From Dennis Velasco,
Your Guide to Basketball.
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The Second Rounders

This is where things start to get frantic. Second-round picks have no guaranteed contract. Most of them won’t make their big league squads. From moment one these guys are fighting for a spot at the next plateau: training camp. An invitation to fall camp means the dream is still alive. A handshake and a polite "Thank you" mean sleepless nights hoping another team saw enough in you to give you a chance lest you become a basketball vagabond. You can usually tell when a second-rounder with reasonable expectations hits the court. The engine is revving at 7,000 RPM right away. There’s a tightness around the eyes, a grim expression... there are no confident, casual saunters here. This is business.

The Europeans

The guys from overseas tend to be a laid-back bunch as a whole. They don’t say much off the court and they try to fit in on it. Almost every player brought over understands the fundamentals of the game and you could run a clinic watching them block out or set picks. Often they’ll exhibit frustration with the individual tenor of summer league contests... for instance, when they set a nice pick and then roll, but never receive the ball. Relatively few of them are ball-controlling point guards and most of them are used to being stars on their team, so the expressions on their faces at being snubbed are frequent and near-comical. Nevertheless most of them know they have contracts waiting back home so the experience is not as frantic for them as for the second-rounders. Some have fun, some resign themselves to their fate, and a few manage to break through and actually get shots up, becoming torch-bearers for the overseas players.

The Also-Rans

Every team has guys who know they won’t play much. They’re on the fringes of the league, hoping for five minutes and a chance to show some scout somewhere that they might be worth a look. Their NBA aspirations are muted... buried deep underneath the reality of name players and big-contract players ahead of them on the bench. Most of these guys are in their own world here and that seems to be the way they prefer it.

THE STAFF

Beyond the players you get a first-hand look at the infrastructure of the various teams here. Unless you are invited to a team meeting you will never see as much of your team officials as you will at the NBA Summer League. They include:

The General Managers

General managers tend to be quite visible and active at summer league. In many ways this is their baby. They made the draft picks. They issued the invitations. You’ll often see them exhorting their teams, watching intently hoping to see something good to validate their choices. They are the ones who face the interview questions and offer the explanations. Other than draft night you will not see them so far forward in the public eye.

The Head Coaches

Most NBA Summer League teams are led by assistant coaches from the big league squad. This puts head coaches in the peculiar position of being observers, perhaps offering a pre-game pep talk, post-game analysis, or heading parts of practice, but not much more. Most seem to observe with a certain amount of detachment and skepticism. This may be the GM’s baby, but afterwards the GM is going to foist some of these guys off on the head coach and demand that he win with them. In the end, the head coach is far more likely to take the fall for poor player performance than the general manager will be. You can see the critical eyes of head coaches separating the wheat from the chaff while perched in the stands. Stoic expressions and silent rolling of the eyes are common.

The Assistant Coaches

Assistant coaches get to shine in Summer League. One of them usually coaches the team. Most others are assigned to player development. This is their bread and butter. They’re excited about helping the kids, urging them onward, and making progress with their own careers as a result. The enthusiasm of the assistants and the GM’s, sandwiches the skepticism of the head coaches.

The Scouts

Unlike a regular NBA contest, most of the scouts here are not attached to other NBA teams. They are from European leagues. People describe guys that aren’t going to make it as "Players in search of a country." These are the brokers that find them one. They take meticulous notes on every player, never knowing which guys will slip through the NBA net and become available for recruitment. Many have deep connections with the league and are greeted with fondness by old-timers who know they are doing the young players a service. The active players never acknowledge the foreign scouts or look them in the eye. The road between giving up on your NBA dream (for now) and being happy about still being able to play basketball for a living is a long one. Nobody wants to make that trip until they’re forced to.