Miami Heat Summer League Winners & Losers Ft. Pelle Larsson, Kel’el Ware & Kasparas Jakucionis

Miami Heat Summer League Winners & Losers Ft. Pelle Larsson, Kel’el Ware & Kasparas Jakucionis

[Music] Miami Heat summer league has officially ended and on today’s show we’re going to look at who are the winners, who are the losers from the Heat Summer League squad. And if we’re going to be completely honest, it was a pretty disappointing summer league this year. Maybe I was spoiled. I mean last year we did in fact win the entire thing with standout performances from Kel Larson from Khal Wear from Kashad Johnson from Haimeh Hakez Jr. even a little bit. Last year’s team was just so much fun. Josh Christopher as well. This year’s team, I didn’t feel that same juice and it was sad to see. But I want to start the conversation with KL Wear. Before we get into our official winners and losers, I’m giving a conflicted grade for the secondyear center out of Indiana. Like he is without a doubt a loser for how he started summer league. He was absolutely abysmal in the first three games he played, spanning across two California Classic games in the first Heat game in Vegas. And then Eric Sper called him out and he had those backto-back 21 point performances. Also averaged 12 rebounds in those games and shot above 55% from the field. So loser for how he started, winner for how he finished. Let’s just hope when the regular season rolls around, he does not need to be reminded to play hard every single night. And make sure you do follow me over on Twitter. My handle is nick_roll rolloff. I talk keep basketball even more on the bird app. I’m still calling it that. I don’t care how long ago it was changed than I do on YouTube, believe it or not. So go give me a follow if you want more up to date around the Miami Heat. We’ll start with a winner. I think the number one winner without a shadow of doubt in my opinion was secondyear forward/guard Pel Larson. The 44th pick in the 24 draft out of Arizona. was a player that a lot of us fans like were very excited about over the course of his rookie season playing late and we were hoping to see him have more of an expanded role in summer league and we sure saw that he was clearly the best player for every moment he was on the floor and before he left the summer league squad to go play a Euro basket for his home country of Sweden he was terrific. Yeah, he struggled a little bit. Shooting from beyond the arc, only putting up a 26% mark, but that’s something that I’m not concerned about. The Heat summer league team was horrific in terms of its spacing. I think in the NBA when he’s playing with legit NBA players, he’ll have more space to get off his shot. Um, where he will have a much more efficient outing, but he was able to get to the rim and finish. He was able to get to the free throw line. And that’s where I just saw more improvement. They put the ball in Larson’s hands an way more than I expected and that was a complaint for a lot of us during the entire summer league period, right? We wanted to see more on ball Casperus Yakonis. Instead, they had a lot of onball Pal Larson. And if I’m going to be forced to watch Yakonis not play on ball as much as he should, at least I was seeing improvement from Larson, who did a much better job handling the rock, initiating contact, drawing contact, finishing around the rim at times, but I like the physicality that Larson played with. He looked like a more confident, improved player. And for the first part of summer league, he looked like how I would have expected Kel Wo to look in terms of an NBA imposing physicality that he was providing. And how about this? In the five games he played, she shot 45 free throws. Averaged nine free throw attempts a game. I know they call more fouls in summer league than normal, but like that’s still pretty damn good. And he shot above 80% from the charity stripe as well. I have a lot of confidence in Pel Larson being a solid rotational player from Miami this upcoming season. What say you? Scale it 1 to 10 for me in the comments. Confidence level in Pel Larson. Loser. And it hurts me. I am going to give a losing grade to our first round pick Casperis Yakon. And it’s hard to say this out loud because I was so high on draft night. Literally, when he was selected, obviously it was not as impactful as a summer league as we would have hoped. It was disappointing. Now, with that being said, I am not going to be that down on his long-term future with Miami. As I briefly alluded to a second ago, I don’t think he was used the way that he should have been used for the entirety of the California Classic and Vegas Summer League. And I do think that he is still going to be a very solid player in the NBA. But some of the issues that he had in college in terms of having more turnovers than made field goals at times reared its ugly head. And all summer league did for me is prove that it will take longer than anticipated for him to be a very productive and crucial part of this heat team. There was a delusional and hopeful part of me that hoped he was going to be a day one starting point guard for Miami because of how good he is as a playmaker, but it’s clear that he needs to tighten up his handle, his decision making. Um, he needs to improve his conditioning for sure as well. And I think it’s going to be very important that he just gets reps. So I could see him playing a lot of time this year in the G-League potentially and they play a lot of DaVon Mitchell and maybe Drew Smith who’s likely going to have a two-way contract again this year um early in the season. Maybe that changes, maybe it doesn’t. But I’m still bullish on the kids future. I just think we have to tone down our expectations for this season specifically. kids 19. It’ll take some time just like it did with Nicole Yoic. Javvante Cook is a winner for me and I was actually pretty impressed with what he provided. This is a older player who I think kind of replaced the Josh Christopher role on this Heat summer league team from a season ago. Um Cook reminded me a lot of Christopher in terms of his ability to light it up from beyond the arc. Averaged about six three-point attempts per game. shot about 38% from Beyond the Ark as well, spanning across the California Classic and Vegas summer league. He’s got good size to him. He’s 66. And I mentioned right now Vlad Golden has a two-way, and I would expect Drew Smith to get a two-way, but you get three of them. I could see Javvante Cook getting a two-way contract. There’s another player that we’ll discuss here on the back end of the show that could be in consideration for that final two-way contract, but this summer league team was so disappointing. Like, I don’t see many others potentially vying for a two-way contract for Miami, considering there’s only like one available right now, assuming Vlad Golden and Drew Smith have the other two. Cook is certainly one of them. Good size, decent athlete, and he proved he could be a three-point shooter as well. a loser. And this one is like interesting to me is Steve Settle III, the Ford from Temple. And like the reason why I think it’s pretty clear that he’s a loser is because I expected a larger role for him in this Heat summer league squad. Like you look at the Heats summer league team and outside of the guaranteed