 What's the word, y'all? It feels good to say those words. Sometimes I take a mental reset and a mental break from recording videos, editing videos, and I am back to talk about Summer League. As you can see, we're no longer called gamer back to Kenny for real. I'm super excited about that. We can talk about that a little bit later. I want to talk about Summer League. I hate to break your hearts. I know a lot of y'all see me as Kenny Beachham, basketball guy. If there's basketball alone, Kenny Beachham is going to be watching. When it comes to Summer League, not necessarily. I try to watch some of it or get a glimpses of it, but I can't tell you and lie to you and tell you that I be glued to my TV the last couple of days. I haven't. When it came to Utah or the Sacramento Summer League, keeping it a buck, I didn't watch a second of those. It's either Vegas or nothing or sometimes Orlando. Orlando Summer League used to be pretty fun, but that was it. So the last couple of days, I've watched an okay amount of Summer League games, but I wouldn't lie to you and tell you I've seen all of your favorite teams play. I may be keeping up with a little stat lines, things like that, but anyway, none of that is really relevant. The reason I don't necessarily love Summer League is because when you think about it, we're talking about a 15-man roster. We're only about three of those players that have guaranteed contracts for this upcoming season, which means that we got 12 players who were trying to impress their opposing general managers or also the other 29 general managers around the league to get a contract, right? These same 12 players were just there. The man on their college teams or international teams, and now they got to share the ball. These same 12 players have practiced together for three days. Basically what I'm saying is the product is not necessarily great. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes we have it first halves in 32 to 34. First has been in 12 turnovers to 14 turnovers. It can be dirty and bad, but it can also be super exciting. And the reason I'm making this video today because I watched two, count them, two super exciting games. One of them was revolving around a player that no joke, I guess two players, but one of these players, no joke. I listened to a podcast where they said the first overall pick, Cade Cunningham, was not fit to play NBA ball yet. I'm going to let you, I'm going to let you digest that before we move on. They said the first overall pick, Cade Cunningham was not fit to play NBA basketball yet, based on a single summer league game. Do you know how many players struggled in summer league in general and turned out to be good NBA players? Do you know how many players have dominated summer league and struggled to get a contract? No disrespect because this guy's an absolute legend in my eyes. Joss Selby has his number retired in Vegas because when it come to summer league, he'd be averaging 30. Him and Vanderblu, they struggled to get contracts. Last year, Lamello Ball didn't even score in his first game. He won rookie of the year. He got his own signature shoe now. It's kind of crazy how people are willing to overreact and I'm okay with having like crazy takes if you're having fun, but the people that I heard say this and I'm just going to say I listened to a lot of basketball podcasts. It can be the number one sports podcast in the world, but sometimes I'd be strolling through. I got people that hit me up saying, hey, can you listen to my podcast? So I've subscribed to a ton of podcasts, right? And the specific one I was listening to is these two guys who just enjoy basketball. I listen to them because they're funny. Their takes are typically pretty bad. And when that one came on, I'm in my car. I went to the very next show. I don't, I didn't even want to listen to them. I should have subscribed. One summer league game where yeah, he struggled, but he wasn't necessary. He wasn't terrible. And today he put up 20. He had the one crossover on, on the number two pick and hit a shot. He also did get a little bit clamped up and ripped up here and there. He ended with seven, seven files. If you're looking at summer league as a way to figure out who the next big thing is, you're doing it wrong. What I look at is, is not necessarily who's performing well or who's not performing well. It's how they're doing the things that they do. And what I see Eva Kay kind of them struggling these first two games is that he's playing with good pace still. He's got good vision. He still got the leadership thing for him to be the number one pick. You can really tell on the court because he's talking to his guys, telling them where to be. Those are the things I look for, right? But like Patrick Williams had 30 today, which is exciting. They had a big time comeback, but I'm not looking at Patrick Williams having 30 points and be like, oh, this is the year he go average 20. That's not how you do things when it comes to summer league. I think we need to really, really to sit down and try to gauge these type performances, right? Like first time I watched Jaylen Green because I am not a college guy and I definitely didn't watch the G League at night. Not a single minute of like actual gameplay. Watch some highlights. I did a little scouting report once we got close and close to the draft, but I will be lying to you if I said I watched a full game of Scotty Barnes before his first summer league game. You know what I'm saying? And