If Darren Collison keeps this up, he won’t be at the butt end of very many pranks NBA locker rooms love to pull on rookies.  He won’t be at the butt end of the bench either.  He makes up for his lack of size with his super speedy play.  It looks as if everyone else is playing in slow motion when he’s on the court.  The guy can flat out run circles around any other 2009 NBA draftee except for maybe Dallas’ Rodrigue Beubois.  He and Beubois can duke it out for the quickest player in the draft, but I’m just happy the Hornets got what could be a Chris Paul-lite with the 21^st pick in the draft.  Now let me qualify that statement with defining a CP3-lite player.  Let’s take a look at the comparisons: incredible speed and quickness, great defense, team player, point guard with court vision who can actually pass, barely over 6’0” tall, around 50% shooting percentage, fantastic free throw shooter, slight threat from the 3-point arch, but teams are more worried about the mayhem these players can cause for defenses with their driving and dishing.  Here are Collison’s averages in the Vegas Summer League games that recently finished up:

The most impressive attribute about Collison is his consistency, and consistency is vital to being a reserve player in the NBA.  Some might say that fans can very easily jump the gun on judging a player’s potential based on summer league stats.  Sometimes this exception can be the case, but the rule is that good summer league play translates into good NBA play.  Players have been proving this for years.  Darko and Greg Oden didn’t have good summer leagues.  I don’t see either of those highly touted draft picks making a very big impact either.  If a player’s summer league play matches that of their college play (like Darren Collison), then their NBA game will follow suit 99.9% of the time.  Collison averaged 18.5 points per game while never scoring less than 18 points in any of the four games he played in.  He had at least a 50% shooting percentage in three games, and made 29 of 30 free throws.  His last game he only had 1 assist but his minutes were cut short due to a hard foul near the end of the first half (while still pouring in 18 points before he limped to the locker room).  He just got knocked to the ground pretty hard and will be fine in a day or two.  Despite all the similarities, the most important thing that Collison and Paul share is a heart and passion for the game that you can see in these little guys’ swagger when they step onto the court.

The Hornet’s draft day move to secure Marcus Thornton is looking like a good one.  The LSU standout played some solid defense, averaging over 2 steals a game, and put in over 20 points a game.  He’s not a rebounder but if he can score and play some defense then I’m not going to tell him he can’t help the Hornets next year.  Look for Thornton to steal some of Rasual Butler’s minutes early on.  If he performs well then Byron Scott will let him keep those minutes, but if not then it’s the dreaded D-League for Thornton.  With his recent play there is a better chance that he’ll be good enough to hold on to those minutes than the alternative.  In addition, Butler only averaged 11.2 points with 32 minutes of play and CP3 as his point guard every game so Thornton’s offensive game should be more suited to playing alongside Chris Paul.  Here’s a look at his summer league stats.

Related posts:

1. Hornets Offseason Progress Report
2. Who Will Start at Shooting Guard for the Hornets?
3. Hornets sign Ike Diogu: Why it’s so Important
4. How the Hornets can get Quality Depth without Spending any Money
5. State of the Hornets Address