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We’re digging in on the Summer League performances, of which the Thunder had heaps.

Most exhibition statistics, primarily the percentages from the field, have little to no correlation to players’ output during real NBA minutes. The Summer League is more about the process and how these players are doing what they are doing on the floor.

This helpful guide by Owen Phillips showcases which Summer League numbers are sticky when projecting a player in their first season:

As Phillips shows, all of these categories are less affected by statistical noise when compared to their counterparts. The least correlated stats from Summer League are:

With these caveats out of the way, we’ll be digging into how OKC’s young prospects performed in Utah and Vegas.

A player similar to Aaron Wiggins, Lindy Waters is your prototypical off-ball shooter. He only shot 33.3 percent from three and scored 5.6 points per game in his five Summer League contests (13.8 minutes per game) but we all know he is a better shooter than that. He didn’t do much else, with the only other stat average over 1.0 being his total rebounds at 1.2, but he can shoot and did so in Utah and Vegas. I will take this opportunity to say that I think Lindy is in fact an NBA player. He graded out fairly well in impact metrics for his play this past season, cashing in a ton of threes at a league average clip despite terrible spacing. He also plays competent defense is a player to keep an eye on. I wasn’t swayed in any direction by his SL performance, but it reinforce my opinion that he belongs in the league.