San Antonio Spurs: What can past greats in the Summer League teach us about the future?
Parker: Silencing the doubters early
Similar to his future Hall of Fame teammate, Tony Parker used the Summer League to shake some of the “boom-or-bust” talk with his play in the 2001 Summer League.
One of the drawbacks to drafting Parker with the 28th selection in the 2001 NBA Draft was that the French guard hadn’t had much experience in playing against American competition — a worry he’d soon prove laughable time and time again.
Small sample size considered, Parker quickly dispelled the thought that this would be a problem. In the Rocky Mountain Revue tournament, Parker averaged 19.5 points and a tournament-leading 9.0 assists.
Today, Parker stands as one of examples of the Spurs’ incredible fortune. According to Popovich, the Spurs were apprehensive about the likelihood that 27 teams would pass on the future six-time All-Star.
As fate would have it, the Spurs found the guard they wanted running their offense in the post-Avery Johnson regime. Four games into the 2001-02 season, Parker took the reins as starting guard, a position he’d stranglehold for the next 15 years.
Parker’s competition during the Rocky Mountain Revue — essentially the 2001 NBA Draft — is generally seen as underwhelming. Aside from Arizona’s Gilbert Arenas, the point guard crop in this class (others included Earl Watson and Jamaal Tinsley) is considered decent at best.
Though, Parker’s dominance at the Revue that year is especially noteworthy, when thinking about how close he came to not even having that opportunity.
The name Sam Presti likely evokes different, more negativity-driven recollections these days, but in the year 2001, he was likely more crucial to creating Tony Parker than anyone besides Parker himself.
With a duffel bag filled with tapes of a little-known point guard from France, Presti was intent on introducing Spurs general manager R.C. Buford to what would become the “Robin” to Duncan’s Batman.
What followed is Parker’s infamous failure of a workout, which he illustrated in his Player’s Tribune article:
"“That was my first workout with an NBA team, during the pre-draft process in ’01 — and it was a disaster. I absolutely sucked. And when it ended, I thought for sure my NBA dreams had ended too. But while you probably guessed that the story is mine, I bet not as many of you will guess which of the teams in the league my nightmare workout was with. It was with the Spurs. It’s true — I played maybe the most brutal basketball in my life, at the worst moment possible, right in front of Coach Pop and all of them. Pop and R.C., they had brought in this guy named Lance Blanks, a former NBA player, to run my workout, and he just dominated me. He made me look … well, he made me look like the teenage kid that I was.”"
To Parker’s credit, he did come in off of a 15-hour flight, and went into the workout with jetlag. Popovich ended the workout, saying that Parker was too “soft,” and he needed a guard with more toughness and grit.
Three days before the 2001 Draft, the Spurs brought him in for a workout — to which Parker excelled and earned himself consideration for the spot.
Per usual with those Parker-driven Spurs, the story has a happy ending. Parker recently closed the chapter to a storybook, Hall of Fame-type career. And a huge part of that started with the confidence Parker gave the organization in the summer of 2001.