Edmond Sumner could be a perfect insurance policy for the Indiana Pacers.
The Indiana Pacers took a gamble in the second round of the 2017 NBA Draft when they traded for the 52nd overall pick to select Edmond Sumner, an explosive guard from Xavier University. Sumner showed great promise while he was in college, averaging 14.3 points, 4.8 assists, and 4.1 rebounds per game on a very good Xavier team during his Junior campaign for the Musketeers.
However, Sumner blew out his ACL and had to miss the final portion of the 2016-2017 college season. Despite the injury, Sumner decided to forgo his senior year of school and declare for the NBA Draft. Although it was a risk to draft someone coming off of a major knee injury, the Pacers decided Sumner’s potential upside was worth taking a chance on and sent cash considerations to the New Orleans Pelicans in order to draft him.
Flash forward to the 2017-2018 NBA season, and Sumner’s potential was still hazy as the year went along. On the entire season, Sumner only appeared in one NBA game and played for a total of two minutes. There is essentially no useful information to gather from that small a sample size, so Sumner’s value to the Indiana Pacers was still a question mark going into this summer’s offseason.
Sumner did get some playing time in the G-League last season where he looked solid (7.2 points, 2.4 assists, 2.4 rebounds), but those numbers were only across the span of 14 total games due to time missed rehabbing the ACL injury. The rookie did get some healthy playing time in the 2018 Summer League where he played well (11.3 points, 3.3 assists, 2 rebounds), but it’s difficult to really gauge a player’s effectiveness in that setting. Sumner even missed one Summer League game with knee soreness, which was slightly concerning given his injury from the season prior.
Then came the first game of the Pacers’ preseason schedule on Thursday night against the formidable Houston Rockets. With Tyreke Evans missing the contest after being a game-time decision, Edmond Sumner was the guy that head coach Nate McMillan decided to call upon to fill the vacant backup shooting guard role. With little expectation for how he would perform, Sumner stepped up big time, putting up 13 points on 75% shooting in 19 minutes. He was a +18 when he was on the court, which was second only to TJ Leaf’s +25. He even contributed on the defensive end, adding a couple of steals and one block.
The stats looked good, but Sumner definitely passed the eye-test Thursday night as well. He looked to have regained the explosiveness he had prior to his ACL tear at Xavier. Sumner was blowing by guys on the baseline for dunks, throwing up acrobatic layups, and even went right into a future hall of famer, Chris Paul, for an impressive bucket. Sumner looked so good in this contest that Houston’s color commentator, the legendary Clyde Drexler, said that Sumner looked like a young Paul George. While that’s obviously a very premature (and painful) comparison, it shows that Sumner was playing with a level of competence that was worthy of high praise.
Sumner might not ever be a sharpshooter from distance (he missed his only attempt Thursday, shot 25% from behind the arc in the G-League, and 29% in college), but he looks to have a skill set that could lead to him being a strong two-way player that’s able to get to the rim and create some shots.
Despite how good Sumner looked against the Rockets, it’s important to not get too high on a player based on just one game of the preseason. It is, however, encouraging to see that Sumner looks 100% healthy and hasn’t seemed to have missed a step from his glory days at Xavier before he got hurt. He’s also a bit buried on the Pacers’ depth chart, as Tyreke Evans should be healthy enough to jump back into the rotation soon, but Sumner showed that, if necessary, he could be a great insurance policy for the Pacers to utilize if any future injury concerns pop up for the guards ahead of him in the rotation (Evans himself has missed 30-57 games each of the last three seasons). It’s possible that McMillan even has Sumner currently ahead of promising rookie guard Aaron Holiday at the moment considering that Sumner got 19 minutes of action Thursday night while Holiday only saw six minutes of fourth quarter action.
Only time will tell how Edmond Sumner’s time in Indiana ultimately goes, but the future for him looks brighter now than it’s ever looked. Clearly, it is very early in the 2018-2019 NBA campaign, way too early to really have a grip on what type of player he might grow into this season. But it’s now apparent that he’s one of the most promising young prospects that the Indiana Pacers currently have on their payroll. If Sumner starts to make some noise in the coming days, don’t say you weren’t warned.