Assassins to Watch, Bred in the Best City in the South

The NBA’s Summer League got off to its inoncuous start this past week. Not usually terribly fan-friendly for most followers of the League — or at least not a very meaningful exercise in fandom — this year has proven to be no exception, as only 21 of the 30 NBA franchises have actually fielded a Summer League team. The recession can be to blamed, I suppose, but it’s also mostly the sort general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament that accompanies the NBA in July.

And whilst my favorite team, the Charlotte Bobcats, is one of the cheapskates not ponying up enough to send a team to Vegas or Orlando, there’s still plenty reason for a basketball fan from Charlotte to be keeping tabs on what’s going on in summer NBA ball.

Follow through the Jump for a run-down of my favorite plot lines from the NBA Summer League:

1. Anthony Morrow, the surprise and success story of the 2008 NBA Summer League, where he just kept shooting and shooting and shooting and hanging around and rarely missing, is now in his second summer with the Golden State Warriors, and he’s paired with another sharp-shooting, mature Charlotte, NC, product: Davidson superstar Stephen Curry.

Put the two of them in the backcourt at the same time, and the ball may never hit the rim from beyond 23 feet. Morrow led the league in NBA 3 point percentage last year, shooting 47 (!) percent from beyond the arc. Curry led all college players in scoring, despite also playing point guard and having the biggest target on his back in the college game. They’re so good, it really is shocking when you see them miss.

Former Charlotte Latin Superstar Anthony Morrow

I went to high school at Charlotte Latin School with Anthony, and I’ve never seen a better shooter play the game. He has a smooth, quick release, and he gets great rotation on the ball.

We played Curry’s Charlotte Christian twice a year, and Ant — and by extension, I — dominated Curry. To be fair, Anthony dominated everyone, and Steph was younger and even more undersized against our team.

But a friendly rivalry in high school could really blossom into a backcourt not often seen in the NBA. Everyone knows the Warriors like to run-n-gun, but the shooting and scoring possibilities are endless with Curry and Morrow playing side by side. Throw in the young talents of Monta Ellis, Anthony Randolph, and Brandan Wright, with the veterans Stephen Jackson, Andris Biedrens, and Corey Maggette, and you have a team that can score in waves upon waves upon waves. They may not play a lot of defense, and they may not have a lot of size. But they’ll be able to run, and man will they be able to shoot the long ball.

Last summer, my man Ant used the NBA Summer League to show off his smoove shooting stroke and go from undrafted free agent to diamond in the rough. This year’s break-out star will most likely be Curry, the baby-faced specialist who has done his fair share of defying odds on a basketball court. As a native Charlottean — and a former private school basketball player like Morrow and Curry — I feel like I have an oddly close connection to this team. They’ll be my favorite non-Bobcats team this year, and they will play a wildly entertaining brand of basketball.

Check out a great story on both Anthony and Stephen in our hometown paper from this morning.

2. The potential resurrection of Adam Morrison: Smokey’s favorite NBA player — he owns a full Adam Morrison/Bobcats uniform — is looking to remake his name as anything but one of the biggest top-3 pick busts ever with his time in Vegas with the Lakers summer team. Morrison was so broken down he was left of the Lakers playoff team, and yet basketball in the summer is always a prime time for redemption.

The jury still remains quite skeptical of whether Morrison can turn himself into a real NBA basketball player. But that’s all for us to quickly decide or dismiss come next October. For now, it’s summer, and Morrison needs to get back to being an aggressive and crafty player. Vegas seems like a great place to do that.

Ok, so maybe there are only two things I’m actually interested in that have to do with the NBA Summer League, but damn, it’s a summer Monday night, and one man can only stand so much Berman squelching, “backbackbackback…’