You can shoot every bullet you brought and still lose the war. Adou Thiero found that out the hard way Monday night in Las Vegas.
The Lakers’ undrafted rookie forward — signed out of Arkansas after nobody called his name in June — posted 18 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 steals on a spotless 6-of-6 from the floor, 1-of-1 from deep, and 3-of-3 from the stripe in the NBA Summer League semifinals against the Golden State Warriors. A plus-eight in the box score. Not a single miss on the entire résumé. The kind of line that makes a 340-pound man in a recliner sit up and pay attention.
Didn’t matter. The Lakers were eliminated anyway.
Thiero did everything but grab the clipboard and draw up the final play. He was a problem going downhill, active hands on defense, cleaning glass on both ends — ten boards from a wing is the kind of thing that gets a roster spot in October if the right person is watching. Perfect shooting nights in Summer League don’t guarantee a thing, but they don’t hurt, either. The kid from Little Rock who transferred from Kentucky to Arkansas and turned himself into a pro prospect through sheer motor kept that motor running right through the last buzzer.
The Warriors, though, had more answers. That’s the thing about elimination games — one guy playing the game of his life still needs somebody else to hold the rope. The Lakers’ summer run ends in the semifinal round, and Thiero’s perfect night goes into the books as a consolation prize, the kind of performance that gets remembered more by the player than by anyone who watched it.
For a franchise that just spent the offseason retooling around Luka Dončić and LeBron James, finding an undrafted forward who can defend multiple positions, rebound, and not waste possessions is like finding a twenty-dollar bill in the couch cushion. You don’t throw it away. You see if it spends.
Thiero’s training camp invite just got a lot more interesting. The Lakers’ front office has decisions to make, and a 6-for-6 semifinal with three steals is the kind of tape that makes those decisions harder — in the best way.
