The hardest part of Drake Powell’s Summer League might come after the gym empties, when the misses stop belonging to the game and start following him back to a hotel room.
Powell admitted that some nights are hard when he’s alone. The answer resonated because it placed him inside the stretch. He’s living through the ugliest shooting spell of his young career in public, one miss after another, one empty possession after another, with enough time afterward to sit with all of it.
The Nets‘ second-year forward entered Tuesday night’s Las Vegas matchup against the Sacramento Kings with 11 points through four Summer League games. He’d made one of his 28 shots from the field and missed all 14 of his 3-point attempts.
Those numbers are objectively awful. They’re also so severe they resist easy judgment. This is a slump, and slumps happen. Sometimes the ball simply does not go in. Powell should bounce back, eventually, and this stretch may help him in the long run if he treats it properly.
It also needs to get his attention.
Summer League won’t define Powell, but it should push him. This concern runs deeper than missed jumpers. A player with his athletic ability cannot fade from the game when his jumper deserts him. For a wing with his tools, defensive profile and first-round pedigree, presence cannot depend on makes.
Powell has to be felt.
Sacramento offered the sharpest example. Powell went 0-for-9 from the field with four turnovers when the Nets faced the Kings earlier in Summer League. Brooklyn tried to run offense through him in stretches. He missed on and off the ball. He got stripped multiple times trying to dribble. The issue, in those moments, started before the release. He had to protect the ball, reach his spots and keep possessions alive.
July is built for some of this. Teams use Summer League to stretch players into uncomfortable places, and Powell has been asked to do more than stand in the corner and defend. When asked about getting more on-ball chances and self-creation reps, he didn’t frame it as a major shift in role.
“No, more so just game flow,” Powell said. “I think given our offense, I think it’s pretty much positionless. I think we have a lot of ball handlers that can do a bunch of different things with the basketball. But yeah, for the most part, it’s just the flow of the game.”
The flow has been unforgiving. Powell’s jumper is more than cold. It’s being rebuilt from the ground up. Asked about his shooting numbers and whether he has been tinkering with his shot, Powell corrected himself mid-answer.
The flow has been unforgiving. Powell’s jumper is more than cold. It’s being rebuilt. His answer about the shooting work started modestly, then became more honest mid-sentence.
“I think I have been working a little bit, or no, not a little bit, but a lot with my coaches on my shot,” he said. “But yeah, obviously they’re not going in right now. I’m going to continue to put them up and just have full confidence that this is going to go in.”
The changes are more than mental.
“Yes,” Powell said. “Yes, mechanically.”
That helps explain the ugliness, but it can’t excuse Powell from finding other ways to leave fingerprints on the game. A young player changing his shot can look uncomfortable. A young player missing shots can press. Powell has shown some of both. The next step is learning how to stay productive anyway.
His own offseason checklist points him there.
“Definitely want to continue to just be physical when I’m on defense, especially pressuring the basketball and just offensively continuing to make reads for myself and my teammates,” Powell said.
The focus is right. Now it has to show up every trip down the floor.
Powell’s defensive impact is already his calling card. Last season, however, he showed enough flashes to make this stretch frustrating instead of final. People forget too quickly. There were games when he showed a full scoring package at all three levels. He attacked off movement. He played with confidence. He offered glimpses of legitimate shot creation beyond a low-usage defensive role.
That version hasn’t shown up this summer, but the good news for Powell is the calendar. Better to face this in July than October. Better to miss now, rework now, get stripped now and learn now, before training camp begins and rotation decisions carry more weight. The Nets don’t need him to panic. They need him to respond.
That response won’t be measured by his next make. It’ll show in the work between now and camp, in the steadiness of his mechanics, in the intensity of his defense, in the reads he makes under pressure and how he commands attention without needing shots to fall.
This stretch doesn’t have to define Powell.
It should change him.