Nets<\/a>\u2018 second-year forward entered Tuesday night\u2019s Las Vegas matchup against the Sacramento Kings with 11 points through four Summer League games. He\u2019d made one of his 28 shots from the field and missed all 14 of his 3-point attempts.<\/p>\nThose numbers are objectively awful. They\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
It also needs to get his attention.<\/p>\n
Summer League won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Powell has to be felt.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t frame it as a major shift in role.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, more so just game flow,\u201d Powell said. \u201cI think given our offense, I think it\u2019s 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\u2019s just the flow of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The flow has been unforgiving. Powell\u2019s jumper is more than cold. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The flow has been unforgiving. Powell\u2019s jumper is more than cold. It\u2019s being rebuilt. His answer about the shooting work started modestly, then became more honest mid-sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I have been working a little bit, or no, not a little bit, but a lot with my coaches on my shot,\u201d he said. \u201cBut yeah, obviously they\u2019re not going in right now. I\u2019m going to continue to put them up and just have full confidence that this is going to go in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The changes are more than mental.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Powell said. \u201cYes, mechanically.\u201d<\/p>\n
That helps explain the ugliness, but it can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
His own offseason checklist points him there.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely want to continue to just be physical when I\u2019m on defense, especially pressuring the basketball and just offensively continuing to make reads for myself and my teammates,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n
The focus is right. Now it has to show up every trip down the floor.<\/p>\n
Powell\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
That version hasn\u2019t 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\u2019t need him to panic. They need him to respond.<\/p>\n
That response won\u2019t be measured by his next make. It\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
This stretch doesn\u2019t have to define Powell.<\/p>\n
It should change him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hardest part of Drake Powell\u2019s Summer League might come after the gym empties, when the misses stop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,44288,997,6,3494,671],"class_list":["post-786638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn-nets","tag-basketball","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-brooklynnets","tag-c-j-holmes","tag-drake-powell","tag-nba","tag-nba-summer-league","tag-nets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116919970317303002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786638","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=786638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}