The NBA Summer League will host a rematch of previous Tennessee practice court battles on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas.
At 4:00 p.m. ET, Kennedy Chandler’s Houston Rockets will take on Zakai Zeigler and Chaz Lanier with the Detroit Pistons in both teams’ second league game.
While Lanier and Chandler didn’t spend any time together in Knoxville, Chandler and Zeigler did. Both players were part of Tennessee’s 2021 signing class and spent their freshman seasons together in Knoxville.
Zeigler’s fierce practice competition against Chandler, a Top 11 player in the recruiting class, is what prompted head coach Rick Barnes to begin working in a role for Zeigler despite him being a late addition to the class.
“(Zeigler) and Kennedy were going at it the first practice,” VFL Josiah-Jordan James recalled during the Zakai Zeigler Bet on Me documentary. “Zakai scored, like, three or four straight buckets. Was picking Kennedy up 94 feet. And he was just a terror on both ends of the floor. And I remember, vividly, shot after shot, defensive stop after defensive stop.”
Now, four years later, we’ll see the two back in competition again on Sunday afternoon.
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In Chandler’s first summer league contest with the Houston Rockets on Friday, the former Vol dazzled. He recorded 22 points in 22 minutes off the bench, figuring out how to get to the free-throw line and find extra points there. He also recorded five rebounds and three assists.
Zeigler and Lanier, meanwhile, made their NBA Summer League debuts on Friday. The former teammates in Knoxville combined for 18 points, with Lanier earning 10 and Zeigler tallying eight.
Lanier made four of his 11 attempts, including 2-of-7 from three-point range, to go along with two rebounds, four assists, one steal, and one block. Zeigler, on the other hand, recorded his points on 2-of-4 shooting with both makes coming from behind the arc.
Considering both Zeigler and Chandler led their teams in bench minutes from the point guard spot, it seems highly likely that we’ll see plenty of competition between the two former teammates on the court in Sin City.
KC in his Rockets Summer League debut:
22 PTS / 5 REB / 3 AST / 22 MINpic.twitter.com/3bWLLvNOfd
— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) July 12, 2025
