Wizards beat the Nets 102-96 in Summer League & Tre Johnson goes for 21 points

Wizards beat the Nets 102-96 in Summer League & Tre Johnson goes for 21 points

What is up, Wizards fans? Welcome to another episode of the Believe in Trey Johnson podcast. That’s right. This is officially a Trey Johnson stand podcast. Uh Jir W Jir Watkins stand podcast. Like some of these young guys are just really exciting. I think this was cool. Obviously, they were a lot more engaged tonight. We didn’t get the same big Keshan George performance, but didn’t really need him to. Other guys stepped up. You got a lot more offensively from Bob Carrington. They spread the wealth a lot more. I think they were more engaged overall defensively. And you know what, like I I think uh there were some flashes here tonight. I’m a lot more excited uh coming into this podcast than after the last one there. You know, there were some some negatives, too. We’ll talk about those uh as we go here a little bit. Like, let’s just start with the rookie again here. Uh the rookie, the other rookies had some moments, but the rookie is Trey Johnson. Plays 27 minutes, goes seven for 11 from the field, two of six from three, five of eight from the free throw line. got to figure he’s going to make more of those free throws than not over the course of the year here. Three rebounds, one assist, one steal, only two turnovers, which is pretty good for how much he had the ball for 21 points. And I don’t know, for that first quarter, I was like, we got to get this dude more touches. He was like four for four and like just cooking everybody. Looked like every shot he could take was going to go in. You know, he forced a few things here or there tonight. There were a couple possessions where he did the same between his legs crossover like six times in a row and didn’t get by anybody and then finally got a little daylight to just like put up a 15 foot floater, get himself to the line. But overall, I thought it was really encouraging. We’ve seen a lot of like really highlevel players in the summer league need a little bit of time to find their footing. And so for for Trey Johnson to look like this right out of the gate and basically have two fringe 20point games, you know, in a row, I think is just really encouraging. like he, you know, had the the close to 20 point game last night. He breaks 20 points uh tonight or two nights ago and then tonight just I got nothing but but love for the rookie here. Uh a few things defensively still needs some work, let’s say. I think he’s a little uh less ready to go on that end of the floor overall. But he’s not bad on that end necessarily either. Like they they kind of have him funneling guys I I think to SAR for some help on a lot of this stuff. um some ball screen coverage things. I think they probably could have benefited from maybe communicating a little bit more. I would love to be there and on the court and know like who’s the talkative one of this group. Ideally, you’d want somebody like Sar to be that one. You don’t see his mouth moving a whole lot. So, I think that’s maybe an area he could grow and just kind of take some of the younger guys under his wing a bit here, too. Again, that’s that’s speculation from afar. It’d be nice to see uh what the case with that really is or find out a little bit from the coaching staff how they’ve liked that defensive communication uh overall. But again, like more good than bad from from Trey Johnson. And I think that’s uh that’s a great sign for Wizards fans. Like if this dude is going to average 15 points a game, you know, in the NBA as a rookie, like I’m I’m not going to be surprised by that. And he’ll get the opportunity. Like this team is going to need some scoring. They’re going to need the shooting to say the least. This again, this is a game they won with like an average shooting performance. They were sub, you know, 30% last game. This one they were 11 of 31, which is 35 and a half%. So, so better, but not overly uh impressive. So, this isn’t one like one where they won because they torched the Nets and uh they actually got outshot from the three-point line. The Nets were 16 to 42. I think the three-point defense overall could have been a little better tonight as well, but but this is a good performance. It’s like again, you you shot worse than the team you just played against and I think probably had more turnovers. Yeah. 18 to 16. So, if you can still win a game doing that, like that’s that’s a pretty darn good sign. And they they barely outrebounded the Nets, which I’ll take any advantage they get on that end because that’s not the strong suit of this Wizards team. I think we would all say they had 52 rebounds. The Nets had uh 48. So, so any win there I think uh you know in in that column is is definitely a good one. Let’s uh catch up on the chat here a little bit. Uh Joseay very quiet off uh offensive outputs from Will Riley and Trey Johnson. We’re going to get to Riley here in a