The Low has written a report on last night's Vegas Summer League game between the junior versions of the Pistons and the 76ers. You can also read this report at BadBoySummerCamp.com. Here's the report, and feel free to discuss it in this thread.

July 7, 2007
DET vs PHI – VSL Game 1

Well, to kick off this year’s VSL I bounced on down to Thomas & Mack with the girlfriend and brother in tow.

I noticed a handsome young man named LA Dre hanging out across the arena getting ready to enjoy the action. Spotted everyone’s favorite beat writer and caught a glimpse of Joe Dumars and Mo Cheeks.

This year we were hoping to keep a closer eye on certain commodities as some of the lesser members turned out to be ineffective at best in years prior. This year appears to be more of the same, so I would recommend that you prepare to catch up on as much as I can provide on Johnson, Stucky, Maxiell, Afflalo, Mejia, and Samb.

• Points of note: Today’s game felt very slow and unfamiliar for a lot of these guys. I’m pretty sure this is mostly due to their not having played with each other for very long.
• DET seemed to get very little out of there offensive sets and turned the ball over a lot more than they should have.
• DET didn’t really shoot well to start the game, but seemed to take advantage of PHI’s dry spells.
• DET also didn’t seem to be attacking the basket with strength (with the exception of Maxiell because that’s what he does).
• PHI also seemed to be able to get some scores in the paint pretty early as Samb appeared to be late on a number of rotations.
• The first half seemed very methodical and slow moving to me…very tedious.
• I really hope this game isn’t an indicator of how well Stuckey and Afflalo can attack the basket and/or create their own shots. I was somewhat disappointed judging from all the excitement from some fans.

AJ
No Amir at this point. Still haggling contract issues.

Stuckey
Says that he patterns his game after Wade, but appears to lack the speed and strength. I was looking for him to be much more aggressive than he was. He seemed to dribble away from most double teams instead of looking to split or attack the weak side.

Afflalo
Hit a few shots here and there, but didn’t do anything eye catching in my opinion.

Samb
Appeared a bit slow and out of sorts today. He stayed near the basket and grabbed a few rebounds and knocked down a couple shots. However, he seemed to be very late on several defensive rotations. I’ll need to see his next couple games to see how this guy is rounding into shape.

Mejia
He didn’t really amaze me, but he did do a nice job of knocking down shots (including the game winner)

Maxiell
What can I say? Max was Max. He lead the team in scoring and was very aggressive on offense. I think the VSL officials really dislike him or something because he appears to pick up a lot of fouls that don’t get called on other players. He did a good job of knocking down his mid-range jumpers and attacking the basket with the same force we saw during the regular season. This year’s summer league will be the last for Maxiell and he plans to make lunch meat out of the competition on his way out the door.

I’m pretty sure that I am in the minority in thinking that today’s game was kind of blah as I understand the fans that caught the webcast enjoyed today’s action. For me, being there in person, the play just seemed very sloppy and the DET players seemed to get very little in the way of execution when running their offensive sets. I’m going to be looking forward to the following games to determine whether or not I’ll take a certain level of enthusiasm and/or interest into the regular season.

Thanks for the post lurker.

Ditto. Nice report... Low.

Nice work Low. Looking forward to all your coverage.

A couple of things that I noticed from the box score.

- The 2 starting guards, Afflalo and Stuckey, both played over 30 minutes but only had 5 assists between them. Some dude I've never head of before, Ibrahim Jaaber, let the team with 5 assists in 15 minutes.

- Stuckey had a lot of fouls - 8 to be exact. No one else on the team had more than 3.

- J-Max shot well, going 7 of 10 from the floor and 8 of 11 from the line

- Not a whole lot of blocks or boards in the game

Can anyone that was either at the game or caught it on t.v. add any more insight to these box score notes? Did Afflalo and Stuckey look comfortable handling the ball? Were Stuckey's fouls legit or more of the ticky tack variety? From being out of position or covering for a teammate?

NBA.com : Summer League 2007

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You cannot go by box scores of summer league games as they are often quite poorly done (I'm certain Stuckey would have had more assists with a real score keeper). Stuckey had a couple really bad decisions/plays but several of his turnovers wouldn't have been to's with real refs. He was very comfortable with the ball and one of the negatives mentioned in the report is actually a huge positive for me. Stuckey recognized the double team early and effectively cut it off entirely by making the smart pass that often led to a basket or the pass that led to the basket.

Stuckey is much poorer man's D Wade at this point.

We will have to let a few more games play out to properly assess Stuckey.

Louis Williams is just flat out lightning quick. Coming out of H.S. he was compared to Allen Iverson, just to give you an idea of his speed and ankle breaking ability with the ball in his hands.

Couple this with the fact that Williams has already played some in the league - meaning that he has had time to get acclimated not just to the rules but also the speed of the NBA - and it really doesn't surprise me that he gave Rodney some trouble.

It's great to get to read reports from the Low.

My thanks to everyone involved in the process.

It's the SL, no one looks really comfortable handling the ball. The games have a much more frenetic up and down pace than NBA ball.

I thought Stuckey played well. A little overwhelmed, but he settled down later.

Afflalo played big when it mattered. He was so important at the end of the game, I wasn't sure that going with a 3 draft pick lineup was best because LaRon Profit was shooting well.

Mejia looks like a sleeper.

Samb looks too tentative, too soft. It might be time to bring him over and put him in the NBDL to toughen up.

I ain't gunna say squat about max, except that he eats rims for breakfast.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

Yeah, that was my first thought when I checked out the box score. I've found that they are extremely inconsistent and inaccurate.

That's why I'm so glad that we have our very own first hand accounts from pf.comers that are actually at the games!

A very nice luxury to have for sure!