Where the Miami Heat stand at summer league: Ethan and Adel take five
Hey, it’s Ethan Skolnick with Digital Adele. We’re actually at a random hotel in Las Vegas after the Miami Heat win a summer league game. They are now one and two in Las Vegas. Kind of a late comeback against the Boston Celtics. We’re going to talk about the summer league as a whole though now that they’re How many games are they into this at this point? They were I can’t remember. It’s been so many games that I’ve seen uh since I’ve been here last 5 days. But I’m I’m going to guess it’s been what three at the California Classic. So, six total. Six total. So, six total. All right, so let’s you know what? Six total. You could divide it by three. So let’s go with three takeaways so far. Uh number one here uh for me is that they gave Pella Lararsson a lot more responsibility in this summer league. They kind of put the ball in his hands like they did with Max Strus way back when. And although there were some turnovers, which Larson spoke of, he did make a lot of plays. I think he scored 24 today. Got to the line uh a bunch, hit the floor a bunch, and showed that edge. Even got into an altercation with Jordan Walsh. He walked away from smirking. Uh what do you think this means for Larson now going into the season, particularly into training camp? Yeah, I think Pella Larson has solidified a a role in the rotation. I think he’s going to be able to provide the Miami Heat with much needed scoring um off either off the bench or in the main rotation uh depending on how it all shakes out with the main roster by the time opening uh day gets here. His three-point shooting, I really like the self-creation into the three-point shooting, but his ability to draw fouls, get to the foul line, that’s something that Miami he lacked all of last season. If he can do that, I think he’s going to be able to bring a much needed relief valve whenever there’s a team going on a run. If you can get the ball to Pel Larson, he can get to the free throw line, that’s going to stop the clock and stop some of that momentum. All right, second one here is they asked Kel Wear to back it up, play another strong game after he had uh the the sort of very lazy game, first game of Las Vegas. Uh and then Spoke called him out and then he really showed up in the game after, but he was better today. And Eric Glass, who’s coaching this team, said it was his best game. Why do you think it was his best game? Do you agree with that? Yeah, I do agree with it. I think he was very aggressive some from the opening tip. I thought he uh really showed his three-point shooting touch. he took those shots in the flow of the offense. There really wasn’t a lot of that, you know, sideep dribble attempting to get into pull-ups where that were outside of his game. I think everything that he got was within his game and he fought and he competed and he played really really hard today. There’s still some technical things, you know, obviously would like to clean up like the angle of screens like 45° making solid contact, that sort of thing. But he tried. The effort was there, the motor was there. you could see and you could the other players could feel the force in which he played with. All right, number three here. We could talk about Kesha Johnson because he did have a much better game today. Eric Glass said he felt he’d failed him uh in the last couple games not getting him opportunities. But I guess we’ll close here because we went into this doing a podcast on it and I’m not sure anything really changed. Um Stevenson hit a late shot which kind of pushed them ahead, but we still don’t see another two-way coming from this roster, right? No, I don’t see a 2-way on this roster at the moment. Stevenson hit the three, which is great. He does have three-point shooting prowess. And if he just would play within the flow of the offense and hit threes like he did at the end of that game to to push him put the game away, then yes, I could see how he could make us push for that last two-way. The fact is he stops the ball a lot and he handles the overhandles a lot. Cook, I like Cook a lot. He does a lot of nice things, not anything great. He’s just small defensively and he gets pushed around and bullied in the paint. Even though I mean he’s in shape, he’s fit, but he just doesn’t have the athletic profile in the strength to be able to compete defensively. And on a roster where you have DaVon Mitchell, Casper Shakonis, Drew Smith, you know, hopefully he can get healed from his Achilles injury there. It’s going to be very tough carrying another small guard on the roster. All right. And Vlad Golden played a little bit with Khal Wear today. That was an interesting twist, but again, I’m not sure he really has the foot speed to hold up, but he already has a 2-way. All right, for Digital Adele, I’m Ethan Skolnick. This is probably our last dispatch from Las Vegas. We survived 111 degrees today. Have a good one, everybody. Stephen.
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