{"id":36450,"date":"2025-07-25T14:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T14:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/36450\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T14:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T14:03:09","slug":"nba-analyst-predicts-pistons-have-more-than-one-nba-player-in-summer-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/36450\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA analyst predicts Pistons have more than one NBA player in Summer League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of the talk around the Detroit Pistons\u2019 Summer League has focused on the exciting play of Ron Holland II<\/a>, but there may be more than one NBA player lurking on the roster. One NBA analyst thinks that player is Tolu Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Daniss Jenkins played well in Summer League and looks like a viable \u201cbreak-in-case-of-emergency” point guard and Smith was once again one of the best big men in the league, averaging 13 points, eight rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was his mobile defense that caught the eye of John Hollinger of The Athletic<\/a> (subscription), who named Smith as one of his players to watch from the Summer League. Here\u2019s what he had to say:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSmith is a pretty mobile defender for a big and showed enough skill as an offensive player to seem functional at the NBA level. He had a 19.5 percent rebound rate and 8 percent block rate at summer league, both among the best figures in Vegas. The Mississippi State product is on a two-way contract with Detroit after being one of the best players in the G League last season. The Pistons are well-stocked at center but file this name away for later in the season or next year if he changes teams. He\u2019s an NBA player.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Pistons appear to be set for two-way contracts<\/a> after waiving Ron Harper Jr. and signing Colby Jones to go along with Jenkins and Smith. Of the three, Smith would appear to have the most difficult road to rotation minutes but his continued development could be good for Detroit down the road.<\/p>\n

Detroit Pistons\u2019 rotation: Developing the two-way players\u00a0<\/p>\n

Side note: I recently took part in a survey about the next name for the G-League. The NBA\u2019s deal with Gatorade apparently ran out, and they are renaming it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Out of a pretty awful list, I chose “NBA Prospect League” as my top choice and “NBA Ascension League” as my bottom. Ascension League sounds like a bad comic book or cult.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anyway, the Pistons haven\u2019t gotten anything out of their two-way deals yet, so it would be nice to develop a player who could play rotation minutes at some point in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Pistons appear to be set at center, but one injury could change that quickly, as we saw in the playoffs last season when Beef Stew went down. Duren was forced into heavy minutes, and the Pistons had to use Paul Reed more than they probably wanted to, though he held up fairly well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even a minor injury to a big man could force the Pistons to bring Smith up for stretches and it would be nice if he could fill that role capably as a rebounder and guy who can affect shots at the rim. If he can move well enough to defend switches on the perimeter as Hollinger suggests, then it is possible he\u2019ll see minutes at that third big spot at some point next season.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most of the talk around the Detroit Pistons\u2019 Summer League has focused on the exciting play of Ron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-36450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}