little bit. OBJ people went overboard after that first game after watching these youngans for for 82 games. I I mean look they were better as a whole. I I think the holes are still the holes and you know the good things are still the good things. I’m not expecting them to be perfect players, but I I think there are some very fair things to point out that that they’re going to have to improve on for this team to even be competitive. Like again, this this is a large part of the Wizards rotation this year playing in summer league. And it’s just it’s going to be rough. Like I I just wanted to put to bed any of the questions about is this team suddenly too good because I don’t think that’s anything anybody should be worried about right now because of this one summer league performance. Uh K dot 81 Trey all day. Uh yeah, hard to argue with that. Uh Dreads for Nothing. Everyone had moments. Very fun watch. Yeah, I thought this was a well-rounded uh performance overall. Uh David feel better after tonight. Yeah, I mean that that was nice. They settled in. That was great. Uh host Keshan didn’t make shots today, but was still awesome. I’m still impressed with him on defense. Even when he does get beat, he’s got the length to get back. I think when you’re a guy like Keshan and you have that that basketball queue, he does. He just finds a way to be in good positions and then he’s got quick hands or something something enables him to get like a hand on on a ball that you don’t think he should or maybe the defender doesn’t think he should. He’s like tipping and deflecting passes and and even if it doesn’t lead to a turnover, I still think he’s something that other teams have to account for and sort of offset that length a little bit. So, love that. I think that’s great to see. Uh Farszy bounceback game from Sar and Bub. Yeah, I thought they both did a couple really nice things. Uh so that was awesome. Andrew, uh this was a game the young guys would have lost confidence in as Brooklyn pulled away in the second. We can see the growth. Yeah, I think you know that was good that they locked in. I think that’s something that Bub really helps them with. Like you saw some competitiveness from him. He was getting up in guys defensively. That was really the story of it when they made their little run and turned some things around on them. They did it by pressuring the ball a lot and getting some, you know, some pick sixes and things like that. So, I think that’s huge. Um, from Jacob, George still controls the pace well and defensively is so active no matter how he’s shooting. Agreed. I I do wonder about the shooting here a little bit because he definitely kind of feast or famine. He has so many balls that hit every part of the rim and rattle out like a disproportionate amount of his shots compared to the normal player. He kind of slings it a little bit. I’m wondering if it’s like a backspin thing or something, but it it just uh it it seems like he gets bad luck on on some of those to um you know, not dropping in that that you’d like to see that. So, you’ll see if that’s something they can maybe refine here a little bit. He’s somehow short so often in his threes. It’s odd. Yeah, I agree with that, too. A lot of short shots. He misses short or long, which is good. you’d obviously rather see that, but uh yeah, it just needs a little tweaking there. And then I think he becomes really dangerous because he can just put the ball on the floor, get ahead of guys. He does that one really first big dribble uh you know, big step and dribble, which is which is awesome. Um uh let’s see from uh from George. Let’s see how big a story will Yeah. Well, Sar throwing shots away left and right. Yeah, I mean that was that was cool. I I want to talk about Sar and the defense. We’ll get into that in a little bit. It never makes no sense. Some fun Will Riley flashes. Agreed. Uh, all right. Let’s Let’s see. Um, an eight and a half Stephen Alex Cami. Yeah, he definitely did a little bit of his Marcus Cami impressions tonight, which is actually not like a terrible comp for him. Um, except you hope longterm he shoots it a lot better here. So, so let’s have the SAR convo a little bit. I’ll just first give you the stats here. Anybody listening to this maybe who didn’t watch the game, he was seven to 15, so sub 50% from the field, which at some point I’ I’d like to see my big make a few more 50% games. He’s 0 for two from three, but didn’t force a lot of them obviously only 0 for two, so I can live with that. 204 from the free throw line. Like to see him improve there a little bit. The best part tonight though, the 12 rebounds, I think they needed them. A couple of them were like really contested, especially down the stretch, which is awesome. had 16 points, two assists, no steals, eight blocked shots. That was huge. And they weren’t just like all like superficial blocks, too. Like they they were meaningful stretches of the game here. Had a big one on Timmy late, uh, which