Nique Clifford And Maxime Raynaud Shine In Summer League Debuts

Nique Clifford And Maxime Raynaud Shine In Summer League Debuts

The Sacramento Kings kick off their 2025 NBA Summer League campaign with an 8481 victory against the Orlando Magic in what was a rematch of the G-League Finals. And it really did feel like a rematch of the G-League Finals because the first plays of the game, it was Mason Jones and Ethan Thompson exchanging three-point shots. Mason Jones and Ethan Thompson really just they can’t get away from each other, these guys. But then you also have Scallabisier who has changed teams since that G-League finals going over to the Magic and kind of cooking us. He had 14 points off the bench including massive dunks over both of our centers, Maxim Renault and Dylan Cardwell. But the Kings were really led to this win by their two rookies, Nate Clifford leading the team in scoring with 17 points and then Maxim Renault with 16 points. And it was Renault in the first half and it was Nate Clifford in the second half. But I want to start with Maxim Renault because he started off this first quarter. He was amazing. He was outscoring the Magic by himself. I believe he had 11 points and the Magic had eight points at one point of this game and he was just showing off all of his different skills offensively. both being able to work in the post as a seven-footer, but then also being able to work from beyond the ark, knocking down a couple of threes. He went two for five from three in this game, but then also his passing ability. He was using the pump fake, attacking closeouts, making some really nice passes. He had one sequence where he had two possessions in a row where he was able to use his gravity as a three-point shooter because he was dominating scoring and he was able to find a teammate in the corner for three and then he was able to find a teammate cutting back door from the corner for a nice look at the rim. So he was just really doing everything offensively from scoring from beyond the ark, scoring in the post, facing up in the post, being able to find his teammates, and just really showed off that he has so much skill as a 7 foot big man, which can be so valuable. And he just looked so confident in the way that he was moving around the court when he was going to set screens. It felt like he knew exactly what to do, when to roll to the rim, when to pop out for three. There was one play where he sets a screen, pops out to the three-point line, but the Magic switch it. So, he has a smaller guy on him. And what does he do? He doesn’t wait on the three-point line with a smaller guy on him. He goes directly into the middle of the paint. And the Magic do get like a a switch to get a bigger guy on him, but he’s able to uh take it into the paint. And I think he might have gotten fouled on that particular play. I can’t exactly remember what happened, but he just looked like a super smart offensive player. And then he was able to play defense as well. I don’t think he was necessarily a massive presence as a shot blocker, but when he would get put into pick and rolls and, you know, when the Magic would try to put him into space, he was able to just stay very big. He was using his length to affect plays and just take away passing lanes. And I can remember three separate occasions where he would get put into a pick and roll and he would just use his length to bother passes and and make them go ary. So, he carried the offense early on, then it slowed down as the as the first quarter went on because other guys on the Kings weren’t having the best offensive starts. Meet Clifford had a very slow start. Uh Devin Carter just had a rough game all around offensively, and I’ll definitely get to that. But, I mean, this Kings team is definitely built with a focus on defense. I knew be before before the roster was even announced that this Kings summer league team was probably going to be a very good defensive team with guys like Devin Carter, Meek Clifford, Isaac Jones, Isaiah Crawford, Dylan Cardwell. This was going to be a very defensive focused group and and you can see that through the Magic only scoring 81 points. And the question more was where is the offense going to come from? And we got the answer to that early on with Maxim Renault. But then, you know, he goes out of the game, we make some substitutions. Okay, how about now? Now, where is that offense going to come from? We We have Mason Jones and and Mason is great and he was tied for leading the team in scoring with 17 points, but I’m I’m thinking about other guys, some of our younger guys like a Devin Carter or like a Nick Clifford. And to me, early on, it really seemed like Devin Carter really wanted to set up his teammates. He was very slow and methodical trying to play that point guard position. And that can be okay. Like slow and methodical, not not a bad thing necessarily. If you’re going to play slow and methodical, you better know where you’re trying to get to and have a way of getting there. And so for Devin, as a player who’s maybe not comfortable at the point guard position, he’s coming into this summer league, he’s being asked to be a ball handler. And for him as an NBA player, as a prospect coming into the season, like his best chance to get minutes and really make an impact is at the point guard position. So, he has to grow into that if he really wants to be able to get minutes. But you can see that’s just not natural to him. So, he was just so focused on the playmaking aspect, I think. And he was taking screens and really taking his time, trying to patiently wait for passing lanes to to to open up and to get into the