The Bulls opened their Summer League schedule with a 71-62 victory over the Boston Celtics on Saturday night.
The level of competition in Summer League is very low. The large majority of the players aren’t making the NBA and a successful showing in the summer typically has little correlation with what will happen during the regular season.
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However, there are some aspects of play that can hint at what a player can and cannot do. Denzel Valentine showed some of these hints in his first game.
It would be a mistake to take too much away from his 24 minutes of play, but his performance was the most interesting part of the game and what I’ll focus on here.
Good feel for the game despite poor shooting numbers
Valentine had a poor night shooting the ball. He shot just 4-for-16 and scored eight points. He went 0-for-9 on his 3-point attempts.
That’s not something that fans should be worried about. Doug McDermott shot nine percent on 3-pointers through his first four games of summer league last year. Shooting will come and go.
Maybe Valentine missed because of nerves, but he showed good discipline in his shot selection. He looked to be pressing at times, committing some careless turnovers along the way.
Despite his poor shooting, Valentine showed some nice things offensively. He was very smooth on the court and did a mostly fine job as one of the primary ballhandlers. That’s a role that Fred Hoiberg said he envisions Valentine filling once the season starts, as he told NBA TV during the game.
“[Valentine is] a very versatile basketball player,” Hoiberg said. “He’s a guy that can shoot. He can really pass. That’s the thing I’ve been most impressed with. He gets into the paint, he makes the right play.”
The Bulls don’t have much point guard depth behind Rajon Rondo and Jerian Grant. Hoiberg suggested that Valentine and Butler may be used to fill that ballhandling role.
“I played Jimmy at the end of the year with the ball in his hands quite a bit as well, and the thing with Denzel is you can play multiple ballhandlers on there,” Hoiberg said.
Valentine looked to have a pretty good feel for the game. He committed four turnovers to just one assist, but he was making the right passes for the most part and pushing the pace when he had the ball.
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Problems on defense
The big question mark on Valentine before the draft was if he was a good enough athlete to be passable defensively, a concern that was not mollified after his first Summer League performance.
Valentine really struggled to get through picks. He did not fare well in speed drills during his pre-draft combine workouts, and that weakness was on display again as he got stuck on screen after screen.
Valentine also really struggled to stay in front of his man, the most concerning part of his play for the night. He was getting burned in isolations, was too slow to rotate over and help, and was committing silly fouls when his man blew by him throughout the night.
Valentine’s defensive issues went beyond lacking athletic tools. He has a reputation as a smart defender, but I wasn’t seeing it. On the play below, he allowed his man to get to the middle of the court because of poor positioning and was forced to foul.
The middle is death in the NBA. Valentine doesn’t need to be fast to be able to funnel players away, but he does need to learn intelligent footwork to make up for his lack of tools.
Valentine is going to be facing much tougher competition once the season starts. That he struggled so much against lesser athletes is a concern. He will have to be a really good playmaker, because it looks like he’s going to be a negative defensively for a while.
As poor as Valentine was on both ends, it’s important to emphasize that this was only 24 minutes of his first Summer League game. There’s plenty of room for growth and for him to show more of what he can do. His shooting will come around — he was deadly in college. He showed flashes of good court vision and intelligence on offense. The defense though is a work in progress. He’ll have to improve if he wants consistent minutes during the season.