4 days in Sin City: A running diary covering the Warriors and NBA Summer League

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LAS VEGAS — Summer League is for basketball, but it’s really for schmoozing. 

For the last week, the league converged in the desert for networking, gossiping, and meetings. Front office personnel, coaches, agents, and players spent much of their time at dinners or casino bars, in the Thomas & Mack Center, and wading through the underground labyrinth of the Strip. They hit up pool parties and the Backstreet Boys concert at the Sphere. 

Typically, it’s a time for dealmaking, though most of the big transactions happened this offseason, leaving the 2025 Summer League fairly quiet on the rumor mill. 

One of the biggest remaining items at the center of the NBA offseason is Jonathan Kuminga, the Warriors’ restricted free agent. Conversations between Kuminga and the team are ongoing. The Warriors value the wing, are certainly open to bringing him back, and would want to return real assets for him in a potential sign-and-trade, per league sources. 

Practically everyone in Sin City wanted to talk about Kuminga. One reason for the intrigue is that his situation is a domino around the league. The longer negotiations drag out, the longer the Warriors likely have to wait to make other moves. Money is tight, and the sequencing of transactions can determine which avenues are available to Golden State to add other players. 

Those around the team are confident that whenever the Kuminga situation is resolved — one way or another — veteran center Al Horford will hop onboard. De’Anthony Melton, an unrestricted free agent who spent the first six games last season as a Warrior before tearing his ACL, is another strong possibility. 

But things in this league can change quickly, like a string of bad beats at a poker table.

The Standard flew to Vegas to take in all the action, lunacy, and, of course, the basketball. Here are the highlights. 

This year’s Summer League will be remembered for the spectacle that was Cooper Flagg’s professional debut. 

Flagg, the top overall pick, squared off against the Lakers in a primetime matchup billed as him versus Bronny James. Flagg shot 5-for-21 in his first game as a Maverick, though he made a clutch play late in a Dallas win. 

The Thomas & Mack Center was packed, with a get-in price of $85 and courtside seats going for upward of $3,000. That’s a lot of blackjack hands. Fans went crazy when Flagg, six minutes into the game, swiped a steal and took it all the way for a breakaway dunk. The NBA universe watched as he converted two more buckets right afterward. Almost the entire building gasped as Flagg nearly put Christian Koloko on a poster.

The gym might’ve had the most juice in the second quarter, when Flagg posted up Bronny on the block. Bronny poked the ball away but was whistled for a foul. Flagg asked for another post-up and promptly sank a jumper over Bronny. The House of Highlights social media admin might’ve fainted.

Flagg had about a dozen excellent defensive plays, making use of his otherworldly physical attributes.

But the debut was definitely a struggle for the Maine Event, as the public address announcer referred to him before the opening tipoff. As his shots kept clanking, the writers in my row of the press section started riffing on player comps. Gordon Hayward. Andrei Kirilenko. Jayson Tatum. Each started to get more outlandish than the last, and it quickly devolved into naming random white dudes who have nothing to do with Flagg. A bouncier Detlef Schrempf. A taller Kon Knueppel. A taller Luke Kennard. Christian Laettner (just Christian Laettner). Skinny Ryan Anderson. Alexey Shved. Luke Bonner, Matt Bonner. 

Cooper Flagg is going to be Cooper Flagg. With a minute left, he swatted a layup attempt into the hardwood, pushed in transition, and found Ryan Nembhard for a 3-pointer to put Dallas up by two. 

After the game, Flagg was swarmed by media members, his head floating over a sea of reporters either posing questions or trying to hear him through the commotion. The 18-year-old out of Duke called the performance “one of the worst games of my life.” Mark Cuban did a radio hit in the same room. Bronny held his postgame press conference a few feet away, too. 

I’d gotten to the arena around 2:15 p.m., after Warriors practice. For five straight hours, everyone wanted to talk about Flagg. The anticipation for his debut. Would LeBron James come? (He did not.) How did the Mavericks get so lucky? What was the last Summer League debut with this much hype? 

Alexey Shved could never. 

The Warriors’ first game of the Vegas portion of Summer League came against Portland and the 7-foot-1 Chinese phenom Hansen Yang. As much hype surrounds Flagg, the intrigue around Yang might be doubled. 

Many observers expected Yang to be selected in the second round of the June draft. The Blazers picked him 16th overall. 

He quickly showed why. 

In the opening minutes against Golden State, Yang left the gym in awe by dotting up the Warriors’ defense with flashy dimes. He operated at the top of the key, directing the offense with a collection of points and grunts to his teammates. 

“He’s just really good at seeing the cutters kind of before they become open,” Warriors Summer League coach Lainn Wilson said postgame. “It’s what makes guys, even Jokic at times, difficult to guard — passes you’re normally not expecting to be made, those guys can make.” 

