Bruin Bites: NBA Summer League Update

The NBA Summer League continued in Las Vegas as Zach LaVine's Minnesota Timberwolves and Kyle Anderson's San Antonio Spurs played their second and third games (click here for a review of their debuts), but once again, another Bruin surprised -- David Wear.

Wear came off the bench to play 20 minutes and score 15 points on 8-10 shooting as his Chicago Bulls trounced LaVine and Muhammad's Timberwolves, 107-73 on Tuesday. David didn't score in his first two games for the 3-0 Bulls who are led by Doug McDermott.  The Bulls gave him a shot against the 0-3 Wolves, but I don't know think his mid-range jumper will play in the NBA, and even a small forward has to get more than one rebound.

The Wolves continue to look dreadful.  After scoring 27 points in a loss to Dallas, Shabazz fell to Earth in a loss to Washington, 67-59 on Sunday, playing only 15 minutes and scoring four points on 2-6 shooting.  Shabazz came back a bit Tuesday, playing 25 minutes and scoring 10 points on 4-18 shooting against the Bulls.

Zach's on-camera obscenity at the Draft was prescient.  Even Minnesota's Summer League team is awful.  Meanwhile, Zach's stat line stayed flat.  After scoring 13 in his first game, Zach scored 11 on Sunday and 12 on Tuesday.  His assists and turnovers were 2-3 and 3-3.

Kyle continued to draw tough defensive assignments.  On Sunday, the Spurs lost to possibly the best team in the Summer League, Andrew Wiggins' 3-0 Cleveland Cavaliers.  Kyle chased Wiggins around for a half, and Wiggins thanked him by blocking his shot twice.  Kyle scored two points with no assists in an 82-70 loss to the Cavs.  The Spurs came back Monday to beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 88-86.  Kyle drew 11-year vet and former all-star, Josh Howard.  The match-up looked tough on paper for Kyle, but Howard had been out of the league for a year, and scored just two points.  The relative breather allowed Kyle scored nine points with three assists and three rebounds.

In other news:

• Five-star recruit, 6'7" Jaylen Brown from Georgia, plans to visit UCLA later this month.  Brown played for the U18 team this summer, and is widely thought to be the nation's top small forward, a position of need for the Bruins, in the class of 2015.
• The  NCAA's July live recruiting period, began last weekend highlighted by  The LeBron James Skills Academy.  Basically, this is when college basketball coaches can watch the elite recruits play in national AAU tournaments.  For the top schools chasing the five-stars, this is a face time and babysitting exercise.  This post-mortem mentions five players with offers from UCLA.  Brown, Stone and Zimmerman are the ones we realistically still have a shot at.
• Who is the best recruiter not named Calipari?  You guessed it - Sean Miller. Gary Parrish sings Miller's praises especially since he didn't' have pre-existing West Coast connections ties.