I want to get into the Timmy performance here a bit as well. He had four turnovers, which I didn’t love to see. Got a little out over his skis at times, but again, more good than bad from Sar. I think we’re just going to have to like accept that maybe he’s a little bit of just a slow starter because the first quarter that you just look around at the tweets and everyone’s like what is Alexar doing right now? Does he want to be here? Like myself included the first game a little less so uh tonight. But again, you saw the the good and the bad of of Alexar. Like I I thought he was really good just covering ground as a defender, the weak side blocks. He rotated well. I think people had to factor him into their drives because he was he was going to come hunt them down if they got by their own defender. Uh still not as good on ball defensively against bigs as you would like. He got a little lost in pick and roll coverage. Again, I don’t know what the Wizards are telling those guys to do. So, I don’t really know who to put that on, but he just kind of got stuck in the middle a couple times. It seemed like uh Timmy beat him just straight up around the hoop a couple of times and he got a little bit out muscled, which you know that that’s what Drew Timmy does. So, I’m not totally discouraged by that. He’s probably the best low post scorer in the summer league uh right now. So, it’s not the worst thing in the world, but you know, Alex is probably better switching on to guards as an onball defender, I think, right now than he is sticking with his his own assignment and and that’s where he’s going to probably have to improve. thought there was definitely some like footwork stuff offensively where he was just sort of out of place and and seemed like to lose his footing here a little bit or just kind of like not awkward. It was a little awkward like he wasn’t pacing out his steps particularly well on a couple drives. I felt like especially early uh you know he was just kind of too like too much. He tried to like euro step through two guards in the lane rather than just try to dunk on either of them. There were some fadeaway. He’s a floater that he like almost airballed. Uh just I took notes from the first quarter here. There were there were some tough ones and it just seemed like the only things he dunks are balls that are like uncontested. Uh he had a couple putbacks though, so it was kind of turned that around on me as soon as I took that note. Uh but still fades away and things like that a little too much for my liking. I just need someone to remind him like every time out that you’re the biggest, longest, most athletic big on the floor. like put somebody in the rim a little more often. He did have one big dunk late tonight. Wasn’t really like on anybody. Not that that’s, you know, that’s probably an unreasonable expectation of putting somebody on a poster. Well, he did get put on a poster a little bit tonight, but I’d always rather see my big get dunked on because it means he’s at least challenging somebody at the rim. Just didn’t work out for him. Uh, so you just we need him to just continue to get stronger and and be a little tougher. And saw a little bit more of that edge tonight, which which was good. Uh, I think he kind of turned around and accepted the challenge after getting a little bit of a slow start. Timmy got off to a hot start. So, you know, maybe somebody in uh the, you know, the huddle was like, “Hey, man, like you can’t get pumped all night.” Not really sure uh what the case was that turned it around. But, you know, we’ll we’ll get into that. Uh, let’s see. Host, I don’t know if it’s a bit of a concern for you, but Sar’s short roll decisions have been shaky these last two games. I think it’s just them not knowing each other. I think he did that pretty well uh you know in in regular season play last year. Uh so summer league it’s it’s new guys, new faces doing new things. I wouldn’t worry about that. They just looked a little out of sync. There was some like one where he passed behind somebody after they cut. So just learning your guys especially as a big trying to play make is probably even more important when you don’t have the same natural feel maybe like your guards do. Iron Man 12 Trey Eagles Rip Hamilton. Don’t really see that comp a whole a whole lot personally other than he runs around a lot which which is good. He did hit some mid-range jumpers. Maybe maybe that’s the thing. Uh but definitely puts the ball on the floor more than I remember Rip doing and and also a lot more lethal from from three, I think. U Dreads for Nothing said, “Thoughts on AJ tonight?” Yeah, if a butterfly flaps its wings in Maryland, AJ Johnson get you know gets blown off his spot in Las Vegas. like the guy is just it’s just this the strength thing. It’s like so glaringly apparent that he’s going to struggle to play meaningful minutes in the NBA until he can bulk up. I’m not saying he has to be like this yolked guy, but like