contract players Larson Yakonis Wear and Kashad Johnson there was only a couple guys that had a legit deal with Miami. Vlad Golden on a two-way and then Steve Settle. They gave him an exhibit 10 contract right after the draft as a UDFA and that guarantees him, at least as long as he has the exhibit 10 contract, a spot at Heat training camp in October. So, you would have anticipated him having a relatively large role for this Heat Summer League team. He like didn’t see the floor until the last couple games. That’s not a good sign. That tells me that this Heat summer league coaching staff doesn’t believe he would have been able to contribute anything that productive and you saw a lot more playing time from like an Eric Stevenson, um a Dane Danja at times. So, it’s like you would have thought Settle was going to get more PT considering he had a legit contract and wasn’t just a summer league invite like half the other players on this roster. And that is why he’s clearly a loser to me. having a real deal and not playing. Make sure you are subscribed to the channel for more daily Miami Heat content videos all year long on summer league for agency, the draft, the season. We’ll be doing live watch parties again when the real season rolls around in October preseason as well. So, make sure you subscribe to the channel and join the family here today. I’m gonna say Kashad Johnson is a loser. And I know some people aren’t going to like that, but I was severely severely underwhelmed by his performance throughout the California Classic and Summer League. I mean, this is a player that averaged damn near 20 points per game for the G-League Sou Falls squad this past year. got his team option of $1.9 million picked up before free agency, which means he got a guaranteed contract by Miami. And for him to have a guaranteed deal going into summer league, I just expected more. And he did show some nice things like he was a connective defender. He’s an athlete in transition and he had a really good game in the one game they won against the Boston Celtics, but he was disappointing in the California Classic. He didn’t consistently shoot the ball that well from beyond the arc. I thought Kashad Johnson showed me more last year as a UDFA rookie than this year as someone Miami expects to maybe take a little bit of a larger step up into a rotational spot on the Heat’s main roster this upcoming season. So, for him to be a little bit underwhelming, it puts him on my loser list. And to me, I think you could have kept him on a two-way. I know you maybe want to keep that flexibility open for a potential UDFA. Um, but Kashad, I don’t think would have been signed to a standard deal by another NBA team. And if he was given opportunity to be a two-way back in Miami again or a two-way on a different club, he probably would have chose Miami. So, I think you could have kept him on a two-way, which would have given us another $1.9 million in cap space, at least as of right now, and then uh have another roster spot open to potentially sign a true center because we don’t have a backup center to KL Wearinet buyer right now. So, to me, I think hindsight’s 2020 obviously, but I would imagine Miami would think a little bit differently on picking up that team option for Kashad considering how he struggled a little bit during summer league. A winner is Eric Stevenson, the player that I briefly mentioned a little bit earlier when referencing the talk about Javvante Cook. And when you think about who could be up for that last two-way spot for the Heat, maybe it’s someone that played for the summer league squad. Maybe they’re eyeing a different player in NBA free agency or a team player that is on a different summer league team right now or was. But Eric Stevenson across the five plus games that he played shot 50% from beyond the arc. He had like five or six threes in the Heat’s first summer league game. He shot 55 plus percent during the Vegas summer league. Like this guy was an absolute sniper. He’s an older guy. He’s bounced around some NBA teams. If you looked at that head shot we just showed, he had it with a Washington Wizards jersey on. So he’s a player that has gotten looks from other NBA players or teams in the past. Um, should he give up his dream of being an NBA player? I mean, it’s going to be pretty farfetched for him to get a rotational spot, but I would contemplate giving Eric Stevenson that last two-way considering how good Miami has found some of these undrafted shooters like Max Stru, Duncan Robinson, Gabe Vincent, Caleb Martin. Maybe Stevenson could be a late find. People forget Duncan Robinson didn’t make his first kind of splash in the league until he’s 26 27. So maybe Stevenson could be something very similar to that. Who knows? But you make the call. Should Miami give Eric Stevenson a two-way deal? I guess I will say yes. Actually, if you had to choose one player that isn’t on a two-way deal or a standard contract for Miami from the summer league team, it would be between Stevenson and Javvante Cook and I would lean Stevenson because he showed me a lot in terms of his ability to be a marksman. So, let me know your thoughts on Typen Wise. Final player we’ll talk about going Vlad Golden, the center that obviously is on a two-way contract right now. I like Golden. I was very, very happy about the Heat signing him in undrafted forc. He was my I think second or third top player on my big board that wasn’t selected and I had him in like 46th overall. But he didn’t show me as much as I would have hoped and I get it. Maybe we were expecting to see him get more playing time. And he has great size obviously, but he just struggles to move his feet on the defensive end of the floor, which was definitely one of my concerns in my scouting. He’s just so big. And I was concerned about when he got up against NBA talent, especially with these NBA centers that are just so uberly athletic now. Would he still be able to be as impactful or would he have my concern with what I had with Zagini as well in terms of the inability to move the feet defensively getting yourself in out of position committing just a ton of fouls and getting targeted and drop coverage in the pick and roll and I think that has kind of reared its ugly head. He hasn’t finished as well around the rim as I would have hoped for as well on the offensive end of the floor. So there’s been a little bit of a concern from my end for Golden. Now, is that enough for me to say he shouldn’t be a two-way player for the Heat and they should release him? No. I would like to keep Golden on a two-way contract for the short term. Um, but I wouldn’t say he surprised me in such a way that I could see him getting meaningful playing time for Miami on the main squad this season like you see some other two-way players get. Um, but maybe that changes throughout training camp and we’ll see him more in the preseason for sure. And make sure you are subscribed because with summer league over, the next time we see Miami Heat basketball is in September during the preseason and then the October regular season beginning creeps up on you. Really does. We’re almost done with July here. It’s only one month of August and next thing you know, preseason basketball is here. So, make sure you subscribe for the top-notch coverage of the Miami Heat. [Music]