paint. and he was doing okay with that and he found some nice passes. He was able to get to the rim at times or at least get shots off in the paint, but he’s not someone who uses explosiveness to get all the way to the rim. And so he was getting into the paints and getting into the paint and he was using his body to try to get these shots up while taking contact. That’s kind of his thing. Like he wants to post guys up. He wants to use his body to get shots up around the rim and they just weren’t falling. like he made a floater early on, but you could just see when he wasn’t able to get to his spots in the paint where he was comfortable scoring from, then it was a very mixed bag in terms of the playmaking. There was one play, I believe, in the second quarter where he tried to throw two straight alley oops, like the first one gets blocked, but he gets the ball back. Throws another one, it goes off the rim, shot clock resets, he gets it back, and then I think he still scored on that possession, but you could just see he wasn’t totally comfortable in this position. And I think the best thing to to compare this to is looking at his stint in the G-League last season when he came back from that injury and when he was allowed to run the G-League team to get some reps before he went to the full NBA team. And he looked so good in the G- League, being able to score the ball and just being super aggressive, looking for a shot, trying to get to the rim, being super confident at pulling from three. And I just felt like that confidence wasn’t there for him. and Summer League and that and G in the G-League are, you know, it’s comparable competition. Maybe you have a little more talent in summer league with some of these top draft picks, but but it is comparable competition. But I think Carter just wasn’t totally comfortable when the Magic were putting pressure on him on the ball. And that’s something we saw last season when he was playing that he wasn’t completely comfortable with the ball when he was put under a ton of pressure and his default was pass the ball to Mason Jones, right? when when things got tough, when the possession was breaking down, it was get the ball to Mason Jones, he’ll know what to do with it. He got an 8-second violation in the first quarter and honestly probably got away with another 8-second violation early on. So, you could just see he wasn’t comfortable and hopefully he can uh grow as this summer league goes on and gets more confidence in the coming games. and he still was doing his thing defensively, but it’s looking like uh me pushing him as a possible summer league MVP candidate. Uh it looks like that’s not going to come true. The Kings really needed someone else to get going other than Reo and Isaac Jones was a guy who was really struggling to start this game. At the start of the second quarter, he was honestly getting bodied defensively, which is not something that should be happening with him. He’s a very strong guy and he was getting bodied. He committed a moving screen. he was trying to post up and committed an offensive foul. He was just getting extremely frustrated and he wasn’t able to find his way into the game. And that’s something with Isaac Jones that kind of is a big question mark is how does he fit into an offense, especially when he’s not playing the five? Because when he’s playing the five as a smaller five, he’s going to be the guy coming up to set screens. He’s going to be rolling to the rim. He can play in the post. But when he’s playing the four, he’s not getting into the post as much. He’s not being the guy to come and set screens for the ball handler as much. So, how does he find a way offensively to really impact the game because he’s sitting in the corner so much? And so, we know he’s really been working on his corner three-point shot, but that’s really not going to be his biggest asset. And we didn’t really see him get any opportunity from the corner to shoot any threes. And so instead, what he started doing towards the middle and end of the second quarter, he started to get into the game a little bit. He was catching from the corner. He just started relentlessly attacking the rim. And with those uh attacks to the rim came a lot of trips to the free throw line. He went seven for nine from the free throw line, ended the game with 11 points, had six rebounds, two steals, a block, add in three assists there. So he he kind of found his way into the game. And with him, it’s it’s just so interesting kind of how he can affect the game offensively. As a guy who’s not the best shooter, it really means that he has to do it a lot with his offball movement, timing his cuts to the rim or being able to catch the ball and then just bully his way to the rim or attack close outs. And that’s what he did throughout the rest of the game. Had a really nice baseline take for an and one where it felt like he was getting fouled the entire way. And I hope we we see more of him using his strength, not just offensively, but defensively, too, because he had some really strong moves offensively using his strength, but I still feel like there’s more to be had with him defensively. He he also had a really nice block in the fourth quarter. He had he rose up for a massive block, and so that’s what he’s able to do as a help defender. But what about on ball? I feel like on ball there’s still more for him to be able to do to be just a bigger stronger presence as an onball defender. So the first half was really carried by Maxim Renault and then Isaac Jones getting into it a little later in the second quarter. Kings also started to get out in transition a little bit more. But then