Open Thread: Stephon Castle receives high praise for Summer League performance
When will the regular season get here again?
We only saw Stephon Castle in three summer league games before he was shut down following a fall in Las Vegas that resulted in a sprained wrist, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make an impression — and not just on Spurs fans. In a recent article from The Ringer about five observations from the Summer League (so far), Rob Mahoney had the following to say about Castle:
Gregg Popovich is going to have a hard time keeping Stephen Castle off the floor.
One of the pleasures of being an NBA elitist is getting the chance to introduce fresh new faces to the broader basketball world, so let me be the first to report that Stephon Castle is pretty awesome. There was simply no way to know this about one of the best players on the best team in college basketball last season because the only true crucible is summer league—the purest version of the game, spared from distractions like order and game plan and on-court chemistry. We can see the truth of Castle’s game in a glorified AAU tournament and, better yet, the single game of a glorified AAU tournament, before Castle withdrew from competition in Vegas with a wrist injury.
But what a game it was. Even in the summer league slop, Castle is an engine for intuitive, winning plays, connecting dots that lesser prospects wouldn’t see and manifesting plays that lesser athletes couldn’t create. The questions about Castle’s shot and position are inevitable, but those are almost beside the point; what’s most striking about watching him play against quasi-pros is realizing how difficult it will be to take him off the floor in the earliest days of his career. Why would the Spurs deprive themselves of a guard who comes by impact plays so naturally? Throw Castle into the mix and see what he can turn up, whether by jamming opponents up at the point of attack or slicing his way through the defense. Toolsy, theoretical players are fun and all, but so are the dudes who make shit happen almost incidentally, as if it were an entire way of life.
There are a lot of reasons to look forward to next season, such as the free agency additions to the roster and the potential growth of Victor Wembanyama, but don’t underestimate the impact Castle will have. His calm demeanor may make him easy to miss at times, and the old saying goes you should never overreact to the Summer League, but in just a small sample, Castle has still managed to create yet another level of intrigue that will make the wait for the next season even longer.
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