New additions give plenty of options<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThere were times where he just said, ‘OK, you want to pressure me? I\u2019m going to beat you the other way,’\u201d Dunn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And of course, Thornton\u00a0\u2014 the all-time leading scorer in Ohio State history\u00a0\u2014 put the ball in the basket. He shot 7-for-18 from the field, 3-for-8 from three and made all seven of his free throws. He notched three steals, assists and rebounds in his professional debut. Summer League is just Summer League but Thornton always seemed to play at his speed, his first bucket coming on a turnaround fadeaway mid-range jumpshot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know my grandma probably crying\u2026 that\u2019s my girl. I know she back home watching, I know she\u2019s very proud of me and my guys back home, all my friends that I grew up with, I know they\u2019re very excited for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just glad I can put on the show. I\u2019m just a kid from Fairburn, Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Quadir Copeland brings intensity<\/p>\n
On the first day of practice, Dunn met with undrafted rookie Quadir Copeland.<\/p>\n
The coach told Copeland, whom the Rockets recently signed to a two-way contract, that a lot of players on the Summer League played hard\u00a0\u2014 but that Copeland was the only one in the main group with an edge to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brings that juice, talking trash, getting in scraps, altercations out there,\u201d Dunn said. “\u2026 We like people that have that little toughness, that kind of toe the line with that edginess.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But Dunn implored Copeland to stay on the right side of that line and to keep his energy up and positive amid in-game swings. It worked well Friday, as Copeland routinely talked trash and finished with 14 points, seven rebounds, two assists and two steals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Thornton’s poise was on display in his debut with the Rockets in the NBA Summer League. Michael…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-793740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}