Getty Golden State Warriors rookie Gui Santos handles the ball during a summer league bout with the New York Knicks.
Rare is the player who’s able to make an impression like Golden State Warriors draftee Gui Santos in a summer league debut. The Brazilian baller emerged from relative obscurity to land with the club at No. 55 overall in the 2022 NBA Draft, then promptly went bananas in his first-ever game on July 2.
In a contest that also featured the fourth overall pick in Kings forward Keegan Murray, there were multiple instances where Santos looked like the best player on the court. Over 25 minutes of action, he scored 23 points on 7-of-13 shooting while adding six boards, three thefts and a block.
Although the 20-year-old failed to recapture that magic in subsequent appearances, Dub Nation was nonetheless riled by what they saw from the Brasilia native.
Still, questions abound regarding his timeline toward becoming an actual contributor at the NBA level. And one league executive believes his transition to the American pro game will be more difficult than it would have been otherwise due to a recent departure from Golden State’s coaching staff.
GM: Santos Could Have Benefited From Barbosa’s Presence
When asked by Heavy.com’s Sean Deveney about when fans might see some fireworks out of Santos — or even him locking down a back-end bench spot — an Eastern Conference GM employed the infamous Bruno Caboclo line.
“He’s two years away,” the GM said. “The joke is always, he’s two years away from being two years away and that might be the case for him. But he’s 20, so he’s either NBA-ready in two years or they will move on.”
Nevertheless, the exec maintained that Santos has a chance to catch on.
“He can get there. He is fun to watch but he is like a lot of young players coming out of Brazil, very raw,” the GM opined. “He is not a crazy athlete and he has good ballhandling instincts but he needs high-level experience.”
Unfortunately, the one person perhaps most suited to ease Santos’ transition to the Association just left the Warriors for a new gig about 90 miles up I-80.
“Leandro Barbosa leaving that staff will hurt him,” he said. “I suspect Leandro will still help the kid, but that was a perfect connection to have on that team, a good line from the team to the player. But they’ll find a way to bring him along, they are maybe the best organization in the league when it comes to paying attention to every detail and making sure they get what they can from their assets.”
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Even when foreign players are given a soft landing with a fellow countryman or someone else they’re familiar with, it doesn’t quite ensure that they’ll be successful. Ultimately, they’re good enough to flourish or they’re not.
Case in point: former No. 5 overall pick Dante Exum.
After the Aussie was selected by the Jazz in 2014, the team eventually made the move to acquire Joe Ingles — Exum’s childhood hoops hero and another Down Under baller — to be his babysitter. When all was said and done, though, it was Ingles who became the better baller, and by a sizeable margin at that.
Exum (himself a prospect who was perpetually two years away), never developed a jump shot or tightened up his loose handles to make himself a viable player. He also fell prey to a series of devastating injuries, which hampered his ability to find any kind of consistency as a young pro.
So, after six seasons in the league with multiple teams, he went overseas, wrapping up his NBA run at just 26 years old with a career scoring average of 5.7 PPG and an effective field-goal percentage well south of 50.
Whether Santos will be able to avoid going down a similar path remains to be seen. But if he can’t keep pace with NBA athletes or bad luck besets him somehow, it may not matter if Barbosa is there or not. In other words, look at what’s happened to Caboclo over the years.
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Warriors Champ’s Exit Could ‘Hurt’ Rookie’s Development: NBA GM