these were the first time I got an impression of these dudes. So the first time I watched Jaylen Green, I was absolutely impressed. There's a tweet out there of draft night while I was like, the Houston Rockets won the draft. Of course, I saw the Jaylen Green get buckets. One of my two of my favorite prospects in this year's draft got drafted to Houston. And that was LP, Sengun and Sengun. I still don't know how to pronounce it. I will learn it eventually. And Oozman who played for Spain. Those are two of my favorite prospects and I am an absolute terrible person with trying to gauge who's the next big thing. I'm always trying to swing for the fence and that's why I always picked the lesser known international player. I saw Yanis be good one time and I immediately thought, okay, that guy can it's not gonna work like that. But Sengun, Sengun through the first two games, I would say has been the most impressive player in the entire thing. Again, I'm not watching every single game. So don't come at me and say crazy orte. I know he's hoping. I understand that. But like from the games I have watched and the things I've watched, Sengun has been the most impressive. And this is coming from a guy that already loves Sengun coming into this draft. One of the things I really, really questioned was the ability to defend. And I know we're talking about Summer League and 90% of these players will end up in a G-League overseas. I am impressed with the way he has been able to defend. And I knew he had the offensive game. I knew he had the ability to hit the three. I knew he talked to the basketball and every time he does it, they talk about it. Oh my God. I didn't know that he didn't know a single lick of English until today. So that was very interesting. Overall, this Houston Rockets versus Detroit Piston game for the first half, felt like a real life game. It didn't feel like a Summer League game. And then I realized the reason it felt like a real life game is because this is 80% of the Pistons roster for next season. This is 80% of the Rockets roster for next season. These are like they're playing regular season games. Josh Christopher, Kenyon Marjoon, Sengun, Jalen Green. I don't think Carrie Thomas is going to be a big part of their future going on. Those are four players that will be on the actual roster next season. Get in a minute. Then you go out to the Pistons, Sadiq Bey. Oh, we're going to talk about sophomore year players because why are we having these players in here? Because they're just dominating. Sadiq Bey, Sekou, K-Kun, and I'm killing, hey, Sabin Lee. Shoot, Luca Garza might even get some run next season. That's six players out of their potential 13 to 15 that'll really be on that roster. So that's why this game felt so intense because this is like their actual roster. Also it's a little one versus two blood. I saw some Pistons fans going at some Rockets fans and I'm completely okay. We're getting some inside like, um, rivalries going on. Cade respects Jalen. Jalen respects Cade, but sometimes the fans can really ramp it up like Trey Yung versus Luca. Those dudes love each other. You remember when Luca hit the half course shot at the Rise of Stars game, they hugged. You know what I'm saying? They're, they're friends, but it's the fandom that gets the rivalry going and I am okay with that if it's the number one versus number two sophomore year players. First of all, that whole class, the, the Lamello class or whatever you want to call it, um, did not get a summer league at all last season. So a lot of them are coming to this year's summer league and are like, yeah, I'm going to dominate. And I like to see sophomore year players realize that this is, this is me. You know, the guy that's guarding me is not going to make an NBA roster. So let me take advantage of it. The guy that's guarding me has not guarded Kevin Durant like I have. You know what I'm saying? That's what Patrick Williams was saying. I guarded Yanis, LeBron, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irvin, all of those players, you're trying to tell me this little dude on a spur is going to guard me? Nah, I got this. So like a lot of the sophomore year players are taking a ton of shots. Obi-Toppin, Maxi Klebe, I mean not Maxi Klebe, but Tyrese Maxi, um, um, uh, manual quickly, bow bow. These players is just going out and it's important because they have a little bit more expectations going into year number two, opposed to some of the younger guys that have expectations for going into year number, year number one, especially with like Sadiq Bay and then they're expect to make a jump. Patrick Williams expected to make a jump because of the moves that the Bulls did is really reliant. Our ceiling revolves around Patrick Williams, believe it or not. He might be our fourth option or sometimes our fifth option, but our ceiling as a team is a lot to do with Patrick Williams. So to see him come in and play the way he has played has been pretty, pretty solid. Let me, let me go through these again. Who are some of the players that were really exciting to me? Uh, Trey Murphy, obviously I watched him because they beat up on my Bulls in that first game. I knew a little bit about Trey Murphy going into it. I really relied on my guy Pierre who's like the draft expert of our friend group and he was in love with Trey Murphy. He actually wanted his nicks to get him. Um, and I could see why he was super, super impressive to me. Um, who else, who else did I watch? Oh, let's talk