Welcome to the Slam and Jam here on the Athletic NBA show.

I'm your host, Andrew Schluct.

We're here live at Summer League, and I am with my good friend Sam Vassini here to preview the Summer league. Sam, how's it going, man? I'm just disappointed. We don't have Alex here. Oh, sclam and jam. Aren't we all? Listen. Alex is the favorite of the show. We just need to be honest about that. Everybody's disappointed about Alex not being here. Okay? That's what we're all disappointed about. Something I'm not disappointed about is that we get to watch a lot of basketball this weekend. Too much, something might say. It's going to be a lot. That's what people are telling me. It's going to be a lot of basketball. Let's start here. Who are you most looking forward to watching this weekend? I think that my answer to this is probably Reed Shepard. The reason that I say that is I think there's a chance that he just comes out and

like blows the doors off the place and is just like everybody's favorite player here

at Summer League.

Or I think there's a chance that like there's an adjustment period to the athleticism that he's

facing for the first time to the differently spaced court in some way.

I want to see how he separates from NBA caliber defenders as well. So there's just a lot to really kind of parse through with Reed. And I couldn't be more excited to watch him, I think. That's probably my guy this time. The Rockets have some guys. There's some more guys that I want to talk about when it comes to the Rockets here. We got Cam Whitmore.

I mean, this is going to be a beautiful, beautiful Rockets team. It's going to be great. I can't wait to see Rob Dillingham. Yeah. Because I think this is a setting that he can thrive in. Because that, that to me, it's a little bit different than like the NBA, the regular NBA to Summer League. And there are guys that thrive in Summer League that maybe take a little bit more time to adjust to the NBA. Yeah. And I think Rob Dillingham might be my number one guy for that topic. Rob's 100% of Summer League guy. Yes. He's going to come out here and just blow the doors off the place. Like I didn't say Rob almost because I just expect it. You know what I mean? Like Rob is going to come out. Yeah, I know. And just destroying, by the way, look at us. We both mentioned two Kentucky guards that came off the bench this year. Teammates. It's true. Didn't even start because John Caliperi is a crazy person. Yeah. Who's somebody that's like a later round guy, either in the first round, second round player

that you think is going to be great in this setting?

I think also a Godaro for Phoenix should be really fun.

I think people will really connect to his like passing and his playmaking and his athleticism.

He can really rise up and throw down

lobs he will make these like really creative intuitive passing reads from the high post and out of dribble

handoffs he'll reject dribble handoffs like i think that he's somebody in the spacing that this

kind of environment provides should allow him to really thrive in that way.

And he's not going to be faced with the kind of super giants that he's going to be faced with in the NBA.

So defensively, you know, the guys here can't really hurt him in the way that some of the NBA players might be able to.

Yeah.

I, and this is maybe this is a Homer pick, but I want to see what AJ Mitchell can do. Against some of these scenes. We've seen him already, though. We know he can go. I know. I can't wait to see him in person. Because I've met the guy. I've spoken to him. Great guy. But I think that he's a guy that's just going to get buckets. Oh. And I think he'll be mostly a G-League player. He signed a two-way contract with a Thunder.

Yeah. Like that is something he just didn't have to do at UCSB.

So when he came out in California and started to like show that, oh no, like I can do a little bit more than that. I can pass. I can play make. I think that people really started to take notice of him in a bit of a different light. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, like you kind of mentioned talking to him. You know, I talked to him on show like he's a he's just got this like calm cool effortless like charisma to him almost and you know i i don't think there's any environment that's too big for him you know what i mean even though he's a small school

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