13/7/2/1. Again, though, I didn't start the thread and give my opinion on grades as a thread-worthy topic. That was you.
Someone with ESPN Insider should tell Chad Ford to update his draft grades. After all, he feels free to update his mock draft several times. It's so obvious that he was very wrong on several counts.
Your bias was obvious. If you want to troll those who disagree with aspects of your list and counter it with their own opinions, well, that's pretty much what Canzano does to those who question him.
In reality, Summer League is a Pass/Fail grade. If you showed enough that you make the GM confident in your ability to play real minutes in the regular season on a rebuilding team, you pass. If you don't, you fail. Lillard: Pass Smith: Pass Leonard: Pass Barton: Pass Babbit: Pass Babbit is the one guy I think barely squeaked by. I wasn't that encouraged by his performance, but he showed enough that you try to see if he has a Korver career path ahead of him. Our GM says he's a PF, which means he's stuck behind a lot of guys. So thankfully we won't have to use him much. 5 minutes here, 7 minutes there is exactly how he should be used. You hope he sneaks in and then out before the other team completely exploits his defense.