positional strength uh will just be more important for him. Like being lean, being I guess functional strength is really what I mean there is going to be be huge for him. He just basically has to foul people every time they get like a little, you know, like lean on him because he just doesn’t have the strength to like get back in front of them and then kind of bump them away from the rim. So, he just ends up like hanging on to him and, you know, that’s like only going to like work for you so long. I I think there’s some some cool things he did. Like he only had the two fouls tonight, but it just felt like he was always kind of scrambling to catch back up to guys defensively. He was three five from the field. Again, not great from the three-point line, but only one attempt. So, 01. Had four rebounds, no assists, no steals. Uh, and had two turnovers. You know, it’s just he’s not a point guard. Like, they’re letting him bring the ball across half court and then he sort of backs it out to half court again and then dribbles around until they sort of kick the ball around the perimeter a bunch. Just I don’t really know what he does for you meaningfully in an NBA game that that impacts winning yet. I still think he’s a really intriguing guy to continue to take a flyer on. I would just prefer to see most of his minutes come at the G-League level to start the year. Like, let’s play the young guys that we think are a little further along in their development. Play them next to a few of the vets. Mix it up. Have some good, you know, diversity in in the rotation of who plays with an older guy. You know, which of the younger guys play with which older guys, let AJ come along, take his time. Like, this is going to be a long-term, you know, project for them essentially. And uh these other guys I want to like force feed a lot of them minutes, you know, assuming they do what they need to do to to earn time on the floor. AJ I think would just benefit from like playing some in the G and just figuring out like what are you what do you do? What is your game beyond just like really good running in transition and then dunking in the open court. There’s got to be more to it than that. I’m not saying they give up on him or anything like that. It’s just anything he does to impact a game this year will be sort of a pleasant surprise for me at this point. I also have like almost no expectations for what Will Riley does on an NBA court this year. I I know he was much better tonight. Five of six from the field, three or four from three, three or four from the free throw line, no rebounds, three assists, and finished with 16 points. He was an overall bright spot. Like he he just didn’t do too much. He seemed a lot more comfortable. Just in general, where he is in his development is sort of what I’m saying. If anything he does is icing on the cake for me this year. If you have no expectations for him, you’ll just kind of always be pleasantly surprised. So, uh, if he gets out there and he has a few games like this sprinkled throughout the the season here, I’m all for it. You know, I think he does need to be able to put the ball on the floor a little bit and create get some rhythm. He played 23 minutes tonight, which, you know, was was a good amount of minutes for him. still got a lot of work to do defensively, I think, but uh decent sized guy, you know, pretty mobile. So, I I think he’ll come around on that. It’s just it’s a raw rookie and I think we’re going to see a lot more of that. I had a less impressive offensive performance. Jir Watkins 0 for four, 03 from the um from the three-point line, but five or six from the free throw line. I think what you’re going to get from Jir Watkins is the guy will get to the free throw line. We saw it in college, you know, Florida State last year. I think he was like nine free throw attempts per game and he makes a pretty solid percentage of them, but he had uh four rebounds, an assist, two steals, uh picked up a couple fouls as well, but was just like in dudes and I think like uh Ben Roth for the Nets especially was like scared to dribble the ball across half court. When you make another team’s guard turn his back to you at their three-point line and he’s still got 70 more feet to go, like that’s awesome. And I’m just I’m in the boat for him. I think he can like be impactful this year. He does need some work on the shot like is the theme with a lot of these guys, but I’ll just take it. Somebody that is going to like find way like not everybody on your team is going to be an elite shooter. Although I wish the Wizards had a few more of those. But if Demir can just come in and provide ball pressure and and good rotations and be a pest and you play him 10 minutes a game and let him just pick somebody up 94 ft, like that’ll be cool and and I’d be happy uh to see it here. We’ll check back in in the chat a little bit. Uh BG the pro Dawkins and company are doing their job well. All three rookies showed their