NBA Summer League Recap: Heat 113, Knicks 66

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope. The Heat dashed whatever dreams we had of a Vegas Summer League championship with, like, a sledgehammer. Good god was that a hideous game of basketball. Sloppy play turned into a big deficit, which turned into lightly-used bench guys gunning for themselves, which turned into an even bigger deficit that nearly set a Summer League record. So many missed long twos, so many turnovers, so many transition dunks the other way.

The beauty of Summer League (even in the postseason) is that only the individual performances matter, but even those were pretty much farts across the board. A few exceptions:

- Jeremy Tyler's work off the dribble. Dude finally made use of that footwork we've been seeing, turning a handful of baseline back-downs into volcanic dunks out of spin moves. He got beat over and over again on defense, but rebounded well (especially on offense) and generally played like he cared. At least on offense.

- J'Covan Brown kept playing feisty defense over picks and stuff. He is little but rather tough.

- Eloy Vargas showed off more of his range on some pick-and-pops and long spot-ups. I'd have liked to see him roll to the rim more, but he does have that range to spread the floor. He was perhaps the only big to play help defense with his hands straight up, too.

- Toure' Murry had a pretty rough evening (he got mad and kicked a ball right at us on press row), but showed some outside touch late in the game. Still a lot of reaching on defense, and more fouls than steals to show for it this time.

- Terrence Jennings rolled perfectly and earned an and-one this one time.

- Chris Smith ran a couple clean pick-and-rolls. He also shanked several thousand long, contested twos and got dunked on so violently I think both he and I lost some teeth, but...

- Uhhhh at least one of C.J. Leslie's half-baked stumbles into the paint ended in a nice feed and finish for Jerome Jordan.

Uhhhhhhhh ummmmmm...nope, that's it. This was awful. A truly devastating playoff defeat. The Knicks will finish Summer League with a consolation game against the loser of Clippers-Mavericks on Friday at 1 PM Eastern.