Brandin Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Quinten Post, and Gui Santos, who have been working out in the facility — sat together courtside. So did Kevin Knox, a free agent who was in Golden State’s system last year. 

They saw Yang carve up the Warriors’ defense and the Blazers’ ball pressure eat Golden State’s offense alive. The Blazers won the first quarter by 21 points and ran away with a 106-73 win. Yang finished with 18 points, four boards, five dimes, and three blocks. 

In a halftime interview with ESPN, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy said the way Kuminga stepped up after Steph Curry’s injury against the Timberwolves is “a big reason why I want to bring him back.” 

Kuminga thrived with the on-ball, high-usage role, averaging 24.2 points per game against an elite Minnesota defense. That role just won’t be there for him consistently on a team with Curry and Jimmy Butler. 

The Warriors are the only team yet to make an offseason move. The same reason Dunleavy wants to bring him back may be why Kuminga could want to leave. 

In the Thomas & Mack Center, players, coaches, executives, and league officials loiter in the vacant space between the baseline and the tunnel. If you hang out in the concourse, Danny Ainge might pace by you. There’s a roped-off section for media and NBA personnel to awkwardly peer down at one another’s credentials.

Getting a break from that hullabaloo wasn’t the worst thing. The Valkyries were coincidentally in town, so some of the action shifted to the Michelob Ultra Arena at the Mandalay Bay. 

There was so much demand for Natalie Nakase’s first game back in Vegas against her former team that several media members, including yours truly, were sent up to the rafters in overflow seating. Another reporter said he heard that Victor Wembanyama tried to secure a ticket, but the Aces couldn’t accommodate him. (Given how many empty seats there were, I’m skeptical.) Savannah James, Reggie “Mr. October” Jackson, Tyrese Maxey, and (of course) Podziemski were among the celebrities who did get in. 

The basketball was far better than anything in the Thomas & Mack Center this week. The competition was relentlessly intense, even if defensive stops were lacking at times. The shot-making, particularly from three-time MVP A’Ja Wilson, was world-class. Las Vegas won, 104-102, prevailing in the back-and-forth affair. 

The best meal was at the Strip House, an annual media dinner hosted by Warriors media relations czar Raymond Ridder. Even better than the medium-rare filet mignon was the company; the highlight of Summer League, for me, is always getting to spend time with titans of NBA journalism. We shared stories, takes, and gripes. Getting to pick the brains of writers who have carved out careers in this league for decades — writers I’ve long looked up to — is a massive privilege.

A close second to the Strip House was the omelet breakfast at Egg Works off the Strip I grabbed with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sam Gordon after we played pickup hoops. Any place with a model train chugging along the ceiling is bound to be a winner. 

The worst thing I ate was on the first day, when I ventured to the Eataly market attached to my hotel for a meatball sub. It was $40, because everything on the Strip costs $40, and reminded me of East Coast chain Bertucci’s. Eataly earned redemption later in the week with its foccacia panino (soppressata, prosciutto, and provolone is the vision). 

The pickup run at the Warriors’ facility is the highest level of competition I’ve played against: former college players, strength strainers, assistant coaches, player development guys, front office types. Five courts, winner rotates to the next. J. Cole hit a game winner over me last summer. 

This time, we played for about 90 minutes, going 3-on-3. In one of our last games, a lanky 6-foot-6 hooper skied for a pair of insane alley-oop jams. 

I hadn’t played in a couple months because of knee tendinitis, and this wasn’t a good atmosphere to shake off rust. My final box score looked something like 0-for-5 from the field, including two jumpers I normally hit in my sleep and an airball from the corner. Most of my morning was spent in the corners and setting screens, and the next morning was spent needing an ice bath. 

I saw more playing time than Warriors center Quinten Post, who was held out because an ankle injury that bothered him in the second half of the season flared up in the weeks before the California Classic. 

So instead of taking important reps, Post worked out in Golden State’s facility and watched the games courtside. He let me tag along with him to the Chesstival, organized by Derrick Rose. 

The event in a Wynn hotel ballroom paired NBA players with professional chess players in a modified game format called freestyle chess. The back row of pieces are randomized, and the grandmasters tell their NBA counterparts which piece to move but not in what direction. Rose, Rajon Rondo, and Onyeka Okongwu were among the participants. 

Post arrived early to the Wynn ballroom, participated in a couple of social media videos, then paired up with grandmaster Tiana Sachdev for a match against Drew Gooden and his pro teammate. 

The games started an hour late, so I could stay only for the first one. Post beat Gooden, then lost in the semifinals. In a later round, the “blitz format,” Post defeated De’Anthony Melton, Daryl Morey, Tony Snell, and Harrison Ingram en route to the championship. He held up a ginormous novelty check worth $25,000, made out to the charity of his choice.

The random excursion in the entertainment capital of the world, ostensibly about basketball but not exactly, dragged out for about five hours — far too long. What’s more Summer League than that?