Well, Detroit's first game in the summer league was pretty impressive. They beat the Sacramento Kings' squad 86-77 handily. In fact, the Kings only led for the first minute of the game.
The rest was all Pistons.
Winning isn't the real point of summer league though—evaluating young talent is, and there were a couple of great performances.
First and foremost, Dajuan Summers, the Pistons' first second round pick, was outstanding. He showed a nice stroke from inside and outside the arc. He had some very nice post moves, navigating around taller players for clean looks at the basket. He even had a great defensive game with seven defensive boards, one block and two steals to go along with his 24 points on 9-15 shooting.
His best moment was opening up the second half by hitting his first three shots within a minute for seven points. Summers is looking like a steal this summer.
A surprising performance came from Mike Bramos from Miami (Ohio). He showed a nice shooting touch hitting 5-6 shots for 13 points. He even had a posterizable two-handed jam on Omri Casspi.
A little less impressive were Austin Daye and Jonas Jerebko.
Daye had a few nice plays, including a sweet crossover towards the end of the game but ended up missing the lay up. He also flashed some range hitting a three-pointer. It looked like they decided to play him at the power forward position for most of the time he was in the game, so maybe they are grooming him early to be more physical.
Jerebko also showed flashes of greatness. In the first half, he pulled off a nice behind-the-back dribble on his way to the hoop. But he had a poor shooting night overall going 1-6 from the field with his only make coming off a nice alley-oop. He did however have three steals, a block, and showed no fear defending under the rim.
The two second round picks from last year also had up and down games.
Deron Washington had a mostly rocky game with a few spurts of promising play. He seemed active in the first half but didn't accomplish much beyond causing a few turnovers.
He had a couple of nice plays in the second half, one being a hard slam dunk halfway through the fourth.
Trent Plaisted seemed to have less errors in his game, but still did not produce much with five points and three rebounds. He also didn't seem as aggressive defending the pick-and-roll as he was last year. That could be a problem because that is why the Pistons liked him so much in the first place.
This was only the first game of the season, so it is definitely to early to make clear assessments on players, but a few are looking very promising.
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