Vegas Babies

This week in Las Vegas, Nevada, a bunch of NBA teams will suit up their youngest, least proven players--along with a lot of players who may or may not ever make a roster spot on any NBA squad--in very plain versions of their team's uniform to compete in something called the NBA Summer League. Last week some teams met in Orlando to do the same thing, but the Spurs weren't there. We played our first game of the Summer League yesterday against the Memphis Grizzlies.

The Spurs won 78-76 (recap here). Ian Mahinmi scored 18 and pulled down 8 rebounds; George Hill debuted as a Spur with 17 points, 8 rebounds.

At the end of the first quarter, O.J. Mayo, the high school sensation and rookie guard out of USC, hit a last second 69-foot two-handed heave to score 13 of the Grizzlies 17 first-quarter points.

Darrell Arthur, whom I talked about getting the draft day shaft and falling all the way to the Hornet's 27th pick (before being traded to Memphis), made me look even smarter, and led all scorers with 23 points in this game.

These games don't mean anything. It's just a good chance to see some of these lesser known players get some burn against each other. Sometimes players will rule the Summer League, and fall completely flat in the NBA (Marco Belinelli was a perfect example last year--37 points in his Summer League debut, breathless comparisons to Larry Bird by respectable NBA journalists...then a total flame out in the regular season [source: True Hoop]). The same goes for a team's record; the Knicks went undefeated last Summer, but were one of the worst teams in the league this year [from same article].

In less interesting news, the Spurs have evidientally done some realligning of their front office. A guy named Rick Pych has been promoted to "President of Business Operations," while Greg Popovich will take over as "President of Spurs Basketball," while, of course, remaining the head coach. R.C. Buford will likewise remain the General Manager, but will also take on the role of "President of Sports Franchises." This means he'll be in charge of the WNBA Silver Stars, the American Hockey League San Antonio Rampage, and Austin's own Toros of the NDBL.

Like I said, not all that titilating, but if you consider how many guys in other front offices and head coaching positions around the league came from the current Spurs system (Danny Ferry in Cleveland, Steve Kerr in Phoenix, PJ Carlisimo in...Oklahoma, and Avery Johnson...well, nowhere at the moment, to name a few), it's a name worth taking note of. Pych will probably be a GM for some other team in a few years. Which will also barely be blog-worthy. But give me a break, it's the Summer.

Oh and now Manu says he thinks he'll be able to play in the Olympics. I'd be surprised if he didn't to be honest. I mean, it's Manu. Come on.

Millions pt 2. - Exactly What I Was Talking About

Bill Self is furious.

Darrell Arthur is not sick.

And it turns out I'm clairvoyant or something. That last post I "blogged" this afternoon--the one about how disappointing (and financially costly) it can be when a player falls to a lower draft order than he anticipated--couldn't have set the stage more perfectly for a story emerging today about a player, Darrell Arthur, who plummeted from his projected spot in the early teens to the 27th pick. This nosedive down the draft board could have cost the Arthur family as much as a million dollars per year.

The really crappy thing is that this sudden devaluation was fomented by a false rumor of a mysterious kidney ailment. Arthur's coach at Kansas, Bill Self, worked the phones to try to quash the misinformation as he watched one team after another pass on the talented 6-9 Forward who helped the Jayhawks win last year's NCAA Championship. (view the entire AP article here).

Watching the draft with his players at his home in Lawrence, Self wound up making frantic calls trying to help Arthur get things straightened out.

"I was scrambling around trying to get information myself because this was unknown to me until [Wednesday night] and apparently was unknown to many of the NBA teams until the very end.

"They said one minute before the draft, 'Can't take him. Doctors won't let us take him,' which is sad because then somebody really dropped the ball. I don't know what the reasoning was, but hopefully they had a valid reason."

Arthur was drafted by the New Orleans Hornets and eventually traded to the Memphis Grizzlies.

From a Spurs perspective, it is worth noting that we were the last team to pass on Arthur at the 26th pick. If he ends up being a monster in the league for years to come--perhaps motivated to even greater heights by the injustice served to him yesterday--the Spurs will be one of about 15 teams who will lament this Kidney prank even more than he does.