Jordan Walsh impressive in Celtics summer league debut

The summer Celtics made their debut on Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas, dropping their summer league opener to the Miami Heat, 99-88. The Celtics were led by Jordan Walsh’s 18 points (6-11 fg, 4-6 3pt, 2-2 ft) and Jay Scrubb’s 17 (6-11 fg, 1-3 3pt, 4-6 ft). Walsh also added 5 rebounds, 2 steals, a block, and 3 turnovers. JD Davison had a 14-point, 11-assist double-double, but shot 5-14 from the field. 

Here are a few thoughts from the game: 

- One thing I wanted Walsh to do in summer league was shoot with confidence. I'll consider this one mission accomplished, as he barely hesitated when he had opportunities to shoot, and he was rewarded by hitting his first four 3-pointers. 

Of course, it's not about how many shots he made -- that's just icing on the cake -- it's about feeling like those were his shots to take because that's what he's going to need to eventually be in the NBA. 

His game was full of the typical awkwardness you would expect in the first summer league for a super high-energy secondround pick. He showed he can handle a ball a little bit, but he also turned it over a few times. He defended pretty well on the ball, but he fouled too much.

The defense will be his calling card, especially early on in his career, and you can see the building blocks there. His off-ball defense was very shaky, but that could be the result of almost anything. He could be making mistakes, but his teammates could also be making mistakes that make him look bad, so I'm not really judging him on all of that. It feels like given time, coaching and consistent teammates, he can figure that part out.

I saw a few nice instinctual plays, like creeping down the sideline as a player drove to stay within his line of sight for a kick-out (the pass never came). He also got in for a couple of nice rebounds. His lack of strength is going to be an issue for a little bit, not just defending other players, but being able to lower his shoulder and clear some space on drives. Right now he's more bouncing off of people. Brad Stevens DID say Walsh would fall down a lot, and he wasn’t kidding.

Overall, I'll consider this a very nice debut for him. It's a good first impression with plenty to work on, but right now nothing unexpected for a player in his position. 

- Davison still has a lot of work to do as a point guard, especially in the half court. When he's out running in transition, he's a much different player. A bulk of his assists came from pushing the ball, forcing the issue, and finding the open man. Of course in summer league, pushing the pace is enough to create confusion and rack up some assists. You're not playing against well-oiled machines on defense, so teams have no idea how to deal with cross-matches. It's fertile ground for a big assist game.

And credit to Davison for taking advantage of that. If he's going to get a crack on the Celtics at all, it's going to be as a pace-changer who is constantly running the ball up the court.

He struggled with traps in the half court, which is a significant issue as he tries to graduate to the big club. If the scouting report is to trap him on pick-and-rolls and he will turn it over, and it doesn't really matter that he's great at throwing alley-oops. He'll rarely get to those passes if he doesn't know how to handle the double team.

Again some of that is on teammates that he's not familiar with, but as the point guard he just has to play under more control in the half court. So over the next few games, I'll be looking for significant improvement in that regard.

- Scrubb made a big impact with his scoring. He was on a two-way deal in Orlando last season, and a few more games like this could land him on a two-way deal in Boston. 

He was able to score in a variety of ways, which was nice to see.

- It's important to note that hot shooting games happen all the time in summer league. The Celtics got burned by a hot summer league shooting game from Orlando Robinson, so we've got to take some of these shooting performances with a grain of salt.

Again defense is a little bit difficult in this summer league setting. It's tough to be a cohesive unit with one week of practice and a bunch of guys you'll never see again after the summer run is over. And even fringe NBA guys can hit shots when they're wide open. So some of these big shooting performances, while nice, need to be duplicated a few times before we can start daydreaming about certain guys. 

- Dalano Banton did not play due to a finger injury.

Boston’s next game is tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. Eastern.