There's not a player in the league who is more casually letting his NBA career slip by him than Nick Young. Someone needs to scare this guy straight, for his own good. At Summer League a few years back Young was more concerned with the women in attendance than the games and last year I wrote about his pregame hijinks. This year he was back with that same "Why bother putting real work into my game if I'm not going to play?" attitude that suggests his coaching staff gave up on babysitting him at some point over the last 12 months. I can't blame them. Tonight, when asked to complete a simple dribbling exercise (one ball in each hand, varying the height of the dribble based upon a coach's instruction) Young mostly ignored the instructions as his attention was otherwise occupied with an NCAA tournament being shown on the big screen. As three of his fellow guards worked hard through the drill, Young repeatedly messed up, losing his dribble and smirking at his own remedial failure. As the touch drills progressed, he simply checked out. He hoisted some jumpers and called it good. What a mess. 0 for 2 in 7 minutes. 1 foul, no points. A shame. Made worse by the fact that his snap jumper off the bounce can be a thing of beauty.
