The Wizards had their first summer league game today and actually got whipped pretty good by the Hawks by 20 (102-82), but there were definitely some positives and negatives to the game.

• Brad Beal: Thought he looked pretty much exactly as I thought he would. Maybe a little bit undersized and not real explosive but his smoothness should more than make up for that at the NBA level. Shot 6-14 from the field so that isn’t great or anything but one of those shots was a last second heave and overall his shot looked really smooth. He finished as the leading scorer with 22 points but really didn’t have many stats to speak of otherwise (0 rbs and 2 assists) but could have easily had more assists with capable big men (Shavlik Randolph…). While he doesn’t have the quickness to explode by people, he is able to get to the basket because of his great balance and like I said his smoothness just allows him to glide all over the court. While his man (John Jenkins) did score 19, I thought Beal played pretty good D and Jenkins just made some tough shots. I was really impressed with Beal in his first action as an NBA player.
• Jan Vesley: Vesley finished with a double-double as he totaled 11 points and 10 fouls… I’m not a huge Vesley fan but even with his ridiculous foul total, he did impress me today. The obvious improvement he has made is with his jumper as I think he went 3 for 3 today and they were all like 18 footers so they were difficult. It was only 3 shots so I’m not going to completely judge his improvement on that but thats like the same amount he made all last season. He also actually looked bigger to me for some reason, while he still isn’t big by NBA standards, he doesn’t look as skinny as he used to so take that for what it’s worth. He still needs to learn how to play defense without fouling. One of my biggest problems with him is that he really can’t guard anybody (too slow to guard 3′s and too skinny to guard 4′s) and today really showed that as he fouled out in a summer league game where the foul limit is 10. Obviously he will need to improve on that if he is going to be a key part of the Wizards big man rotation this year. He also missed like 3 dunks which is odd but I will just mark that down as a fluke.
• Chris Singleton- He had 20 points but I was kind of “meh” on him. For a guy who was a starter last year (embarrassingly enough) I kind of hoped that he would look like a guy who was maybe not head and shoulders but at least above the rest of the league in the sense that he has at least been there. However he looked very average and similar to the way he looked his rookie season. He went 7-13 but his jumper looked very similar as a lot of those buckets were just him overpowering weaker defenders to the basket. He had 4 fouls in 30 minutes and while thats not close to Vesley bad it still remains something he needs to work on. He is more of a role player so it’ s tough to expect greatness from him but he didn’t really stand out in any way.
• Shelvin Mack: I was actually the most disappointed in Shelvin after today’s performance. I kind of defended Mack this off-season as a lot of people have been clamoring for a backup PG to Wall and I had thought that Mack was at least decent last season and could uphold that position again. He disappointed me today because really he just wasn’t very good against bad competition. He shot 3-10 and had a 3-3 assist to turnover ratio. He got himself stuck in corners and traps multiple times and really didn’t look like the steady point guard that I saw last season. He doesn’t really have the quickness or offensive ability to create much on his own and I am okay with that but he has to be steady with the ball and hold the fort down. Tonight he really wasn’t able to do that effectively.
• Tomas Santorsky- Not sure if that’s how you spell his last name but I will proceed. While he was not spectacular or anything, I actually came away somewhat pleasantly surprised with our no-name 2nd round pick from this year’s draft. I expected him to be some European scrub like we always seem to get and just not really make a difference either way. Tomas however played PG for a while where he was effective and very ineffective at different times. When he was effective, he ran the point well and distributed the ball efficiently as well as having the quickness and length (6’7) to get to the basket. There were a couple of possessions in a row where he was picked up full court and pressured heavily and he a couple of ugly turnovers in a row. I am not sure what position I would have him play but I see some Shawn Livingston in him and will be interested at least to see how he plays out. More than I could say about the man yesterday at this time.

Obviously this was just one game and it is summer league so I don’t want anybody to read into my thoughts as if I am saying these are my conclusive thoughts on all of these players it’s just how I believed they played today and a little maybe how it affected my perception of them overall. I was a little bit disappointed that we got smashed seeing that we actually had 3 guys on the team that got solid minutes for us in Vesley, Singleton, and Mack and the #3 pick in the draft but overall I definitely took away some positives from today. Pretty sure their next game is tomorrow around the same time so I will probably come with a similar post afterwards for that as well.