LAS VEGAS — Adou Thiero didn’t have the luxury of playing in the NBA Summer League a year ago, missing out on the opportunity to get his feet wet in the smoldering 110-degree heat of the Las Vegas strip before beginning his rookie season.
Nursing a knee injury suffered at Arkansas before the Lakers selected him in the second round of the 2025 NBA Draft, Thiero missed sat out Summer League while recovering. This year, alongside 2026 first-round draft pick Cameron Carr, Thiero is receiving the full-fledged summer experience. First, he played in two of three California Classic games in San Francisco. On Friday night, he’ll help lead the Lakers into their Las Vegas Summer League opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.
“I feel like we’ve just been pushing each other and I’m helping him out with some of the tips I found out and everything,” Thiero said Thursday of playing with Carr, who the Lakers selected 24th overall after moving up one spot in a draft-night trade with the New York Knicks. “Letting him know those things early. I didn’t really have someone to tell me that during Summer League (last year). I wasn’t playing Summer League. So just trying to let him know some of the stuff that I learned throughout last year, just trying to give him some of those thoughts.”
Carr said Thiero has been someone he can lean on to ask questions, picking the brain of a player who appeared in 25 regular-season games and six playoff games as a rookie. He also mentioned two-way contract guard Chris Manon as an influence, as well as 30-year-old Jon Elmore – who Carr called a “G-League legend” – as Summer League teammates who gave influenced him so ffar.
“I’m a skinnier guard coming into a physical league, and so they get to be a part of it and see what I’m going through, and I can just ask them questions and learn from them,” Carr said. “(I want to) take as much as I can away from them, take from their strengths.”
Carr, a 21-year-old guard out of Baylor, has started hot this summer, recording 16.7 points and 3.7 rebounds per game on 45% shooting from the field, while making 40.9% of his looks from 3-point range at the California Classic.
“I feel like it was a good way to get rhythm and see how to play together as guys, and just mold our team together well,” Carr said. “It was a good warmup for us.”
Carr surged onto the NBA draft lottery radar during his breakout redshirt sophomore season at Baylor, using his lanky attributes (6-foot-5 with a 7-1 wingspan) to be disruptive on both sides of the ball. Lakers Summer League coach Ty Abbott said there has to be a balance between giving Carr the green light to make explosive plays while also teaching the rookie how to avoid bad habits on the court.
“In this setting, you want to give him opportunity to play confident and kind of play free, but at the same time you put him in situations that he’s going to be in when he’s with the Lakers and he’s coming off of the bench or playing spot minutes,” Abbott said. “They kind of help him understand that, all right, so this is a time for confidence and building that confidence and trying to get some momentum going in the training camp for them.”
Thiero missed the final California Classic game on Monday – the Lakers won, going 2-1 in their three games in San Francisco – with a wrist injury. Carr left the final game at Chase Center against the San Antonio Spurs early with an infected toe, the rookie wing said. Abbott said both prospects, however, should be good to go for Friday’s opener after participating in practice on Thursday morning.
Abbott didn’t make any promises about any minutes usage for Thiero, Carr, or Manon, nor their availability for the remaining Summer League slate, calling the process a “read and react” situation for each of the team’s players. Manon is known for his defensive acumen, but he showed offensive development during the California Classic, scoring 24 points on Monday.
Along with Manon, who is entering his second season on a two-way contract, the Lakers recent two-way signees Peter Suder and AK Okereke are also set to play Friday against the Thunder.
NOTES
The Lakers practiced in a hotel ballroom on Thursday, testing out a potential court design featuring the team’s alternate logo at center court with a purple gradient heavily featured along with grey and yellow tones. …
Lakers forward Jarred Vanderbilt entered the ballroom after practice ended, working with a trainer off to the side, the only non-Summer League Lakers player seen in Las Vegas so far.