worth. Yeah, they all did different things, too, which was cool. Uh so that’s great. Christian Gardner just tapping in now. Yeah, thanks for checking in, man. Uh, glad to see that that Alex did a lot better overall here as well. Uh, dreads for nothing. Too much finesse, not enough aggression from Sar. Yeah, I’d like to see that as well. Um, and then also said if Star had Keshan’s mfer, he would win RG of the year. Yeah, I think that would have helped him. He does seem a little content to just coast sometimes. And, you know, I don’t know how you get him to be mean or aggressive or whatever it is that the term is, but you know, we’ll see. Byron man 12. AJ is too skinny and his ball handling isn’t there. Yeah, he he needs some work there. That’s that’s um again, you just got to figure out what he is. Help him develop in the direction you see him helping your team. Uh you know, when when the situation calls for it. Uh from a guy Griffin, love the direction they they trend it in as the game went on. Absolutely. Trey is a bucket. So upping the defensive intensity and making smooth plays off the b off the buck smooth plays at the basket. Gez, I can’t read in real time apparently on this show. So, thank you all for putting up with me. I promise I do read at beyond a fifth grade reading level. Uh my wife is a reading specialist. Maybe I should have her help me work on my functional reading during podcast. Um but Morphin Griffin, uh Bub struggled to but hit some big shots. Yeah, I thought he kind of showed up when they needed him to and made the most of the big moments. Keshan doing everything and just constant steals and deflections. Lots to like. Yeah, I mean this is probably the other worst team in the league and and maybe not one of the strongest summer league teams, but they got some dudes like Timmy is probably one of the better bigs in summer league in my opinion. And he puts a lot of pressure on your whole team. He has like a different sort of gravity. Guys draw into him and he’s a willing enough passer. So it was a good contest for them. They scrambled a little bit uh defensively to sort of make up and and close out on some shooters. I thought they were better at that than they were uh in in the first game. Like there were no wide openen threes for for a Kobe Brea level shooter, which I think, you know, that’s a good thing to learn defensively. It’s just I’m still not sure what they’re trying to do. Like I I would love to be in the locker room and hear a little bit more about what they’re trying to do defensively, what they’re telling these guys to do. I think that’s the hardest thing to judge at an NBA level. you can tell effort and things like that, but you know, some teams are telling their guys like, “Hey, you you can let this guy beat you off the dribble as long as you funnel him in X direction and or to this help and then this guy should rotate this way.” So, it’s just hard to ascribe, you know, blame to certain people in certain situations without knowing uh what they’re being asked to do. Um, Dreads for Nothing. AJ feels like a guy who skipped college. Yeah, I agree. I think he would have really really helped um you know his development just to be playing three years in the SEC or playing at Alabama or something like that. Uh from Griffin AJ feels like he needs a full year in the G- League. Yeah, absolutely agree. Uh Kit, let’s see. Riley looked pretty good tonight, but dang, he is thin. Yeah, he he’s got some work to do, man. Like that’s they’re going to keep him in the weight room. They’re gonna keep working on the shot and keep tightening up the handle. They’re going to teach him defensively. He’s going to watch a lot of tape. But again, I’d love to see Riley just get to cook some in the G-League for a while here as well. And if you got AJ and and Will and guys like that, and I think if you put a real point guard with this team uh in the G- League, like that’d be a great opportunity for them to learn and get some touches. And, you know, I’ I’d love to see uh where that could go. So, more good than bad. I think that’s really the takeaway here. Um uh from George Watkins getting coached by Mike Rhodess and Leonard Hamilton for four years. There’s no wonder he’s a tough defender. Absolutely. Um yeah, so that’s uh look, take guys that are coached by good people that teach if you want guys that know how to defend, you know, taking a Houston guy, taking a a VCU guy, especially pressure defense, like those are never bad things. So, I was just impressed with that. And I think he’s somebody that his kind of energy will rub off on the guys around him. So, hey, we’ll take all that. uh from Christian. Tim Leggler was really good on the broadcast. First time in a long time in national broadcast, had good Wizards analysis. I would hope the former Bullet hypes uses us up. But let’s talk about ESPN as a whole because they were messing up tonight. Like it’s summer league for those guys, too. I guess there’s some room for for