What: Charlotte Hornets (0-0) vs San Antonio Spurs
When: 8:30 pm Eastern
Where: Golden 1 Center; Sacramento, CA
How to watch: NBATV
It’s one of the best times in the basketball calendar, the NBA Summer League. Quality of basketball? Not great. Vibes? Extremely great. And we only watch sports for the vibes.
We posted about the Hornets full summer league roster here, and the full schedule is here.
The Hornets start with the Spurs, much like they did last season. There’s no Brandon Miller vs Victor Wembanyama, but there are still some interesting players to watch. The Hornets already announced that rookie draft picks Tidjane Salaun and KJ Simpson will be out for the California Classic games at minimum, but that just means more touches and more shots for Nick Smith Jr. Leaky Black and Bryce McGowens are the other returning players that are aspiring to be too good for summer league.
The Spurs have a few interesting players of their own. They’ll trot out popular Hornets mock draftee Stephon Castle, likely as a starter at guard. UNC product Harrison Ingram will get some burn as well, and former Charlotte Hornets Nathan Mensah will look to begin his revenge tour. And just to make you feel old, the Spurs also feature Jameer Nelson Jr., son of Jameer Nelson that played mostly for the Magic seemingly only a few years ago.
We’ll also get our first look at new head coach Charles Lee’s system in a patched up, bastardized form. The players aren’t as good and the prep time is much shorter than the real Hornets will get heading into the regular season, so I wouldn’t read too much into how that goes in this environment. That said, hopefully the Hornets are better than the disorganized mess they’ve been in the last few summer leagues.
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