RayJ Dennis + Enrique Freeman lead Indiana Pacers to summer league W, how they reached double-double

RayJ Dennis + Enrique Freeman lead Indiana Pacers to summer league W, how they reached double-double

Patriers beat the Pelicans to close out Summer League with a win. A two-way show from Enrique Freeman and Ray J Dennis and Robert Baker. Holy smokes, a close out strong in Las Vegas for the Pacers. We get to all of it today on the Locked On Pacers podcast. You are Locked on Pacers, your daily Indiana Pacers podcast, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. your team every day. What’s up everybody? Happy Saturday weekend and welcome in to another edition of the lockdown pacers podcast where we of course talk about the Indiana Pacers as always. My name’s Tony East. I cover the team for Forbes and today wrapping up summer league. It’s over. The fifth game is done for the Pacers. They beat the Pelicans who I believe have not won a summer league game in like 10 tries or something crazy like since 2023. Pacers get it done. Their defense solid enough in this one. A lot of guys sitting on both teams, but some real talent on the floor. Jeremiah Fears, lottery pick was playing in this game. Draft picks from last year. I think Trey Alexander is a good player. Uh, and the Pacers were better. They were just better than the Pelicans. A lot of good performances from the, you know, deeper guys on this team who don’t have quite as obvious of a future within the Pacers, but good play. Two double doubles from a two-way guy in Ray Dennis and a potential 2-way guy in Enrique Freeman. Plus, good performance from Robert Baker who is just my goodness level phenomenal in this one. So much to get to as we close out summer league. Going to be a little bit shorter on this one. And then we’ll be back on Monday uh skipping a day. Chat with Alex Golden about all things summer league in Vegas to wrap things up for the Pacers. The two guys with the most consequence in this one certainly Freeman and Ray Dennis. No Johnny Fury, no Quinton Jackson, uh no Cam Jones, no Taylor Peter, which made me h I wonder if he if they’re happy enough with his play. I think I would be as the Pacers I think get a nice summer league. So the key focuses were those other two guys. How did they do? What did they want to start and focus on here because he kind of shifted into a new role in a way that I didn’t I didn’t really not see coming, but I’m glad the Pacers actually showed it. Right. Freeman’s summer league was a lot of five like playing next to Philip Wheeler. Freeman is 100% the center off the bench. He very rarely played with Samson Johnson or Robert Baker pre preceding this game and a lot of his like next steps is like can he be the four? Should he be the four? What’s that going to look like? and today or today I watched it today. Uh and in this game he kind of toggled between both at the five next to uh to Wheeler but he played a lot off the bench with the bench group next to Baker and that gave a lot of variety of play for Enrique Freeman who didn’t take a three but was like cutting on the perimeter and driving toward the basket at times. A a much more varied performance from him in a way that I thought whoa I you know not that I didn’t see it coming. I just they didn’t break it out until the fifth game. So, his game was fascinating, right? Because the very first possession, Hunter Dickinson, h man, no matter where you’re from from the college basketball, you have Hunter Dickinson dislike memory. Uh he get like first possession, Pelicans miss, Dickinson gets the rebound just by being taller than Freeman and then puts it back right over. And it’s like, man, like Freeman is is good and is mobile and effective and he he did a lot of great things that we’re about to talk about, but like that’s the exact conundrum with him. It’s just there are some setters who are bigger than him. It’s like should he be a five, should he be a four, whatever. Because his next string of plays, rotating down to block a dunk from the elbow, hustling in transition when everybody else gave up to get a putback bucket after Buddy Beheim missed the basket, right? Activity plays that only Enrique Freeman makes. Like he’s if you’re active at 67 and can kind of jump like you’re going to make plays. Scoops it up off the floor after a Josiah Jordan Davis turnover. Goes straight up for a bucket, draws a foul. Like Enrique Freeman, look at this. He’s doing all this stuff. He’s just 67, right? And so in general, he had a a really solid summer league. He went seven for eight in this game. That’s excellent. He had 10 boards, another double double. He was a monster with the double doubles. I don’t know um what what they have for like stat limits of field goal percentage out in Vegas, but he had to have one of the better shooting percentages. And if you just look at the Pacers roster in terms of stats in summer league, like he played in all five games, he shot 72 and a half% from the field. He didn’t take very many threes, but he made 56% of them. Freeman finishes, I believe, one rebound, maybe two shy of averaging a double double. 