Every summer, NBA executives travel to the desert and peer closely at what they want to tell themselves isn’t a mirage.
The Las Vegas summer league is where NBA will-bes, could-bes and has-beens unite for a series of scrutinized scrimmages where diamonds-in-the- rough sometimes glisten.
This past offseason, the Nuggets knew they needed a wing defender. There were options, be it with these summer-league players or with veteran free agents. But as the Denver execs and coaches watched their own summer- league team play, they wondered: Is the guy we need playing for us?
Dahntay Jones, a stock- dropping former first- rounder who went from the NBA to the NBA Developmental League, played wing defense out of a textbook this summer for the Nuggets.
Soon it got to the point where, as Denver’s co-summer league coach Chad Iske said, “We couldn’t not sign him.”
And now, Jones is signed to a one-year guaranteed contract with the Nuggets, who plan to utilize his defensive prowess in situational play this season.
“I took summer league seriously and played as hard as I could, and I got something great out of it,” said Jones, a Duke alum who is a 6-foot-6 guard/forward. “My role is to be defensive minded. . . . Defense (is) something I take pride in.”
It’s unclear just how much playing times Jones will get, but he enhances practices just by showing up.
Iske, a Nuggets assistant coach and advance scout, said Jones is an intellectual defender who easily grasps concepts. Throw in the fact that Jones is an amazing athlete and hustles like a college walk-on, and the result is a player who is difficult to keep on the bench.
“He plays every possession like it’s a playoff possession,” said Nuggets coach George Karl, who happily welcomed a defensive-minded player to his squad. “And there’s not many guys who have that commitment. . . . He’s searching for a new identity, and we might be the guys who get benefits of his recommitment to stay in the league.”
The Boston Celtics drafted Jones with the 20th pick in the 2003 draft, but they dealt him to the Memphis Grizzlies, where he played until 2007, occasionally rattling Denver’s Carmelo Anthony with his defense. In 2006-07, Jones averaged 7.5 points per game and signed with the Kings in the offseason. But he played just 25 games last season with Sacramento, was ultimately waived and ended up in Fort Wayne, Ind., playing for the Mad Ants of the D-League.
And then, this summer, he headed to Vegas.
“You never know exactly what to think,” Iske said. “You might have a little, ‘Why didn’t he make it the first time?’ You’ll always have question marks. But a lot of times, if a guy doesn’t make it the first time, it wakes him up and he sees what it’s like on the other side. I think he’s completely motivated to prove that he’s an NBA talent.”
Benjamin Hochman:
303-954-1294 or bhochman@denverpost.com