all of them to uh continue to grow on the broadcast side as well. Well, they put up that absolutely just dog depth chart of just like they were missing dudes from the team and certain players were like, you know, behind other guys that they’ll never play behind and just just some kind of crazy stuff up there, confusing uh Will Riley with Leaky Black tonight. Just just some of that kind of stuff um that doesn’t seem to happen with other teams broadcasts quite as much. So, I think you can put a lot of this on the fact that nobody at ESPN is watching Wizards games cuz we’ll just never be on national TV again until we’re relevant. But yeah, I thought Tim himself was actually um was actually pretty good. So, you know, good for him and and it’s nice to see somebody with some ties to the organization say a few nice things about us. So, Keshan George tonight, four of 16, that’s 25% from the field. Obviously, not ideal. One of eight from three. thought he forced a decent amount. Just kind of thought he would either keep it going from last night or, you know, shoot his way into it, which I’m not really mad at. I’d rather, you know, somebody be more aggressive than not. There’s always that old John Thompson line. That’s one of my favorites here that I use on the show probably way too often. But, you know, you’d rather uh calm down a fool than try to raise a corpse. Like, you don’t have to worry about that with Keshan. Like, he’s always going to just be ready to go, which is great. But, he did kind of everything else tonight. Nine rebounds, six assists. I thought he did some real playmaking. He had five steals, only two two turnovers. So like your your small forward essentially had a 3 to1 assist to turnover ratio. Like that’s pretty awesome. And it’s not often guys are going to shoot four of 16 and and be positive contributors on a team, but he found a way to do it. Uh so that’s awesome to see. Let’s talk Bub Carrington for a minute. You know, he he was rough in game one, and I think he’d be the first to admit that as well. Shot the ball a lot better tonight. five of seven from the field, three or four from three, four or five from the free throw line, six rebounds, three assists, one steal. Did have the five turnovers. Again, I thought he felt like especially early like he was trying to force some stuff. I don’t know if he saw some tweets about him as a playmaker. That’s something they talked about with him in film studies is like trying to create for others, but was doing a little too much out there. But again, he made some big shots late. I thought he was a pest defensively. He’s not a crazy athlete, so he’s never going to probably be, you know, prime Gary Payeyton on point of attack defense or something like that, but another guy that playing with a Marcus Smart, I think it’s going to benefit. They’re probably like similarly sized built guys. Uh so just if you can learn little tricks and tips and things like that, that’d be great. Again, he was not afraid to pressure some ball handlers, you know, picked up a couple fouls doing it here. Uh that but this is an opportunity to try stuff, see what works, pick on people’s tendencies, all those sorts of things. So, I thought that was great. Uh Leaky Black, Leaky Black tonight, three for three from the field, uh two for two from the three-point line. I’ve said before, like Leaky Black is a three-point shot away from being an NBA player, like a lowerend rotation player probably, but still an NBA player. Uh but, you know, I didn’t think he was as good defensively as you’d want. like these other guys were more impactful about sort of forcing the issue. Uh and he’s just sort of a low usage guy. Like again, I think he’d be a great pickup for the G-League team. He’s just a solid guy. Can hit in the corner 3 and D kind of thing and and and that’s okay. Be kind of low usage for you. Mentioned Jamir Watkins already played 17 minutes which was awesome. I I don’t want to be like overly negative about a guy that is like fighting for his like professional future here, but uh the seven minutes of Liam Liam Robbins tonight were probably my least favorite seven least favorite seven minutes of the game. Unfortunately, he went 0 for two from the field. Despite being that big in seven minutes, he had zero rebounds. He did have an assist, which is cool. uh two turnovers in that amount of time, which is almost kind of hard to do when you’re playing as little as you are as a center to get that many minutes. He just looks slow at this point. Again, we’ve talked about Robbins on the show. This was a guy that was a very impactful college defender, mostly as sort of a clog the lane, be very tall, block some shots, drop coverage big. Not going to be able to do that the same way in the NBA. He did have some injury stuff, so maybe he’s still kind of coming back from that. But, you know, this is a dude that I think even if he was on the go- go this year, I probably wouldn’t expect to play a ton of minutes. And