16.6 points a game and 9.6 rebounds. Again, we’ll talk more about his total package summer league. And so, I I think he played well. He showed way more poise than last year, especially after that first game where he was a little all over the place and and you know, like he said, he was a little too timid. You could see that in this game though, I was really glad to see some of that stuff at the four. Uh because playing next to to Baker allowed shift into open space. Uh you know, on defense, he was way more effective with his size. But on offense, he’s different. He didn’t take any threes. He tried to cut across the lane and then drive and it didn’t really work. Well, like I’m just I was glad to see it and it went fine. You know, he had a he blocked a three. He got a huge board over Jeremiah Fears just like the one Dickson got over him. He had a steal and then he pushed and threw a lob pass to Josiah Jordan James. I was like, whoa, look at Enrique Freeman be a a perimeter buzzy guy. He also got cooked by Fierce at one point, but it was nice to see him play the four and do some things there. That was new to his summer league performance. So overwhelmingly positive game from him. You go seven for eight with a double double, duh, that’s the case. I think his summer league was four out of five like solidly above average good performance games. uh he’s still a restricted free agent with that qualifying offer hanging out there. That first game was just a little goofy and I think even he’d admit that. But we’ll see where this goes with him. I’ll talk more about the future of of these two-way guys probably on Tuesday. Maybe we even find out the future pretty soon. I believe it was late July last year when the Tristan Newton Quinton Jackson two-way signing notification came through uh from the Pacers last year. So, we’ll see what happens with Freeman. But I overall thought this game was quite good and I enjoyed seeing him play the four next to Baker which they had to do because Robert Baker was was amazing. We’ll talk about him as well. The other double doubler of the could be in the Pacers immediate future plans. Ray Jay Dennis back in the lineup. Cam Jones was out for this one as they needed they needed a ball hand like they just shut down a group of guys like you need a point guard to make everybody else function at an appropriate level. Ray Jay Dennis has just had a very very interesting summer league. Shots were falling again in this game. So I said after the second game of summer league because Ray Dennis was awesome scoring in that f first game and then really was off in game two I said I hope he plays one or two more games to see if he’s efficient in another outing so we can kind of get a feel for what the outlier game was of those first two and he’s been very effective putting the ball in the basket in his third and fourth appearance. Uh Ray J Dennis exithead summer league at 16 points a game. Shot 42% from the field, 40% from deep, 85% from the foul line and 7.3 assists per game. Right. He obviously has that passing. He is so good at probing with his head up in transition and finding these like forward through the lane kind of passes. I clipped one of those when watching this game. Like those head up transition pushes when the shots are falling too. It’s just he can combine kind of a lot of offensive ability into into his game and make something happen. and I thought he was quite effective uh as an offensive initiator in this game. He had another gorgeous head-up read to hit Robert Baker. He’s just such a tidy passer. I love watching him play. Strong buckets using his body, not shying away from any contact. Just a nice a nice game from Ray J Dennis who I again like Freeman to me had an like above what above what you need to see level of summer league in that I think the the thought about what Ray Jay Dennis is or what he should be for the Pacers when they got him and everybody that I’ve talked to about him since or everybody that’s watched him before is like yes this guy makes other people better. He’s a great passer. He’s just a little short and he’s like kind of reliant on this floater. He made non- floater shots right and making threes is obviously good to see. He made enough shots in lane and that floater to keep his two-point percentage up. But being a distributor at that level, even in summer league, like 11 assists when your teammates aren’t really play finishers or aren’t really are kind of question marks on what they are. Just a really really nice job from Ray Jay Dennis to be a mature point guard even on this stage. Uh I think that’s really good. I think that he especially on a team that’s missing Tyrese Hallebertton has kind of to me secured. I would think that if you had to keep him in the 2A mix, you should. As the Pacers, you might need him at the pro level this year. They needed Quinton Jackson 28 times last year. And they had Tyrese Hallebertton, right? They’re going to need point guard help if they can get it. Nothing Ra Dennis did in summer league suggests that he should be cut out of their plans in the absence of signing another point guard, but that is a different conversation. And so everybody else who played is, you know, a boom player or has not at, you know, a line to obvious contract with the Pacers right away. But the Freeman and and Dennis show as this became they combined to go 12 for 18 from the field. Uh 12 rebounds, 12 assists, 29 points in a win, they were both quite good. The Pacers were good when they were on the floor. That’s what you hope to see, especially when they were surrounded by, you know, not I hate to say it, but lesser talents, right? Quinn Jackson didn’t play. Furby didn’t play. Cam Jones didn’t play. Maldonado even was having a nice summer league. He didn’t play. Ten Peter didn’t play. Like they were missing a lot of the play finishers are just like the oo that’s an interesting player kind of dudes and they still were able to lead to a win. That was good stuff from them. I think that’s the close to summer league that they needed and now the Pacers have to figure out their decisions. I’ll talk about that at some point early next week. Let’s talk about uh Robert Baker. What? Philip Wheeler doing stuff. Buddy Beheim not quite as good. Josiah Jordan James reaching double figures to close out summer league here on Locked on Pacers. Before we do that though, we need to talk about game time. We’ve all been there logging on early, waiting forever for concert tickets to go on sale, only to lose your spot to a show you’ve been dying to see. Live music should be about making memories, not dealing with the stress of ticket shopping. That is where game time comes in. It makes getting concert tickets faster and easier than ever. Prices actually drop as it gets closer to Showtime and you can save up to 60% off with their killer last minute deals. If you’re tired of endlessly scrolling to find the best deal, game time zone deals. Pick the best seats in your section for you. If you’ve ever wondered what your view is going to look like in the venue, perfect. 