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| Nick Johnson showing off his unlimited potential. Photo Credit: Getty Images |
The Houston Rockets showed a lot of potential from its young players in the most recent NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. Last night the Rockets lost to the Kings 77-68 in the summer league championship. Though they fell short of victory, the Rockets got great production all summer from the likes of Dontas Motiejunas, Isaiah Canaan, and Nick Johnson.
Motiejunas also known as D-Mo ended last night with 16 points. D-Mo has had a great summer thus far for the Rockets he was rewarded by making the all summer league team. If the summer is any indication of how productive Motiejunas will be coming this season, the Rockets will be pleasantly surprised. They need Motiejunas to step up after the team missed out big in free agency and also losing core players from last years team.
The best thing for D-Mo to do is to keep improving and pushing that momentum into the season. For his size, he has a good skill set he can shoot the ball and has a decent array of post moves to be effective though he is not very athletic. It will be interesting to see if he can push Terence Jones for more minutes this year.
Nick Johnson has certainly been a pleasant surprise for the Rockets since he was drafted last month. The former Arizona star has had his fair share of highlights this summer. He had a thunderous dunk on a defender in his first game of the Orlando circuit of summer league that instantly had him buzzing he followed that with a 360 dunk and then last night he rose in the air to catch a reverse alley-oop from D-Mo.
At 6'3, Johnson certainly possesses great athleticism to be a solid defender and a highlight reel on offense. His stat line this summer was 12.5ppg 4.4rpg, 2.3apg and 1.8spg he can certainly be a steal for the Rockets this year. Marc J. Spears of Yahoo had this to say about Johnson.
"Find it hard to believe there were 41 better players in the draft then ex-Arizona star Nick Johnson. Nice pick for the Rockets."
Rockets have a knack for finding second round talent i.e. Chandler Parsons maybe Johnson is next.
Isaiah Canaan had a very solid summer league as well as the other two players I have mentioned. Canaan showed solid leadership and scoring ability which the Rockets will need. As it looks right now, Canaan will be backing up Patrick Beverley since Jeremy Lin has been traded. But the Rockets also signed Ish Smith to a one-year deal, so if Canaan doesn't perform consistently at a high level he may have to take the third point guard role as he did last year. But if the summer is a true indication the Canaan should be in great shape.
Overall the Rockets look to have some quality depth with the young players they are developing. The Rockets maybe be better off this year than we think despite their not so extravagant free agency.