and honestly, I’d rather see more of just like Jonathan Pierre or AK Gak or just one of these guys that even probably a few more of those minutes going small ball with Dylan Jones would be more intriguing at this point. Uh, I just he’s just not there. I feel bad. At some point they probably uh like shut Sar down, which means Robbins is going to play more minutes. But yeah, I’m just not expecting him to be a guy that is working his way onto a two-way contract with the Wizards or anything like that. Can he play some meaningful impactful minutes on the go- go or something? Yeah, like that. That’s fine. I’d have no heartburn over it, but uh I just don’t see him as like a long-term piece to be sort of intrigued about the the future development for, unfortunately. So, you know, hopefully that’s another thing where he’s just coming back and there’s some rust there and I wish him, you know, all the best. Um, but it just uh yeah, wasn’t wasn’t the greatest uh performance for him. Uh, let’s see. Um, from Rich Reloaded, Robins was horrible. Yeah, not not great. Hostway, he couldn’t catch the ball. Yeah, not great. Uh, Rich, never seen him get ripped so much on a DHO. Yeah, it’s just it was tough, man. like it’s um it’s going to happen uh where you know you got to get a few minutes for him because he’s literally the biggest person on the team here obviously um same height as Sar but just a little beefier. You need somebody like that that can play a few minutes. But yeah, it’s uh it’s he’s got room for improvement. Let’s let’s say that way. We’ll go glass half full and and say, “Hey, look, you know, he’s he’s shaking the rust off and and hopefully he can be better the last couple games here.” Uh from Jacob, do you think they shut down Bub, Keshan, and Star for the rest of summer league? Now, it’s interesting. I, you know, maybe one of them sits out the third game and one of them sits out the fourth game or, you know, like whatever the case may be or they play light minutes. I just don’t think this is like a deep enough roster that they can afford to totally shut down like four dudes. Uh, so I I think, you know, they’re young dudes. I I think they could use all the minutes they can get. So, I expect they play a little bit more. I don’t know that they’re all out next game, but now that I’ve said that out loud, they’ll probably just all get shut down for the remainder here. Never makes no sense. I just realized that Dylan Jones got zero minutes. Yeah, that that um doesn’t it’s not particularly foroting for him. Uh or doesn’t it’s not good foreshadowing for him, I I think is what I meant to say. Like that was not a great first game performance and now he doesn’t play at all in in the second game. I don’t know if that confirms some stuff they saw in their very limited practices or what, but if they do shut some of these guys down, I’m interested to see a few of these dudes sprinkled in. I wouldn’t mind giving Jones another shot since he is technically a rostered player, although I I have my own opinion already on him. I’ I’d love to be proven wrong. Keshan Gilbert is the guy I was probably most interested in seeing from this group. I thought he was just really positively impactful for Iowa State. kind of a menace and and played some some tough defense and got up in people. He made enough shots. I think he’s a guy I’d be really intrigued to see, you know, converted to the G-League team and get that little roster bonus from his exhibit 10 contract and maybe stick around or maybe even earn a two-way. But the fact that he’s got two DMPS is is not ideal. Zeke Mayo hasn’t played at all. Jonathan Pierre hasn’t played at all. Kari Richmond hasn’t played at all. AK Gak, as we mentioned, has not played at all. So, yeah. Yeah, you get a few of those guys in, I don’t know how competitive we’ll ultimately be, but there’s a couple dudes of that group that that like to play defense, and I think that’ll always give you a shot if you’re going to um compete uh you know, on that end of the floor in summer league. So, I don’t know. Uh not a whole lot else to add on this one. I thought overall like a a more good than bad kind of night, which is what you want to see from summer league. It’s summer league. So, there’s never a no bad kind of night. like there’s always a little bit of sloppiness and it was kind of high turnover from a couple guys here, but you know, if you’d told me like I I think in my opinion Keshan is probably the best overall player on the summer league team. So that you would win a game with him going four of 16. That’s that says a lot of guys did a lot of good things and that’s probably is like the whitest summer league teams. We’re going to beat somebody. It’s probably this one that they’re not crazy athletic here overall. So, we should have had an advantage in that department, I think we did, and that ball pressure helped with the win there. So, uh, you know, we’ll see if they keep it rolling, but I I thought whatever they did