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So, every angle you could want of the weekend and all the events on the lockdown women’s basketball feed. Okay, let’s keep it rolling. The end of summer league. This is the last segment talking about a Pacers game for like two and a half months. Sad. Um, they win it and those two I think were the best players like collectively in Freeman and Dennis. But Robert Baker, man, whoa whoa. What on earth? Where did this come from? Robert Baker, like the two games I saw him play in person, they I I was at the Cavs and Thunders games, he stunk. Like I think he would tell you he stunk. He couldn’t make a thing. He was floaty defensively. Like he certainly athletic. He was athletic enough to get boards, but I was like, “What is this guy? He’s a 27year-old center. Like what’s this about to be? Holy smokes. This is what it’s about to be.” 11 for 18, four threes, 10 boards, three assists, two steals, two blocks. What? He took over. in the second quarter of this game. Multiple in one quarter, multiple steals, multiple finishes, multiple threes, flying up and down the floor. He was awesome. The announcers were like, “My gosh, they can’t stop Robert Baker.” It was unbelievable. He looked awesome. He kept linking up with Ray Jay Dennis cutting down the lane when he’d pop out for a three. It looked like a comfortable shot. And I maybe I’m over overthinking body language, but like given the summer league that he had before this game because even after this four for 10 performance that gets him to 11.5% or 11.5 points per game, he still only shot 35% from three in Vegas in general. Like it felt like he had when he made two in a row, it felt like you could see relief in his celebration. He was just like, “Yes, like I did it. Like I know I can.” Because if you can have a performance like that, you’re if you’re capable of something like that, you know, that makes those bad performances just like how did that even happen? So really good stuff from him in this game in just about every way. Like I thought I I saw it was very funny because I I I tried to watch this game last night, but I just had too much going on. So I watched like the end of the first quarter and I checked on the box score afterwards and I was keeping up with Dustin’s tweets and I saw in the box score that he had 26 and 10 and Dustin put him in his takeaway story and I was like, “Wait, wait, wait, whoa, that’s really impressive.” And then I’m watching the game and the end of the first quarter he like misses a corner three and then is well short on a wing three. And I was like and someone on Reddit posted like could they give this guy a contract? Like should they? And I was like okay what’s going on? He was like actively bad in two games. But still he when he missed those bad threes I was like what is what is about to happen? Uh yeah steal three steel quick stretch big three. I’m like whoa ugly turnover in the middle of that. But he he was just awesome just awesome in this game. Um certainly like try it out in the boom if you can kind of guy if you have that kind of game on the summer league stage. Kay Tommyaga Kase I’ve heard it both ways. Kay is what announcers usually say. Uh he was he stood up Jeremiah Fur for a stop. That was new. He was banging in some threes. I mean I don’t think he was particularly efficient at 4 for 13, but that was his most complete like doing more than one thing summer league game. He got to start. That was fun to see Josiah Jordan James similarly. He got to the foul line. He had six assists. He was really moving the ball and three steals. He got a lot better last year with the boom. He started kind of slow for them, but he got a lot better by the end of the year. He had it that was his first double digit scoring game of summer. They got he was pretty solid in that way. And then Philip Wheeler, man, I don’t even know what to make of this guy. He when he catches the ball, he his plan A, B, and C are different methods of getting his shot up. Is it a shot where he is now? Is it a shot at the basket? Is it going through somebody around somebody? Ah, he’s getting the thing up. He can certainly score. It’s kind of it. He never really passes. He had two assists in this game. One was like, “Oh, that was pretty nice.” A high low assist to Enrique Freeman, but in general, he is purely points on the board stuff, but he did pretty good at that throughout summer league, 19 on 10 shots in this game. Philip Wheeler finishing summer league with eight, excuse me, that’s minutes, 13.2 points per game, shot 53% from the field and averaged 0.6 assists per game. Funny player, like he deserved to be on the floor and like getting real minutes in all these games. Um, but that was certainly his MMO every time. Buddy Beheim, I wonder what if he was playing for any sort of future in the or maybe not a two-way or anything like that, but just like could he be a good boom player like Dakota Matias last year. I thought Matias was pretty good all of summer league last year. Beheim had that good fourth game against the Knicks out in Vegas. Not good in this one. Two for nine from the field for only six points. I wanted to see more RJ Felton