Meleek Thomas wasted no time making an impression in his first taste of NBA action.<\/p>\n
The former Arkansas guard, once considered a potential first-round pick before slipping to the Cleveland\u00a0Cavaliers\u00a0at 34th overall, exploded for a team-high 20 points in his 2026 NBA Las Vegas Summer League debut against the Indiana Pacers, saving his best for last with a dominant fourth-quarter surge.<\/p>\n
Thomas started slowly, managing just six points on 1-of-3 shooting from the floor in the opening half. But the 19-year-old flipped a switch after the break, tallying 14 second-half points, 12 of which came in the fourth quarter alone.<\/p>\n
By the final buzzer, Thomas had tied for the game-high in scoring, finishing 7-of-15 from the field (46.7%) with 5 rebounds, 3 assists and a steal in 27 minutes. He also tied for second on the Cavaliers in rebounding and didn’t commit a single turnover in his debut.<\/p>\n
The performance echoed the kind of production that made Thomas a name to watch during his lone season at Arkansas. In 37 games for the Razorbacks in 2025-26, he averaged 15.6 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game, while shooting 43.5% from the field and 41.6% from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
Thomas isn’t guaranteed a consistent role in Cleveland’s rotation as a rookie, as he’s currently behind established guards Sam Merrill, Max Strus and Craig Porter on the depth chart. Summer League performances don’t always translate directly to regular-season minutes, but Thomas’ debut gives an early look at what he can bring to the Cavaliers as he works toward a spot in the rotation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meleek Thomas wasted no time making an impression in his first taste of NBA action. The former Arkansas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,12628,6],"class_list":["post-784294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-clevelandcavaliers","tag-mcdonald","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116904127593933411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}