NBA Summer League 2016 Scores: The Nets’ young talent is facing unique challenges

Brooklyn needs all the help it can get and that means its young players will have to mature fast.

Jul 13, 2016, 11:00 AM UTC

Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

For good teams, Summer League is a place to be pleasantly surprised. The hope is to find someone who exceeds expectations and looks ready to contribute immediately. For those who enjoyed a dreadful season, on the other hand, the reward is typically a high selection and Summer League is the first chance to be dazzled by a high-upside prospect.

Rookies don’t typically face the pressure to both look polished and still exude potential because teams rarely need both.

And then there's the Nets.

Their descent into their current disastrous state has been well documented. The short version is that they gambled away their future in the form of draft picks in a win-now move that brought them former stars who were about to decline severely. Brooklyn had to send Boston the third-overall pick this past draft, will have to swap selections if theirs is higher than the Celtics' next year and will have to send yet another pick in 2018. There's no savior coming.

In that environment the young talent they have managed to accrue is trying to grow. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Chris McCullough and Isaiah Whitehead are low picks who nonetheless have the burden to produce now on a roster lacking depth. Yet they are also young enough that a leap from any of them could give the Nets a talent boost it won't likely receive in any other way, which means their long-term potential is equally important.

So far, there's a lot to be hopeful about. In three games in Vegas all three are averaging double digits in points. McCullough and Hollis-Jefferson are doing good work on the boards and racking up steals and Whitehead has made four of the eight three-point attempts he's taken.

On Tuesday Hollis-Jefferson shined the brightest thanks to a 19-point, seven-rebound performance on a close loss against the Wizards. He's the Nets best hope if the goal is to find a two-way impact player. He doesn't seem bothered by the expectations that will be place on him and seems ready to work to meet them.

“Everybody talks about being one of the best players in the league,” Hollis-Jefferson said after the game against Atlanta. “But it’s about putting in the work. They want to be great but, whose actually putting in the work to be great? That’s what it boils down to, at the end of the day. Working hard when nobody’s watching”

It's a good thing he's that committed to improving upon a mediocre, injury-filled rookie year, because the Nets might need him to start next to Bojan Bogdanovic at the wing now that Allen Crabbe and Tyler Johnson are not coming. McCullough and the rookies Whitehead and Caris LeVert, who is recovering from injury, have veterans ahead of them on the depth chart but will likely be an injury away from getting regular rotation minutes.

The Nets will be bad next season. So will their young players, in all likelihood. With the 76ers likely taking a step forward, all schadenfreude-seeking eyes could be on Brooklyn next year. The fans will pay close attention too, looking for any glimmer of hope from one of their homegrown talents. They will face a level of scrutiny players with their pedigree typically don't face. There's no new crop coming, so this young talent needs to help carry Brooklyn past this bad time or no one will.

The one good thing that can come out from a terrible situation in almost every way is that the unique combination of pressure and opportunity that Hollis-Jefferson, McCullough and Whitehead will face might make them better than they would have been otherwise.

So far, all three seem to be taking advantage of Summer League to get ready for the challenge ahead.

3 other things we learned

Terry Rozier only needed a little time

When the Celtics selected Terry Rozier with the 16th-overall pick of the 2015 draft, it seemed like a reach. In his first Summer League experience Rozier seemed to validate the skeptics by looking like a mediocre prospect. He simply didn’t stand out in any way. Since Boston had too many guards, he only got to play eight minutes a game in his rookie season and averaged two points and one assist. It seems like a bad pick.

This summer, however, Rozier is looking fantastic. He was averaging 19 points, six rebounds and two assists going into the game against the Mavericks and had 26, six and two on Tuesday. He seems to be as quick and explosive as he's always been but now he's more in control. He might still struggle to find minutes because the Celtics have a lot of backcourt options but Brad Stevens will have to consider expanding his role next season.

The Jazz and Trail Blazers played a crazy game

Nobody wants to see overtime in Summer League games. That’s why the rules are different. Extra time periods are mercifully short. Instead of the five minutes teams play in the NBA, they are only two minutes long. If there’s a second overtime, the game is actually decided by sudden death. It makes for a chaotic but fun atmosphere, as we saw in the Jazz vs. Trail Blazers game.

The Jazz were down by four with under five seconds to go in the first overtime. They inbounded and got the ball to Spencer Butterfield, who was fouled shooting a three-pointer with over one second to go. He made the first two, intentionally missed the third and Trey Lyles tipped the ball in to force a second overtime.

It was all for naught, as the Jazz won the jump ball but turned it over and Pat Connaughton hit a deep three to win it for the Blazers.

Fun stuff.

Dragan Bender continues to look like a project

Bender had a solid game, as he scored nine points and pulled down four rebounds against the Heat. Yet the seven personal fouls and four turnovers are just another reminder that he looks like a long-term project at this point. Even when he dropped 12 points and picked up seven assists against the Trail Blazers in an earlier game he didn't look like a difference-maker.

There's absolutely no reason to panic, since this is just Summer League and Bender is very young, even for a rookie. The Suns also have Marquese Chriss around, who looks raw but shows flashes, as well as enough big men in their roster to bring Bender along slowly. It would surely be a comforting sign to see the fourth-overall pick dominate at least one game before Summer League ends, though.