Hornets’ Miller outduels Spurs’ Wembanyama in much-anticipated NBA Summer League showdown
When the Las Vegas Summer League schedule came out, this was the game everyone had circled. No. 1 pick Victor Wembanyama — regarded by many as the greatest prospect since LeBron James — making his Spurs debut, facing the Hornets’ Brandon Miller, who was selected one pick later.
The Friday night game on ESPN was sold out, with buzz in the building throughout, despite the Spurs winning the low-scoring affair 76-68.
Both of the top picks struggled at times, but each had moments that made it easy to see why they were the first two names called last month.
And in this moment, the Hornets’ budding star shined a bit brighter.
Miller rebounded nicely from his previous outing at Summer League in Sacramento against the Warriors, where he didn’t make his first field goal until the fourth quarter and only took four shots. Friday, he opened the game against the Spurs by making a 3-pointer, and on the next possession, attempted another. He finished with 16 points, shooting 5-for-15 from the field and 3-for-10 from three, and threw down a thunderous one-handed slam on a fast break.
But Miller’s increased aggressiveness wasn’t a matter of a new game plan. Rather, it was what this game called for.
“I think in that Golden State game, I was getting him the ball quite a bit,” said Marlon Garnett, an assistant coach with the Hornets who is the team’s head coach for Summer League. “Golden State had a couple little scheme things that they tried to do. And Brandon is just a smart player, good IQ, that he just makes the right read. He just makes the right play. He’s not going to overdo it, and he’s not going to force anything, which sometimes I think he unfairly gets knocked for not being more aggressive.”
“I think as I let the game come to me, I think just more shots came,” Miller said. “So I just think the ball kind of found my hands to take shots like that.”
Miller also added 11 rebounds, three steals, an assist and a block, but committed five fouls, which has been an issue for him during Summer League. Regardless, it was a solid outing from Miller, who showed his coach some improvement.
“I like what Brandon is doing,” Garnett said. “I just want to see his motor a little bit more like he did today. Again, he had a little bit more pop than the first two games, and hopefully that’s an indication of what we’re gonna see going forward.”
As a team, the Hornets struggled shooting Friday. They made just 29.9% of their field goals, went 5-for-32 from deep and 17-for-26 from the free throw line. But their defense was stellar all night, holding Wembanyama to nine points on 2-for-13 shooting and the Spurs to 33.3% from the field.
“We didn’t shoot the ball all that great, so that hurt us a little bit,” Garnett said. “But typically, when you don’t shoot the ball well, it affects your defense, and I thought that tonight, it was a little bit reverse. So we felt like we had a pillar that we can stand on. Okay, we’re not shooting well, but we didn’t give up our effort on the defensive end, which is gonna help us win games going forward.”
In Sacramento, the Hornets didn’t look good, going 0-2 and losing both games by double figures. They gave up nearly 100 points in each game and got beat up on the glass.
So, before heading to Las Vegas, Garnett decided to speak up to everyone on the team.
“We had a really good heart-to-heart film before we got on the plane to fly from Sacramento to here,” Garnett said. “I’m not much of a screamer or a yeller, but it was a stern kind of, you got to be better. You got to be better in these situations.
“This morning, solid shoot around, and it carried over. Obviously, it didn’t carry over to a ‘W,’ but it’s a lot of positives that we can take from tonight.”