Knicks Summer League starts today!

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Las Vegas Summer League started yesterday, and the first SummerKnicks game of the week takes place today at 4 PM Eastern (1 PM Vegas time, where it's also technically still 2009. I've never understood time zones). It'll be televised on MSG.

Here is New York's full schedule for the week (I'll be in the building for the final two games). This is New York's full listed roster, though the recently signed James White is expected to play a few games as well, and these things tend to change a bit anyway.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with Vegas Summer League, a few things:

- We get very excited about it here at P&T. There will be game threads for every game, and probably even some short recaps of individual performances. It's real live basketball in the middle of the summer. Enjoy it!

- A player's performance in Summer League is DIRECTLY CORRELATED with his NBA readiness. If a guy dominates a Summer League game, that means he can and will dominate EVERY NIGHT in the NBA. The retired jerseys of Joe Crawford, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, and Warren Carter wouldn't be hanging in the Madison Square Garden rafters if this wasn't true.

- Update: Forgot this one. It doesn't matter who wins. Not even a little bit. Summer League is about players, not teams, and the final score doesn't mean anything. Not even a little. Unless the Knicks win.

Those are the basic tenets of Summer League. Quickly, here are a few members of the SummerKnicks you might like to know in advance:

- James White is the one that looks like this. I'm not sure whether or not he'll play today, but if you see him, you should be like "Oh, this is the only one of these guys who is definitely going to be a Knick this season".

- Chris Copeland, who looks like this, has already been invited to training camp, so perhaps he's the next likeliest to actually be a Knick this season.

- Mychel Thompson is not the best of the Thompsons, but he's young, he's a shooting guard, he's up to date on all his vaccinations, and he was good enough to play in a few games with the Cavs last year. Didn't play too well, but that's something, right? No? Okay.

- Really, given New York's lack of depth at shooting guard, any of the wing-type bros-- Thompson, Chris Smith, Jeremiah Rivers, Mustapha Farrakhan-- could be playing for a training camp invite.

- The same probably goes for big men like Ahmad Nivins, Wesley Witherspoon, and Artsiom Parakhouski. One of them should get a training camp invite.

- This probably wasn't a very helpful exercise.

Anyway, that's what's up today. Come on by at 4 for the game thread. In the meantime, we await the decision on Toronto's offer sheet to Landry Fields. The deadline for that should be sometime today... (Update: Apparently the deadline is midnight. Please don't wait that long, Knicks.)