the second clap the the second half is really where Nick Clifford came to life. In the first half offensively he was really invisible. He had some nice moments defensively. I thought there were moments one-on-one against Tristan Dilva where he was able to match Dilva’s physicality and I thought Clifford had good hands, got some deflections. So, I thought we saw some solid defense even though Tristan Dilva did uh have 19 points. I don’t think that was really Ne’s fault and so I thought it was encouraging that he was able to match up against a bigger wing like Tristan Dilva. But really, the way that Nate Clifford was able to dominate offensively in the second half was using the pump fake. I mean, this dude I I can’t even count how many times he pump faked and then drove to the rim. And when he went to the rim, when he drove to the rim, he was going hard, which I I loved because sure, sometimes a player can be a little out of control and if they go too hard and then the defense is there, they can get a charge. And he did have one charge, which uh wasn’t even really when he was going to the rim hard. That was just on him trying to make a pass uh inside and then not slowing himself down as much and the defender took the charge off ball. But he was just going in hard, drawing fouls. Went six for 10 from the free throw line. So, you know, not the best free throw shooting, but getting there 10 times is incredible. He ended the game with 17 points, 5 for 12 from the field, 1 for three from three. That one three was a really nice, confident looking pullup three. He also had a nice play where he was able to pump fake attack a close out go into a nice little one-legged runner. And then when the Kings were really struggling offensively in the fourth quarter when things slowed down late in that fourth quarter and the Magic were going on their run and I think it was they tied it up. I think it was like 7474 or something like that and Nick just quickly takes it the other way drives into the paint spins off his man. A beautiful move to get into a layup. And then the next possession down, Devin Carter drives, finds Nick in the corner. He pump fakes again. It was late shot clock. I thought it was the wrong decision. I thought it was going to be a shot clock violation, but he goes in hard for a big dunk. And those two plays were like the biggest plays of the game when the Magic came all the way back to tie it up. And you know, Devin Carter was really struggling to get anything. The possessions were just so slow, breaking down. It was just Devin Carter and Mason Jones passing back and forth like nothing going on. Neither of them really wanted to shoot it from deep. And it was Neat Clifford who who stepped up and pretty much won the game. And obviously a big reason that the Kings won this game was their defense. And that’s why I thought that this Kings team could be really good because it’s a lot of older guys and it’s a really good defensive team. Hopefully as summer league goes on, you do see better offensive performances, especially from from Devin Carter. But I think what we saw from our two rookies in Maxim Renault and Nick Clifford was super positive. And then looking at some other guys, Isaiah Crawford was a big one who I was watching coming into summer league. And I got to say like he he disappointed me because he just he looked like the same player as last season. And the things that I was really hoping he would improve upon, it it just didn’t seem like he improved upon them. He just was invisible for most of the game. There were a couple of nice defensive plays. Had a steel/block stop at the rim. Had a couple of stops at the rim. And so you see these plays where he uses his his length and uses his size and strength to be able to make these defensive stops. But that’s not enough. That’s not enough for him to become an NBA player. So, what else can he do? And how can he make an impact on the offense? That’s what I was really looking for. And he really didn’t make an impact on the offense. He only hit one three. It was a corner three. A nice feed from Devin Carter. I will say as the game went on, Devin Carter did make a few nice drive and kick plays. So, that was encouraging. And that one three, that one quarter three was great. And it looked like he got it off pretty quickly. It looked really nice, but that was it. And the rest of the game, he he just looked slow in his decision-m and he wasn’t willing to get the shots off, catch and shoot threes very quickly. He was going after some offensive rebounds. He got one. He had his hands on a few other ones. Had six rebounds in 15 minutes. That’s pretty good. You know, I’m not saying he had some terrible game, but it just left me wanting more like it always does for him. And there were a couple plays where the the thing that I hate the most that he does is he gives guys too much space. And there were a couple of plays where he just gave guys too much space and they were able to knock down some threes over him. So the biggest thing for him coming in is I really wanted to see him impose his will on the game and I just don’t think that he did that. Then we can go to to Dylan Cardwell who had zeros across the board except for personal fouls. I think he looked good defensively though and that’s that’s what he’s here for. He’s here to play defense. The offense though, I mean, he only had one play where he got a shot up and it just I mean, it looked awful. There was zero touch. There was zero feel offensively, but I mean, you know, that’s what we expected. That’s exactly the type of player that we thought he would be coming in. So you can see just super raw