Boys of Summer

Sam Young and DeMarre Carroll both looked excellent, with Carroll playing the 3 and Young at the 2. While Young often was beaten handily by Harden on some isolated instances, one particularly vicious dunk comes to mind, he scored 14 on efficient shooting. Thabeet looked fairly impressive, as did Haddadi. Perhaps most impressive, however, was Marcus Williams, another former UConn player, who dropped 17 dimes in 28 minutes of play. Williams has always been known as a talent around the league, but his skills have never stuck and he is recognized as having character issues. He looked excellent, showing great vision and limiting his turnovers to 1.

So what can we take from this game? Williams will potentially fill the need of backup point guard for Mike Conley, provided Iverson doesn't sign. Sam Young can ball, and seems to have the skills to fill in at the 2, which is a position he would fill with quite a bit of size and rebounding. Also Darrell Arthur showed significant improvements in his isolation game; he has obviously learned quite an array of new moves, and could be much better this season.