Marked Men

The Summer League is over. For me, it unraveled brilliantly. Tyreke Evans showed that he will not be hewn by the archaic parameters of his position. My man efficiently facilitated for himself and allowed his stats to bleed over into parts of the box score that, though off-limits to traditional floor generals, are absolutely his manifest destiny.

Brandon Jennings performance is either more or less dubious depending on how you decipher summer league stats. Unlike Evans, his dominance was based on his cunning with the ball in his hands. Rather than bullying opponents with his superior size and strength, like Evans, he used his superior instincts to manipulate the obvious weaknesses of the borderline talent on the court and piled up assists and steals. Ask yourself, which of these young players' assets, Evan's ox-like power or Jennings' guile, will abandon them once they're forced to stack it up against superior talent? Maybe both? Hopefully neither.



Ironically, perhaps the summer league performance of a player no less-enigmatic than Anthony Randolph might offer the sharpest picture of what Evans and Jennings did this summer really means. Randolph is so good that despite his formerly meager frame and propensity to do things that young players should never do if they want to earn the respect of their elders (dribble a lot, cry openly) is still jocked by just about everybody who's seem him play in person. He's also so good that he didn't need to play in the summer league; it's beneath him. However, he came out and did exactly what he was supposed to do. He asserted that he was the best player in the league. He also showed those on the margins of the association scrapping to earns spots at the tail end of any rotation that he was the kind of talent they were really up against. His dominance in the summer league is akin to they type so often ascribed to teams like the Spurs in the earlier part of the decade and the Celtics after assembling their Big Three. Essentially, it's been posited, there's something more telling about winning with a target on your back. That is what Randolph did this summer, and what makes his performance so different from the outbursts of players like Marcus Banks and Marco Belinelli in summer leagues' past.

This may sound facile, but there really is a difference between sneaking in the back door and barrelling through the police barricade in the middle of the highway, no matter how flimsy its construction, to reach a destination. Yes, Jennings and Evans will never have it as easy again as they did this summer. But doesn't the fact that they made it all look so easy say something?