A pair of former Wildcats made their much-anticipated NBA Summer League debuts over the weekend to reportedly packed crowds in Las Vegas. Houston Rockets forward Patrick Patterson shined in his first NBA performance Friday night in the Rockets’ win over the Phoenix Suns. Patterson scored 18 points on 8-of-9 shooting and even knocked down both of his 3-points attempts. Patterson was slowed in his other two games this weekend with six and two points, respectively, but all in all Patterson received positive reviews in his opening weekend. Video highlights and an interview with Patterson are below, plus a review of Patterson’s first game from ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz.Of course, just about everyone in Las Vegas this weekend was there to see the debut of No. 1 overall pick John Wall. Despite injuring his groin in his first practice with the Washington Wizards, Wall took the floor Sunday night to rave reviews. Although at times he was a little sloppy and committed eight turnovers (his one downfall during his time at UK), he finished with a team-high 24 points and eight assists. I obviously wasn’t on hand in Vegas to watch the game and did not have access to the television feed, but by all accounts that I have read, Wall started slow and finished extremely strong, displaying the playmaking characteristics that warranted the No. 1 overall selection in the draft.Washington handed Golden State an 84-79 loss.Check out a few additional links and videos below from this weekend’s NBA Summer League action. You can continue to follow all games and live stats at NBA Summer League central. (One quick programming note: Although I just returned from a short weekend trip, I’ll likely be away from the blog Monday as other work priorities will take up most of my day.)- This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise if you followed DeMarcus Cousins closely this year, but it turns out those much-talked about character issues with him were a tad overblown. OK, way overblown. A story in the Sacramento Bee features Cousins’ leadership skills and the impact he’s already having on the Sacramento Kings.
– We all know Daniel Orton did not have a great debut for the Orlando Magic in the Orlando Summer League. As much as we’ve talked about the summer league on here (hey, it’s summer — not much is going on), the positive thing for Orton is that last week was just that — it was the summer league. Orton played in five games and averaged 3.2 points, 1.8 rebounds and shot just 14.8 percent from the floor, but it’s a small sample and just the start of his career. He can easily bounce back. Orton talked with NBA.com about moving forward.