uh from East Carolina. He’s a rookie. He had some injury to me. He got hurt. I think it was a wrist injury in this game. He did have a lovely drive to the basket. Steven Ashworth missed shot. Samson Johnson dunked twice. Not a lot of note from the other guys in this game. But that’s it for Pacers summer league. The end of the experience uh this Pelicans game. Not a lot of pop. My only note besides what I’ve said so far. Trey Alexander’s on the Pelicans. I don’t think he’ll ever be on the Pacers or maybe he will like in the distant future. He is good. Like he he he had eight and six in this game. He didn’t shoot it like awesome, but I every time I’ve watched him, I’m like, man, he can actually play. Uh the rest of the Pelicans were largely forgettable for me in this game. 16 turnovers, 22 fouls, poor three-point shooting. So the Pers walk out of summer league. Uh their highest field goal percentage player I thought for sure would be Enrique Freeman. But to summarize statistically, their highest field goal percentage player was Quinton Jackson. The biggest bummer of summer league to me by far, both from an entertainment perspective and like a factf finding about the Pacers perspective was that he could only play in that one game. Would have been great to see him play two or three. And if he was just that good in all three, like yes, like this guy should probably be on a standard deal this year. But he was phenomenal in his one game. 243 and two steals with only two turnovers. Uh was just phenomenal. Freeman though, right behind him, 72.5% from the field, I believe. No one else in the Pacers was even above 57. That was Tayen Peter who was uh in his own way quite efficient. Ah yes, Samson Johnson went two for two. Uh their best three-point shooter in Vegas. Q made his only attempa. Enrique Freeman at 55.6. 6%. I should have these on totals instead of averages just so I can more effectively do it. Five for nine though, a small volume, but Ray Dennis at 40% on 25 attempts is impressive. RJ Felton goes two for five, the only other guy over league average from deep. And then on the glass, uh, this is time to go back to averages instead of totals. Uh, on the glass, obviously Freeman was the guy at nearly 10 a game. Baker right in second place at five. So clearly Freeman dominated there. The assists, Ray Jay Dennis 7.3, Cam Jones 5.3. Cam Jones passing in that one game he got to be the lone point guard was certainly encouraging of just like a okay you can put some sort of stuff together doing both scoring and passing especially when you have the chances uh to do it. Quinton Jackson leads the steel department. Uh the turnovers were not kind to anybody. Lots of guys were high in the turnover department. That’s what summer league’s all about. Um so I would say that everybody of again Alex Gold and I will do a deeper dive into summer league uh for Monday’s show. So nothing tomorrow. But I would say of the guys of of im immediately obvious Pacers consequence, right? Fury, uh, Freeman, Dennis, Jones, Jackson, and Peter. That this that group of six, all of them, I would say like had a good summer league. Like they will walk away from Vegas going like, “Okay, like I did what I hoped to do or I did something that the Pacers will be happy about.” Like Freeman showed some new skills and was awesome efficiency-wise. And Freeman was effective enough statistically that I wonder if because he’s kind of on like the edge of the will he make the team or not discussion if like another team would want him because you have a double double and shoot 73%. Like teams are going to pay attention to that. And that is of course something of note for the Pacers. Dennis made shots. Cam Jones showed a balance after a slow start. And I wonder how much the injury actually bothered him given that he said he had to get his win under him. I don’t even need to explain to you how good Quinton Jackson was. Ton Peter just knows how to play and was efficient besides his threes, funnily enough, and defended much better than I expected. And Fury got to the basket like crazy. Did everything well except for big threes, which is fascinating because that was like one of the biggest things. But I still think everybody believes he had a good summer league because of how much he got to the room. And that is the end of Pacers basketball. What a three-month speedrun. Three months ago today of me talking and for many of you listening to this was game one of the playoffs. I mean, what a three-month stretch for the Pacers and for Indie, really. Uh, with WNBA, I’ll start tonight. So, thank you guys a ton for listening through that whole time. It’s going to be weird not doing a podcast tomorrow or tonight. Uh, but tomorrow night, I’ll record Alex Golden. It’ll be up Monday. We’ll break down summer league, what it means. Uh, and then Tuesday, I’ll probably get into some more back end of the roster stuff and then deeper offseason time. So, anything you think would be important to talk about, I’m open to suggestions. I obviously have a long list of offseason topics that I would like to get to, but I obviously am open to fan ideas as well. Thank you guys so much for listening throughout the summer league Vegas experience. One more time wrapping up those games coming up on Monday. You can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky, Tony Ares. This podcast is on Twitter at Locktown Pacers and Instagram under the same handle. Back Monday talking more Pacers. Till then everybody have a wonderful day.

The Indiana Pacers toppled the New Orleans Pelicans to finish 2025 summer league play at 3-2. How did they get it done? Host Tony East breaks down the win, including strong outings from Enrique Freeman, RayJ Dennis, and Robert Baker.

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