After ceding hosting duties to the Warriors in 2022, the Kings will once again host the California Classic Summer League this July, announcing today in a press release that the event will take place on Monday, July 3 and Wednesday, July 5.
The California Classic, which is held days before the league-wide Las Vegas Summer League, was launched by the Kings in 2018, and took place again in Sacramento in 2019 and 2021 before shifting to San Francisco in 2022.
In each of those four years, the Kings, Warriors, Lakers, and Heat were the only four teams to participate, but the event will expand to six teams this summer, and the two new additions are noteworthy: the Spurs and Hornets will also take part and are scheduled to face each other on July 3.
Given that San Antonio and Charlotte hold the top two picks in this year’s draft, we could see Victor Wembanyama and either Scoot Henderson or Brandon Miller make their Summer League debuts in Sacramento, though it’s entirely possible Wembanyama won’t end up playing at all in July, as John Hollinger of The Athletic tweets.
Each team will play two games — one on the Monday and one on the Wednesday. The California Classic will essentially serve as an opening act for the Vegas Summer League, which will run from July 7-17 and will feature all 30 NBA teams.
Really looking forward to summer league this year. I normally have burnout by now, at least the last few years, but I’m really looking forward to seeing some returning young guys, and obviously the new class
This is a very important summer league for the Heat, kind of like a couple of years ago, where they’re going to need to find a couple of more rotation pieces to replace guys they’re unfortunately losing, like Strus, Nnamdi, and probably Yurtseven…Really looking forward to seeing Jovic, who changed his body significantly, and looks exponentially more comfortable than I thought he would be by now, at the start of this year, even though he missed so much time with his back issue. He still has a lot of the same awareness issues, so he just needs to play a lot of basketball. Hopefully he can be ready to replace Strus, but I would have guessed he would need at least another year