Quiz: NBA Summer League player or Louis L’Amour character?

The NBA Summer League is a chance for players you’ve never heard of to make a name for themselves. Can you pick those names from a list of characters from Louis L’Amour books?

Louis L’Amour is among America’s most prolific writers, author of 89 novels, 14 collections of short stories and two other non-fiction books He is truly a titan of genre fiction, winner of the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his cultural contributions. Many of his works have been adapted for television and movies, spun around the rich worlds he created. With such a lengthy catalog he’s created an enormous list of fictional characters, many with made-up names lovingly stylized in the fashion of the Western genre he was so fond of.

The NBA Summer League is an orientation for the future stars we’ve been ogling throughout the past college season, but also a two-week audition for players on the fringes of the national radar, trying to make themselves into a household name. As such, summer league has an equally lengthy list of anonymous characters, many with names that would be at completely at home on the pages of one of L’Amour’s stories.

The list of 19 names below is a mix of fictional L’Amour characters and actual players holding down rosters spots for a team in one of the NBA’s summer leagues — Salt Lake City, Northern California and the signature event in Las Vegas. If you can correctly identify 10 or more, you get an endless well of self-satisfaction. Good luck!

1. Tanner McGrew

2. Haywood Highsmith

3. Milton Doyle

4. Bendigo Shafter

5. Rafe Caradec

6. Canyon Barry

7. Bennie Boatwright

8. Dusty Hannahs

9. Alton Burwick

10. Lance Kilkenny

11. Will Cherry

12. Mitchell Creek