I attended a few Kenner games yesterday. Let me start by saying that the challenge of learning the names of players I have not seen or recognize has never been greater. The long-time public address announcer passed away during the pandemic (not saying from Covid but during this time) and the current announcer feels compelled to provide play-by-play, analysis and conventional public address announcing into his "schtick". The end result is that I can't make out 3/4 of the things he says (OK, I'm getting old. Maybe that has a little something to do with this too.)
Game 1 saw Max square off against Trey Autry. Was hoping to see Garrett Johnson who is also on the Tombs roster but he was a no-show. Max had a few moments when he displayed some real intensity but for the most part, he was getting some exercise in and nothing more. Made a few shots, grabbed some rebounds. He did good-naturedly trash-talk Austin Ball, an incoming George Mason freshman who he was guarding to start the game. Looks like he has hit the weight room a fair amount.
Enjoyed BM's line about Trey not receiving the Kenner memo. He looked fundamentally sound, showed some intelligence on the court, was basically an anti-Kenner presence for this glorified pickup league. Would really like to see a lot more of his game but a very strong first impression.
This brings us to the second game which featured Darren Buchanan Jr on the DC Raiders against AWash who had none other than former Terp James Gist on its team. (For seemingly decades, it was former Terp Byron Mouton who could not kick the Kenner habit and went up against players half his age. Nice to see James carrying on that tradition.) As for DBJ, his bad game got worse and worse as he grew more frustrated as the game progressed. A missed dunk here, being blocked at the rim there, throwing up a few wild shots. The guy clearly looked like he could play even though nothing was going his way. Then down the stretch of a comeback, he made some plays. And then, he nailed a three point shot with just over 1 second left to send the game into overtime. (His team would lose in OT but the game's final 10 minutes were incredibly exciting.) Much like Victor Wembanyama coming off of a 2-13 summer league debut, I am sure that both Victor and Darren will be just fine.