LAS VEGAS—A ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ couple getting a photo with Norman Powell’s family. A man in a bear costume, dancing in the stands while wearing a Memphis Grizzlies jersey. An Australian “diehard” flying 17 hours to get a close look at the NBA’s next generation of stars.
You meet all kinds of fans at Summer League in Las Vegas, but the common denominator is their extreme love of basketball.
Summer League is where NBA teams gather for 10 days every July for the last two decades. Fans get their first look at their team’s top prospects after the NBA draft. Second-year players are building on their rookie seasons while journeymen look to catch the eyes of front offices and earn NBA contracts.Â
It’s also where the NBA stars come out to support their team, mixed with former players in every direction.
“If you’re not here, you missed out,†said Warren LeGarie, co-founder of the Vegas Summer League. “You can walk on the concourse, walk next to Danny Ainge or walk next to Mr. (Steve) Ballmer from the Clippers ... you can take your own personal story of people you’ve met or saw, and you’re the first on the block.â€
Norm Powell’s family
David Pyper and Karen Purvis, long-time ¸é²¹±è³Ù´Ç°ù²õÌýseason ticket holders at Scotiabank Arena, shared a few of their personal stories with the Star while standing in line for the Raptors’ first game last week at Thomas and Mack Center.
Pyper said he’s made about seven trips to Vegas with Purvis for Summer League over the last decade. They remember being among the first to watch Fred VanVleet in a Raptors uniform in 2016 as an undrafted rookie. A year prior, they watched Norman Powell’s debut with ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ in Vegas.Â
David Pyper and Karen Purvis stand in line outside the Cox Pavilion arena waiting to get into the Raptors’ first NBA Summer League game in Las Vegas on July 13.
Libaan Osman / ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ StarPurvis bought a Powell jersey because she had seen him play before he was drafted. She wore it to the game and was stopped by Powell’s family who asked if they could take her photo. Â
“We thought they were from ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, but there was a whole family and I had his jersey on and his mother, his sister all came up taking photos of me with a Powell jersey on,†Purvis said.
Dancing bear
It’s tough to miss Michael Lozada sitting in the stands of the Thomas and Mack Center. He’s the man in the bear costume wearing Steven Adams’s Memphis Grizzlies jersey, dancing on the jumbotron. Fans might be laughing at what Lozada is wearing, but he’s having the time of his life watching basketball.
“I don’t wear this around all day, just here,†Lozada said.
The 30-year-old got his bear suit in college from a friend who sold it to him for $100. Lozada didn’t know what he’d use it for, but now the costume has become part of his Summer League tradition, wearing it every year since 2021.
His outfit has saw him appear on ESPN multiple times, even getting the attention of former Grizzlies player Steven Adams on Twitter.
my full appearance on ESPN
— Jeb (Steven Adam's Stunt Double) (@ActuallyJebBush)
“I’ve definitely had some people say it’s cringe or like silly to be a grown man doing this, which I think is fair criticism but I don’t take it too seriously,” Lozada said.
“I think Summer League is the perfect place to come out and have fun and be a little ridiculous.â€
ESPN recognizing the bear drip
— Jeb (Steven Adam's Stunt Double) (@ActuallyJebBush)
Over the years, Lozada has run into NBA legends like Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He remembers running into NBA player Isaiah Hartenstein about five times in the hotel he was staying at which became a running joke between them.
Lozada has been coming since 2021 with friends who met online talking basketball, playing fantasy basketball and through NBA TopShot. They’ve used Summer League as the neutral meetup spot to get together and hang out once a year.
“People are having kids and growing up, but it’s really a good group of people who just love basketball and we kind of bonded over that and they come from all around the world,†Lozada said.
Trip from Down Under
J.J Smith probably travelled one of the longest distances to watch a Summer League game, flying in from Sydney, Australia. The 43-year-old described the 17-hour flight to Vegas as “painful†and “devastating†but Smith will do whatever it takes to watch basketball.
“I’m just a basketball diehard, so I got season tickets for the Sydney Kings in the NBL. I go to every game. And any time that I’m coming home in July to visit my family, I always stop on the way and do some sporting events and this has been a staple.â€
Smith used to live in Maine and more than two decades ago, he attended the Reebok Pro Summer League in Boston, which featured a few NBA teams and top players in the early 2000s. He remembers watching Monty Mack — a well-known basketball star at the University of Massachusetts, where Smith went to school — play for the Celtics.
After moving to Australia 15 years ago, Smith didn’t have a reason to travel and watch basketball in the U.S. That’s until he connected with the same basketball friend online group as Lozada and started making the Vegas trip the last three years.
Smith’s favourite interaction at Summer League came last year with Australian-born NBA player Joe Ingles.
J.J. Smith, middle, with Australian NBA player Joe Ingles (right) at last year’s Summer League in Las Vegas.Â
Supplied photo“It’s fun seeing players that everybody around my community is such a huge fan of,” Smith said. “It’s the same with all the young Aussies that are coming up, or any international player who’s just played in Australia for a year. We get a lot of top quality guys that come down.
“It’s fun to see them succeeding halfway around the world, and it’s fun to see Joe still on a roster, still shooting threes.â€
Summer League history
The NBA has held Summer League in Vegas since 2018. But the league first debuted in 2004 when LeGarie and co-founder Albert Hall hosted six NBA teams on the campus of the University of Las Vegas to bring NBA personnel together.Â
In 2007, the NBA came on board after Hall got Toshiba as a sponsor and the league saw the vision for the annual event.
LeGarie remembers the 2010 Summer League, when they shut down the doors of Cox Pavilion for rookie John Wall’s game against Jeremy Lin, two years before Linsanity. Both started their pro careers in Vegas.
It’s why LeGarie tells anyone that if you want to be the first to see the stars of tomorrow, come see them today in Vegas.Â
“We’ve always catered to the crazies. We want people who live and breathe basketball,†LeGarie said. “In many cases, a lot of the fans that come here really can’t afford an NBA game now because of the expense.â€
Tickets to watch a full day of Summer League games are $45 for adults and $35 for kids and seniors. Cheap hotel prices in Vegas mixed with the chance to gamble and run into some of your favourite NBA players has drawn hundreds of thousands of fans.
LeGarie recalls getting angry emails from fans in the first year of Summer League when boxscores of the games weren’t updated quickly online.Â
“Once we saw that, we knew we were in crazy land,” LeGarie said. “These are the real genuine hardcore fans who live and breathe this and that’s what Summer League is. It’s for those fans to be there for the first story of someone’s future.â€
They never anticipated Summer League to get this big, but with back-to-back years of fans filling up the seats to watch San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama and now Bronny James — it certainly has.Â
Summer League in Vegas wraps up with a championship game Monday night.
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