Its Friday morning and I am up early out of habit. Hopefully tomorrow we will have that resolved. Its day 2, game 2 of P-Stan's Vegas Vacation and of course the Sun's 3rd game of the Vegas sessions against the Knicks.
The Knicks have a fairly loaded roster for SL standards with speedy little Nate Robinson who by reading the Knicks box scores seems to have been in "I have nothing to prove here again so let the other guys get some" mode.
Those guys include NBA journeymen Wilson Chandler, Renaldo Balkman, Von Wafer and Mardy Collins. And of course the big attraction for the boys from the big apple is the big Italian Danilo Gallinari. It should be a fun little match up.
Other notes from Day 1
- The Vegas Summer League is like a comic book convention except for basketball geeks (as opposed to plain old geeks)
- The concourse of the smaller Cox Pavillion (basically the size of a high school gym) and the full sized Thomas and Mack Center are connected
- In that concourse are all manner of NBA somebodies and plenty of big guys that clearly are somebodies whose faces you can't place.
- I think I was a few feet from Olden Polynice who stopped to talk to a guy that clearly was a player I didn't recognize sitting directly in front of me in the 2nd row as I watched a few minutes of the Blazers / T-Wolves. Oh, and I walked right by Alvin Gentry three times.
- The people here are a mix of local kids having a blast. Local people with nothing better to do. Basketball geeks like me. Agent types. Team folks like Sarver, Kerr and Griff who were all sitting a few rows back from me yesterday. And scouts who are identified by their Spalding Faux Basketball covered notebooks. Oh, and some media types and players' families too.
- I only caught the 2nd quarter of the Blazers/T-wolves game and didn't see Bayless go off. But I got a few great looks at Petteri Koponen who was looking sharp. In a few minutes I saw him deliver a great dish and make a few nice jumpers. Kevin Love looked good too. He didn't seem as beefy in person.
- Neither did Joe Alexander for that matter but I could only sit through the first few minutes of the Bucks / Nuggets and didn't get to see him do anything interesting. Even in Vegas its still Bucks vs Nuggets. Hard to watch.
- The only other Suns SL players that made an impression where forwards Jiri Hubalek who showed some nice touch around the rim and the ability to shoot from range (and miss).
- Justin Cage is a nice swing man type with decent handle and clearly has some game to his game. Its a tough position to break into the NBA though. I expect to see him playing oversea's or in the D League with a chance to break into The Show some day.
- On the coaching front - it sure looked to me like Igor was running the show while Thunder Dan spent more time on the bench. Maybe they rotate? I'll let you know.
- I am meeting up today with Matt Moore from Ridiculous Upside and Frank from Brew Hoop who flies in tonight.
- There's still a great weekend of ball to come. If you are thinking of heading this way - do it.
- I almost forgot my big win! After my lovely dinner of the best wings anywhere, beer and a salad, I decided to go large and laid down a fiver for some slot machine action. I am not a bigger gambler and generally find casino's boring and depressing but I was feeling frisky so I went all in.
- I played a few slot machines with more buttons and gimics then I could possibly understand. It was like watching my kids play Mario Super Whatever on their Wii. Expect instead of swinging my arms around and squealing, I just put in a few dollars and started pressing buttons at random.
- Somehow that five turned into $24.15 and I cashed in which now means a printed ticket which you can use in other slot machine or have to feed into yet a different machine to get actual cash back. Anyway, dinner was on the house. I'll call that a success.
- I won't have my laptop or internet access the rest of the day so if you really want to keep up w/ my ramblings you can do so at Twitter. I can and will post there via my Blackberry. I am so Mr. Wired-Tech Guy these days.