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adidas Unrivaled Day 1: Brandon Ingram gets the best of Jaylen Brown, Ray Smith hurts his knee

Jaylen brown

(adidas)

CHICAGO -- Although the inagural adidas Unrivaled camp began at the Quest Multiplex in Chicago a day after Reebok and LeBron on Thursday, there were still plenty of talented players and coaches on display throughout the day.

The camp has a nice setup for the players in which they do two hours of drills in the morning, break for lunch, play two sessions of games in the afternoon, break for dinner and then close out the evening with two more sessions of games.

With each player running in two games a day, and getting plenty of time to rest, legs hopefully won’t look as tired as a typical camp setting as adidas Unrivaled gets into the weekend.

Brandon Ingram shines in matchup with Jaylen Brown: Camp games opened on Thursday with an intriguing matchup of elite small forwards as North Carolina native Brandon Ingram and his team matched up against Georgia native Jaylen Brown and his squad.

The two top-25 Class of 2015 prospects rarely defended each other, but the long and lanky 6-foot-8 Ingram soundly outplayed the No. 3 ranked Brown as Ingram’s team won in a romp.

Playing in front of head coaches like Kentucky’s John Calipari, Florida’s Billy Donovan, North Carolina State’s Mark Gottfried and a host of other high-major assistant coaches, Ingram went 8-for-9 from the field as he confidently scored from all three levels of the floor.

Ingram especially did damage from the left side of the floor, as he scored through traffic, hit a mid-range jumper off of a curl and also knocked in a three-pointer. The knock on Ingram has always been his willingness to play with and against physicality, but a second-half post-up against a smaller opponent that led to a dunk was refreshing to see.

Brown, on the other hand, didn’t play well but he wasn’t exactly bad either. The 6-foot-7 power wing was 2-for-10 from the field with four turnovers, but he played an okay overall floor game that included getting his big men involved on post touches, making passes up the floor to push tempo and also operating out of the mid-post when he realized his shot wasn’t falling.

It didn’t help Brown’s cause that the rest of his team came out flat, either.

Ingram is the story, though. He’s playing with a lot of confidence right now and seems looser than he was in the spring. Ingram told NBCSports.com that Kentucky and Kansas have recently shown interest while Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State and Louisville also remain active with scholarship offers and interest. Ingram said he would like to see the campuses of the aforementioned schools and I’ll have more on his recruitment later.

Ray Smith goes down with a concerning knee injury: July was going to be a very big showcase for recent top-10 Class of 2015 small forward Ray Smith. The Las Vegas native recently vaulted into five-star status as the bluebloods of college basketball were trailing his every move in Chicago.

But the thoughts of college recruiting, and basketball in general, were put on hold during the night session of games on Thursday when the 6-foot-7 Smith went down untouched while clutching his knee.

While working an in-and-out dribble to go past a defender, Smith planted his foot and his knee just gave way as he lost the ball and instantly collapsed to the ground. The injury looked scary, and Smith had to be carried off the floor and into the back-room medical area, but adidas officials told NBCSports.com that they were cautiously optimistic that the injury wasn’t serious.

For his part, Smith took to Twitter to try to stay positive after the injury, but I would be surprised if he played at the rest of the Unrivaled camp.

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You hate to see any player get hurt and hopefully Smith can get healthy and return to playing basketball soon.

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