about Scotty Barnes briefly. Um, again, I didn't watch a single game with Scotty Barnes until this first summer league game. And if you remember, if you were there doing my draft stream, if you weren't there, I'm disappointed in you. Um, I asked my chat, like, is this a W or L for the Raptors, the fact that they selected him number four instead of, um, instead of, instead of my guy Jalen Suggs and a lot of people were like L and I was legitimately asking questions. I didn't know much about Scotty Barnes and again, I'm not overreacted to a single summer league game, but I see the mode of him being a very good NBA player. Jalen Suggs, who was number five, had a very good game going into overtime and looked like a leader on the court. I think that this draft class, I know people had already said this is one of the best draft classes in recent history. I understand it now. A lot of these players looked super, super good. A lot of these players look super, super good. Um, Antonio Blakeney retired his number in the summer league too because he is, uh, he's always going to come in and who I hope they give him a contract because if there's one thing that he can do that is get buckets. Um, I watched the, the, the Bucks play at Jordan Nawara. I can't, I still don't know how to pronounce his name. Had a very good game, but I didn't watch it for him. I watched it for my guy, Mike Smith. My boy is on a summer league roster. He did not score in his first game, but hey, they play tomorrow at two o'clock or three o'clock. He got it. You can get on that board. You know what I'm saying? There's still games going on right now. Um, Davion Mitchell limit. Can I please address this? And I want anytime y'all see somebody in my comment section talking about Davion Mitchell under my mentions, I just want you to click this a sentence to them because I have been misinterpreted, misconstrued a lot about Davion Mitchell. First of all, me and Davion are friends, believe it or not. You know what I'm saying? So for reference, when Davion Mitchell, before Davion Mitchell was drafted, I was saying that I expected him to jump a drop in the draft because a lot of the teams that were drafting in the top of the lottery, already had point guards. So when he was drafted to the Sacramento Kings, I already have De'Aaron Fox and Terry's Halliburne. I was like, that's a very peculiar pick that I don't really love because if anything, he's still coming off the bench and like, where's the room for him? Reese is a thin frame shooting guard. I don't expect him to, they could, they could definitely run a three guard lineup. I'm not saying that they can't, but like for long term success, I don't know if Davion Mitchell was the pick, especially with him being an older point guard and a bit smaller as far as his height. Obviously he's bulky and he's great like that. And I was just trying to be relatively realistic about things. I didn't say anything about his individual game, the saying that he can't hoop or things like that, but people hear criticism about where they'd be their favorite prospect, their favorite player and try to use that. Like I have, criticism is very just like a normal part of sports in general. There's no such thing as a perfect player. And Davion has been playing very good. And I'm hoping that he is the right pick for Sacramento, but through the draft and these first couple weeks, my opinion has not changed about him being the wrong pick just because of the fit aspect, not that he can't hoop. Let's talk about called game. Called game is done. I mentioned this on Twitter, but I know everybody that's watched this video don't follow me on Twitter. So I'm completely okay with that. Would it really boil down to when I switched it up or decided to switch it up? It was a few things. It was mentally taxing, physically taxing to do the show, mostly because it was either over zoom and it didn't feel organic and it feel authentic, or when it was in person, I had to fly all the way to California. I was flying to California every single month. And again, that's very taxing, especially during these times and yada, yada, I don't, I hate flying. First of all, it's a weird job for me to be in where I'm traveling to interview people. I hate flying. Absolutely hate it. If I, if I can go to rest of my life without flying again, I would agree to do that thing, but I can't because of my job, right? And then also it was too many cooks in the kitchen. I am a very hard personal worker. I know it's hard to believe because on these videos, I'm super excited and I'm just happy to talk and do things. I am a hard personal worker because when I have a vision about something, I wanted to be done exactly like that. And when we were doing called game, we had a production team and producers that had to say, and I didn't like that. I'm also had some people in the whole thing try to, I won't use the word take advantage of, but they, they insulted my intelligence in this whole project. So it's for me, it was like, if I'm going to do anything, it's solely going to be Kenny for real and mean like just me or I'm going to individually hire, interview and hire people that I think share the same vision as me. So as of right now, Kenny for real is this, but it does have the opportunity to grow to more than just this. All right. Hopefully that clear stings up. Um, hopefully a clear killer stings up. I'm excited about summer league though. How much more would I be watching? Probably not a lot, but it's been fun.