What: Charlotte Hornets (3-0) vs San Antonio Spurs (3-0)
When: 7:00pm Eastern
Where: Thomas & Mack Center; Las Vegas, NV
How to watch: ESPN
This game is practically a quarterfinal game. Both the Hornets and the Spurs are 3-0 heading into the final scheduled game of their respective summer league schedules. The top four teams at the end of this round will advance to a single elimination tournament to determine the summer league champion. There are three teams that currently sit at 4-0 already and another five at 3-0. The first tiebreaker is quarters won. The Hornets currently hold that tiebreaker over the rest of the 3-0 teams, so a win and a couple of quarters won should be enough to keep the Hornets in the top four.
As luck would have it, they have a tough opponent for this game, which is kind of fitting given the stakes. The appeal of this matchup was supposed to be a meeting between second overall pick Dylan Harper and fourth overall pick Kon Knueppel. Harper has been shut down for summer league, and I think it’s 50/50 that Knueppel gets the same treatment.
But Harper isn’t even the player to watch out for, apparently. David Jones-Garcia has led the Spurs in scoring all three games and is averaging 24.3 points and 4 assists per game on 58.7% shooting from the field and 63.1% shooting from three. He went undrafted in 2024 and spent most of last season with the Mexico City Capitanes in the G League after being released by the Jazz twice. He has seemingly played his way into an NBA contract one way or another.
He’s been the only consistent offensive performer with the rest of the team oscillating in production. The Spurs other lottery pick, Carter Bryant, has made some waves with a few defensive possessions but has scored 12 total points on 3-of-24 shooting from the field and 1-of-12 shooting from three.
The Hornets are going to start shutting players down, but it’d be cool to see them win this game and earn a trophy for the collection by winning summer league.