with them between game one and game two, obviously, there were some posts about uh Keshan or excuse me, Brian Keefe getting with Keshan, uh, Bub and Sar, you know, after that last game and and kind of having a sidebar with them. And hopefully, I think they took that to heart. You know, all three guys did more and were more aggressive. Just a few less shots dropped for Keshan, but overall still impacted the game. I think that’s actually my favorite takeaway from this whole game is the dude who went fourth from 16 didn’t let it shake him. He still found other ways to be positively impactful. I think in a real game, you’d hope he probably doesn’t take 16 shots when it’s clearly not his night, but you can let him do that in this setting. And he’s not really like a force shots guy too much. He’s obviously a willing passer. So again, the six assists there are great. I do still think this team would have benefited from from one more like really creative guard. Actually, Trey Johnson made probably the best pass of the night. He kind of slung it crosscourt to the corner for Keshan who missed and then Sar caught a put back, you know, caught it and put back, dunked it. That was one he got fouled on and and got the N1. So overall, like that this team still needs like they’re all decent enough playmakers. I think they could use one like here is the playmaker and you know I think Bub is is better offensively on ball for himself then I think he isn’t creating for other people right now. So that’s still something I’d like to see them kind of fine-tune here a little bit and they do still probably need that piece uh long term of this is the you know poke holes in the defense guy and and sort of um get everybody on rotation. So we’ll see as they continue to build out this roster if that’s something they agree with. positional size is is um something they seem to value. You know, this this team looked a little small to me out there again tonight. Maybe it’s just the lack of size in the front court, but but Bub and Trey together is not the biggest back court, and when you put AJ out there, it’s officially the skinniest back court, especially uh when the Johnson boys are out there together, it becomes really skinny really quickly. You know, Keshan’s not a huge dude. Uh so, they’re going to have to beat people by running. like this is a team that I think should get out and transition as much as they can, especially in the regular season. You’ve got young legs. And you look at all these veteran guys, they do not want to play at breakneck pace in January, you know, and it’s cold as out against the Wizards. So, that’s what I’d lean into. Uh, and and just say, you know, hey, if we get a ton of possessions and we put up a lot of threes and maybe we’re much improved shooting, we can get some rebounds actually and limit your possessions. Maybe that’s a way to be at least more competitive. Again, I don’t care if they go 0 for 82 this year. I mean, I don’t want that, but like I really don’t care about the wins, losses as much as like I don’t want to see as many just like total blowouts. There were so many games last year where they were just non-competitive and I didn’t expect that to the extent it happened. So, I I just rather see less of that this year. And again, maybe just leaning into that break neck pace is is a way to do it. But, you know, hey, we’ll see what they ultimately do. It’s it’s their show, not mine. But, hey, this is a good start. We’ll take it. Uh I don’t know any any other comments from the chat here. We’ll uh we’ll start to ramp this one up or wrap this one up um as we go. Man, it’s been a long day. Um I’m like tongue tied from the start here. And doing this alone, not a great life choice. So uh we’ll get somebody back on uh for the next one here to uh to do some of the co-hosting duties. Just going to pull up the summer league schedule. I’m sure a lot of you listening to it know it off the top of your head. I just can’t remember the time. All right. They play on Tuesday night. That’s July 15th against the Philadelphia 76ers, 8:30 p.m. on NBA TV. So, we’ll do another one of these after that. So, we’ll check you all back here then. Thanks for tuning in. If you are watching this on YouTube, please do me a favor, guys. Hit that like button. Uh that means a lot. Helps us, you know, the show’s been doing well this summer. It helps people uh find it out there, though. So, so thank you guys for doing that. That that’s a real team effort from uh Wizards uh community here. So I appreciate you guys. All right. Again, this is Believe in Trey Johnson podcast and we will catch you all next time.

Matt Modderno analyzes the Wizards second Summer League game against the Nets, a 102-96 win. Tre Johnson continued to look like a future star, Bub Carrington and Alex Sarr had bounce back games, and Kyshawn George found ways to be really impactful despite not having a good shooting night.

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