offensively, but the size defensively and length is great. And so we’ll just see throughout this summer league if if he can make any sort of an impact offensively and and how much of a defensive impact he can continue to make. Thought he was solid defensively in this one, but uh you know, 10 minutes there wasn’t too much to go off for him. And then you have our other two-way guy, Isaiah Stevens. He went one for six and at least half of them, if not more, were him going to the right baseline and fading away. He loved the the right baseline, mid-range fadeaway. Knock down one of them. I will say I liked how he looked confident getting to his spots. I mean, it looks like he knows like this is one of my spots. I’mma get to it. I’mma rise up. That’s good for a guy of his size. A smaller guy. He uses quickness to be able to get to his spots and rise up. That’s good. Just need to see him shoot a little bit better. I thought he was solid on the defensive end for his size getting a steal. And yeah, let’s see what else I got for this game. Oh, Nick Clifford’s ball handling. Even in the first half when he wasn’t really scoring very much, his handle looked very good. He looked very confident handling the ball. Made some nice passes. I mean, first offensive play of the game, he drove, made a nice pass to Mason Jones on the wing for three. brought the ball up a lot and and just looked confident handling the ball. So, that’s great. And Scott Perry was interviewed during the game, talked about how we could see him get some backup point guard looks in the NBA. He ended the game with three assists and just looked confident playmaking for others. Also, that that uh that Scott Perry interview started off very weird. felt like Scott Perry was like slurring his words and then it got better after a while and so people well at first including myself was like is he drunk? But then people were saying that might have been like a a technical issue where he was getting like feedback in his headphones and he wasn’t used to that. So that could have been why it was weird. But yeah, like that his interview started off uh real weird and it was just weird to me because like he’s a guy who is is good talking usually before he was GM of the Kings. This guy was on podcasts nonstop. So it it was very weird to see him struggling there. Couple of other things I noticed. I liked that Devin Carter and Nate Clifford were both picking up full court a lot of the times getting after it defensively there. Uh Maxim Renault in the open court looked so slow and he’s a guy where like his his full sprint speed is is slow but he is he has some quickness to him and I think his movement especially on the offensive end is good and when he has the ball he has a good handle. So I think that’s really what makes him seem quick and he’s a good decision maker but if he’s asked to be out there running the open court he is not fast. But uh yeah, that is it for this game. There was some some other news I wanted to talk about. First of all, from some interviews from yesterday, Dylan Cardwell, he compared himself to Kings legend Quincy AC, which is just awesome. Like, how do you know Quincy AC is a Kings legend? That was hilarious to me. Isaac Jones said he was working on his consistency on corner threes all off seasonason. So, thought that was just an interesting tidbit. And then we got we got the NBA Cup group announcements. The Kings I can’t remember what group they’re in. Maybe group A. I don’t really remember, but their group consists of Minnesota, OKC, Phoenix, and Utah. The Kings have been in the same group as Minnesota all three years of this. And this is also the second year they’ve been in a group with OKC. So maybe we got a little bit of an NBA Cup rivalry going with Minnesota now, I guess. But obviously that’s a very tough group. I mean, Phoenix and Utah not so tough, but OKC and Minnesota that I mean, it’s hard to see the Kings getting out of this group, but you never know. And then another piece of news, I believe it was Kyle Draper said that he heard that Cameron Payne’s representatives were trying to get him to the Sacramento Kings. So nothing about the Kings being interested in campaign, but apparently Campaign really wants to come to Sacramento and the Kings have been rumored with other point guards. I mean like Russell Westbrook wanting to bring both Shruder and Westbrook to Sacramento. So maybe even with Monk still on the team. The Kings still have some interest in a backup point guard. I’m not sure. Maybe they’ll just roll with Monk and then Nick Clifford like Scott Perry was mentioning. I think I would rather not have campaign. I I like campaign. He’s a fun player. Not necessarily the greatest player, but a fun player. But uh I just think the Kings have other guys that should be getting those minutes and not a guy like Campaign. Oh yeah, and also I got a new setup here. I I didn’t mention that, but obviously you can see it if you’re watching. So, yeah, that’s cool. Still got some kinks to work out, but I think uh I think it looks good for now. So, anyways, that is it for this episode of the Roll Report. I will be back, I believe, on Saturday, although I’ll have to check that when the Kings play the Bulls for their next summer league game. So, I will see you guys then. Peace.

Welcome to The Royal Report

Sacramento Kings beat the Orlando Magic 84-81

In this episode of The Royal Report I discuss the summer league standout debuts of Nique Clifford and Maxime Raynaud, the struggles of Devin Carter playing the point guard position, and the mixed bag performance from Isaac Jones.

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