My pick for the Warrior who will jump off the page this Summer League is Taran Armstrong, although my Florida alum superfan and sometimes-co-host on the live chats, Bruce Maro, would likely pick his guy Will Richard.
I’ve been spending time in Santa Cruz this year for personal reasons, so a couple times, I dropped by Kaiser Permanente Arena to do pregame with Coach Nicholas Kerr.
The most recent visit was the night after he made this incredibly creative between-the-legs pass from under the hoop to Javon Johnson for a three in the corner:
Good thing Johnson made that, otherwise this highlight might not even be on the Interwebs!
In fact, I didn’t even know that play happened except that it came up in conversation with Kevin Danna, the voice you hear on that highlight, who was there for Kerr’s pregame in Santa Cruz the next night with me, as he always is.
The former G League head coach, who will now join his dad Steve Kerr’s staff up in Golden State, Nick felt Armstrong’s game was a better fit than Australia’s slower-paced and less athletic NBL:
He’s integrated to our group really seamlessly. Our league is so much faster than Australia and I think it suits him better. He’s really good in transition. He’s good with more space to play with. He makes all of the ball screen reads pretty easily, so he’s been great for us.
Here’s some workout footage:
And at a recent Summer League Media Day podium visit, Taran said he gained 17 pounds:
I’ve been here the whole time, pretty much working out, on-court, off-court. Yeah, I’ve definitely added muscle. I think I’m up maybe like 17 pounds
Dalton Johnson of NBCSBA tweeted it as “17 pounds of muscle.” Like, I don’t mean to nitpick and what do I know about anatomy and nutrition — btw kudos to Johnson for asking the question that resulted in the new information, to which Dalton can literally be heard saying, “Okay, wow,” after Armstrong said that — but 17 lbs. of combined muscle and/or fat and/or otherwise human tissue is probably close enough to pure muscle. I know “17 pounds of muscle” does sound a bit far-fetched to anyone you ask on the street while looking at a pic of Taran in a SCW uniform. Maybe five to nine pounds is more easily acceptable? I get that.
Anyways, he was listed previously (on NBA.com) as 6’5” and 190 lbs., so now he’s probably at 207 lbs. right now. From an eye test perspective in that you’d consider Armstrong “skinny” if you saw him that night in Santa Cruz, that’s tremendous news. That’s more an NBA body than the 190-lb. version, for sure.
Below the paywall are the full transcripts from Nick and Taran. The Armstrong Q&A also includes interviews with Jaden Shackelford, who is already a three-year vet of Summer Leagues and looks to take a leadership role on this fourth iteration with GSW, and Lainn Wilson, who was named to replace Nick as the SCW head coach this year. I’ll unlock them once I post the next article.
Be sure to join us on the livestream in an hour from this post for the first game of the California Classic which will overlap into another livechat Watch Party of the Valkyries…