There’s one goal for returning players at the Summer League: Prove that you are too good to be there and land a spot on an NBA roster. The players will never say it out loud, but you have to imagine that was Zyon Pullin’s goal in his second trip to Vegas with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Over the five Summer League games, Pullin proved he belonged, averaging 21 points, 7.8 assists, and 4.6 rebounds in 30 minutes per game.
Pullin produced good counting stats. However, the advanced data better illustrated his impact. He had a true shooting percentage of 68.7% and a 2.6 assist/turnover ratio.
Summer League film and numbers can be hard to decipher. Just taking a glance at recent seasons’ traditional stat leaders, it’s difficult to find a correlation between Summer League success and NBA impact. However, it can help players find more opportunities after the team leaves Vegas.
Pullin’s case is that he dominated the G-League and maintained success in Summer League. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves still have one more roster spot open, at minimum.
The Timberwolves have filled out their guard room more than in past seasons with the trade for LaMelo Ball and re-signing Ayo Dosunmu and Bones Hyland. However, Pullin has shown us enough to be more than deserving of a standard NBA deal.
The journey from the bottom up is nothing new for Pullin. He was an unranked prospect as a high school player in Pleasant Hill, Calif., near San Francisco, who had to prove himself at the mid-major level.
Zyon Pullin committed to the University of California, Riverside, and went on to have a successful four-year career with the Highlanders. However, his game still needed refining. He was granted an extra season of eligibility due to COVID-19, and elected to play high-major hoops for one season under Todd Golden and alongside Walter Clayton Jr. at the University of Florida.
Pullin ultimately had five impactful seasons of college ball. He averaged 12.8 points and 3.9 assists, shooting 46% from the field and 37.8% from three with a true shooting of 55.4%. Still, it was not good enough to show up on draft radars. Pullin would ultimately have to prove himself worthy of the next level.
After going undrafted, Pullin has spent his entire post-collegiate career bouncing around the G-League. He spent a season with the Miami Heat and Memphis Grizzlies affiliates before finding a home with the Iowa Wolves last season.
In Iowa this year, Zyon Pullin averaged 25.4 points and 6.3 assists, shooting 58% from the field and 52.7% from three across 22 games with a true shooting of 75.7%.
Pullin’s G-League numbers were ridiculous for a guard. The Wolves released Johnny Juzang and gave Jules Bernard the two-way spot until Pullin was healthy. Once Pullin returned from his injury, the Timberwolves officially made Pullin part of the roster on their final two-way contract from March 1st through the rest of the season.
Despite posting gaudy numbers in the G-League, Pullin maintained perspective in his approach to the Summer League, even as he proved he was better than his competition in Vegas.
“Just making the right play, whatever that may be,” said Pullin after his third Summer League game. “I may have a high-assist game, I may have a high-scoring game, I may have a high-rebounding game.”
It was the right approach for Pullin, who demonstrated his composure on the court.
Pullin, 6’4”, 206 lbs, thrives because he’s unfazed inside the arc. He lives in the paint, using his live dribble to maneuver and play physically against his defensive matchup. That was evident in Pullin’s play with the Iowa Wolves last season, where 12.5 of his 25.4 points per game came in the paint. Most of the other players who were that effective in the paint were players drastically larger than him.
There was no drop-off for Pullin within this play style in Summer League. He confidently operated inside the arc off the dribble as Minnesota’s primary scoring and ball-handling option, scored with efficiency, and didn’t turn the ball over much relative to his usage.
Much of the uncertainty with Pullin’s game revolves around his openness to attempting more threes.
In Pullin’s five seasons of collegiate basketball, he only averaged two three-point attempts per game in 30 minutes per game, and had a three-point attempt rate of .211. Meaning 21.1% of his field-goal attempts in his 142 games played were threes.
That trend continued for Pullin in the G-League. Over 56 G-League games with the Iowa Wolves, Sioux City Skyforce, and Memphis Hustle, Pullin has averaged 2.9 threes per game and a three-point rate of .240. That’s a 0.9 attempt improvement from his time in college, but his three-point rate decreased by 2.9%.
Pullin has always been highly efficient from three-point range in college and in the G League. Much of it comes down to a greater willingness to take those three-point shots. It doesn’t help that much of his three-point shooting has come off the dribble, which could further complicate his role in an NBA rotation.
Ultimately, though, Pullin has a real chance to be a back-end rotation or even reserve depth player for the Timberwolves.
As Minnesota’s draft assets have continued to be depleted, the cap apron era has placed greater emphasis on low-cost, rotational players. Therefore, there is a good chance that Zyon Pullin could end up as a sneaky value add and development piece for the Timberwolves moving forward.
