While The Whole World Weirdly Obsesses Over Bronny James, The #2 Overall Pick Alex Sarr Threw Up One Of The Most Disastrous Summer League Performances You'll Ever see

Candice Ward. Getty Images.

I think it's fair to suggest that this year's NBA Draft wasn't exactly filled with the high profile superstar prospects that we've been accustomed to seeing over these last few years. That doesn't mean there won't be good players or even future All Stars at some point in their careers, but it's not exactly the "put asses in seats" type of players we usually see, especially at the top of the draft.

A perfect example of this is the fact that I'm pretty sure nobody gave a shit when the #1 pick Zaccharie Risacher faced off against the #2 pick Alex Sarr a few days ago, something that absolutely would have been a big story had it been Wemby vs Brandon Miller or Paolo vs Chet or Cade vs Jalen Green like we'd seen in previous summers.

Maybe it's because this year's top picks were international guys that nobody was really watching, but for whatever reason there isn't that same amount of "juice" surrounding this year's class. 

Take what happened last night with #2 pick Alex Sarr. While it's of course just Summer League and everything should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt, there's no denying this was one of the most shocking performances of the summer in all the wrong ways

Remember how crazy the entire world went last summer when Wemby struggled in his very first Summer League game? It led every talk show on the planet. The internet wouldn't shut up about it. Well here we have the #2 pick doing his best Tony Snell impression and for the most part, it's crickets.

Yet at the same time, compare that to what's happening with the 55th pick of this year's draft. Seems kind of backwards right? I'd say hitting on the #2 pick is a bit more important than hitting on the 55th, and through 3 games in Vegas things have certainly not been kind to Sarr:

6.7/6.7/3.0 on 19.5/11.8% splits in 30 minutes a night

Sure there are flashes of his defensive impact which is nice and all, but all I know is he should be thanking Bronny James every single day for taking all the focus away from how he's played so far in Vegas. Can you imagine what things would look like today if Bronny threw up a 0-15 (0-7) performance? I don't even want it to seem like I'm caping for Bronny or anything because it all comes with the territory, but we all know what the world would be doing with that. It would lead every talk show, every podcast, NBA Twitter would be going crazy etc. Shit, I bet there are some who didn't even know about Sarr's performance last night before clicking on this blog, and he was the #2 pick!

And look, it's beyond early. There are of course going to be growing pains for all these guys as they get acclimated to the NBA game, but as a Wizards fan, I could understand being a little nervous. At the very least you're hoping your #2 pick shows that he's a cut above Summer League talent, and that hasn't exactly happened yet for Sarr. At the same time, he's only 19 years old so it's not as if he's even close to being a finished product.

The good news is at a time like this it's important to remember the #1 rule of Summer League. When bad things happen, you can convince yourself they mean nothing because the games are fake. I'd suggest that's what Wizards fans do at this moment and just hope things look better moving forward.

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