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LAS VEGAS -- I spent almost four days here, which is equivalent to 17 days anywhere else ...

5 Reasons summer league matters

5. Pre-preseason training for rookies. Kevin Love had just finished a 18-point, 17-rebound performance for the Timberwolves in their 95-93 loss Wednesday against the Lakers. "You've got to take it with a grain of salt,'' he said of playing in the summer league. "When you start playing next year in the regular season, it's going to be two levels up from here.''

It's always hard to know what to make of the performances at summer league, where only a few players from each team will be playing in the NBA next season. Golden State rookie Marco Belinelli was the hit of this event last year with an opening 37-point game, but during the ensuing season he managed just 2.9 points in 33 games. Donte' Greene, the No. 28 pick in last month's draft, made the game look easy when he exploded for 40 points in his pro opener with Houston this week, but most people -- including the Rockets -- figure that he'll struggle to earn minutes as a 19-year-old rookie in the regular season.

Summer league forces rookies like Love and O.J. Mayo to get over the ludicrous hype of last month's draft and to launch into the rhythmic drudgery of the NBA season -- of practices, back-to-back games and coaches preaching the nuances of defensive rotations and other crucial details that separate the NBA from the NCAA. As well as the 6-foot-10 Love played offensively and on the boards Wednesday, he had trouble stopping his former UCLA teammate, the 6-9 Lorenzo Mata-Real, in the post at the end of the game.

"The biggest thing I need to improve is my defense,'' Love said. "I have to do it if I'm going to play alongside Al Jefferson.''

Love was adapting to the speed of NBA offenses -- "You've got to be able to get up the floor in the first four seconds,'' he said -- the size of the opponents and the professional mentality.

"In the NCAA tournament, you're playing for your school, playing for your passion,'' he said. "Out here, you're kind of playing for a paycheck a little bit."

But he's trying not to do that. "I'm just playing, chasing a game, not chasing the money, and just going after it," he said.

The point of this event for rookies like Love is not to be satisfied with the artificial numbers on the stat sheet. It's about gauging themselves for the season ahead. Love has lost 15 pounds since his freshman season, but he realizes he has a lot more to work away.

"The biggest thing now is just the wind and the body fat,'' he said. "I want to get to under 10 [percent body fat]. I'm about 12 or 11.5 percent right now. I was 15 to 16 percent [last season], so that's significant, being down that much. I'm going to hire either a nutritionist or a chef just to write it off on my taxes. I'm learning all the different stuff, even at 19, about the accountants and the things you can write off.''

4. Exposure for NBA veterans. Here and there are players with guaranteed contracts who come to summer league for a variety of reasons. In the case of Knicks point guard Nate Robinson, he wanted to begin learning coach Mike D'Antoni's fast-break offense.

"I've been playing different styles each of my three years in the NBA and now for the fourth one,'' said Robinson, who will be playing for his third NBA coach. "I'm just trying to get a head start on everything and see how it feels to play in this type of basketball up and down the floor.''

Most of the 21 rosters were filled with rookies or second-year pros. But free agents like 31-year-old Robert (Tractor) Traylor (playing for Cleveland), 27-year-old Dahntay Jones (Denver) and 28-year-old Keith McLeod (Dallas) were here trying to work their way back into the NBA. Andray Blatche, the Wizards' talented, 21-year-old big man, couldn't afford to pass up the minutes or the opportunity to lead his team for these couple of weeks.

Robinson is going to be a Sixth Man Award candidate in D'Antoni's offense, based on the speed, strength and instincts for playing in the open floor that he showed this week. He had no issues with playing in this minor-league format after three years in the NBA.

"It gives you a feel of the NBA, what it's going to be like,'' he said. "Every guy in here is not as good as guys in the NBA, but everybody here is trying to get a job. So they're going to play their heart out. If we've got guys who play hard and are competitive, that's going to bring the competitiveness out of you and you're going to play hard and get ready for the upcoming season.

"[At summer league] you'll never see Chris Paul, Raymond Felton or other [top] guys who came into the league when I came in. But I just came for a good sweat, play a few games, and it ain't going to hurt none.''

3. Establish the NBA's new offseason headquarters. Eleven teams based their summer minicamps here, with more expected to do the same next year. They've discovered -- to no one's surprise -- that it's easier to persuade veterans to attend summer workouts when their expenses are being paid to come to Vegas.

The growth of this summer league has also helped win acceptance for Las Vegas as a potential home for an NBA franchise. The more time that the league spends here, the more it will understand a market that used to frighten it.

2. One-stop shopping for foreign clubs. More than 40 teams from at least a dozen foreign countries attended summer league in search of young talent that isn't quite talented enough for the NBA. "This is invaluable,'' said Walter Szczerbiak, father to Wally, the Cavaliers' well-known shooter. "You can see the progress of a lot of players, see how hard they play.''

As an expatriate American forward, Szczerbiak played 11 years in Europe while becoming one of the great players in Spain during a seven-year run with Real Madrid through 1980. Since 1986, he has been a talent evaluator and "official U.S. representative'' for the Spanish ACB, which is the world's finest national league outside the NBA. I've seen Szczerbiak scouting the summer leagues here and in Boston for years, and he has no easy job.

"It takes a lot of concentration because I have to write something on every single player,'' he said. "This is a hard event because there are 21 teams. My ideal number is to see everybody three times, but I might not be able to do that here because they use two different gyms.''

Among his proudest summer-league finds were center Nate Huffman, who had a championship career in Israel, and Chandler Thompson, who had a long career in the ACB.

"This is the place to come,'' Szczerbiak said. "Where else can you see so many players in one place who have the talent level to play in a league like the ACB?''

1. Find sparring partners for USA Basketball. It's a small marketing gimmick, but the two best young players in Vegas -- as judged by an NBA panel -- will be invited to join the team that will practice against the United States later this month as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Jason Kidd prepare for the Olympics in China. Love and Jerryd Bayless are among the early favorites.