After Lonzo Ball and the Los Angeles Lakers won the 2017 NBA Summer League championship in Las Vegas, we give you the best rookies of the summer.
NBA Summer League is a desperate time for professional basketball fandom. With the NBA Finals, free agency and the draft in the rearview mirror, it’s the last basketball we’ll have for months. The NBA is moving the season up a couple weeks, but we still just lost basketball for a while.
Especially in Las Vegas, it’s become an attraction unlike any other. A record number of teams participated this year with a packed house of media members. Across three states, Summer League is a real phenomenon. The Dallas Mavericks won the Orlando Summer League, the Utah Jazz took their state’s small four-team league, and the Los Angeles Lakers lifted the hardware in Las Vegas.
While Las Vegas gave us the largest number of teams to check out, both Orlando and Utah were useful too. Across these two-plus weeks, we saw a strong 2017 rookie class, plenty of promising G-League players and countless professionals trying to make their dreams come true. It may have led to some unflattering and unattractive basketball, to say the least, but it’s an important component of the NBA calendar year.
When it comes to Summer League, the rationale behind fan attendance mostly revolves around future rookies. Jayson Tatum vs. Lonzo Ball is a main attraction, not the Celtics against the Lakers.
With that came many injuries and DNPs. However, it also yielded a look into some very promising rookies. We got some of the best Summer League performances in recent memory. So, without further ado, here are the 10 best rookies of the summer across the three leagues.