2025 NBA Summer League has come to a close for the Miami Heat, and they were unable to defend their Summer League championship from 2024. Today’s Miami Heat rumors and Heat news will take a look at the top Miami Heat winners & losers from NBA Summer League. Kel’el Ware, Pelle Larsson, Kasparas Jakucionis, and Keshad Johnson were some of the top names that stood out for the Heat Summer League team. Who will get a two-way contract on the Miami Heat roster? That question is answered on this Miami Heat YouTube video.

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Miami Heat Summer League winners:
Pelle Larsson, G/F
Javonte Cooke, F
Erik Stevenson, F/G

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Heat Summer League losers:
Kasparas Jakucionis, G
Steve Settle III, F
Keshad Johnson, F
Vlad Goldin, C

Prove you KNOW ball by answering today’s questions in the comments:
– Confidence-level in Pelle Larsson? Scale of 1-10
– Should Miami give Erik Stevenson a two-way contract? Type ‘Y’ for Yes or ‘N’ for No

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Pelle Larsson 2025 NBA Summer League stats:
17.4 PPG, 3.6 APG, 3.0 RPG, 42.3 FG%, 26.3 3P%

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Miami Heat Highlights are fun to watch but do you learn anything? Watch these Heat Report videos to sharpen your Heat analysis:
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– 😱SHOCKING😱 Miami Heat Rumors: Trade For LeBron James? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzOjernpO7I
– MAJOR Terry Rozier Update + Damian Lillard Signing With Boston Celtics? Miami Heat Rumors – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGm-6zej3wc

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