Summer signings, round 16

- Bracey Wright and his Bengali cats are to sign with DKV Joventut Badalona in Spain, where he'll be joined by Pops Mensah-Bonsu. Pops's status was up in the air for a while, as he exercised a clause in his contract that allowed him to attempt to find some NBA work. But there wasn't any, and so Pops will return to Joventut, a broken man. Maybe.

- The point guard crop got another touch weaker, as Dan Dickau signed with Avellino in Italy. (I suppose an altternative title for this post would be "Dick Out!". Ah well, too late now.) Is this the end of Dickau in the NBA? I hope not, but I fear it might be. And that's a crying shame. If it is, and if we include his draft night like we did for Bobby Jones in a previous post, then the list of NBA franchises that Dan Dickau spent some time with is as follows:

1: Sacramento
2: Atlanta
3: Portland
4: Golden State
5: Dallas
6: New Orleans
7: Boston
8: Portland (again)
9: New York
10: L.A. Clippers

In only 6 years, that's a damn good list. Maybe one day, we can add Chicago to it.


- J.R. Pinnock has signed with Pallacanestro Roseto 1946 in Italy's second division. It's hard to make jokes about team's names when they include the year in which they were founded in them. It's hardly the best ammo in the world, is it?

- Dawan Robinson has signed for Prima Veroli, also in Italy's second division. I know that you know who Dawan Robinson is, and I know that you can tell me which NBA franchise he went to training camp with back in 2006 without looking it up. If you can't, there's something deeply wrong with you. (Clue: Dan Dickau once played for them, which gives you a 1 in 9 shot of a lucky guess. Unless you just skipped the bit about Dan Dickau. If you did, there's something deeply wrong with you.)

- The Phoenix Suns' lengthy pursuit to sign Goran Dragic - their own draft pick - ended in misery and defeat. Dragic decided for about the 400th time to stay with Tau Ceramica in Spain, leaving the Suns having to look elsewhere. It hath been mentioned by people whose job it is to mention these things that the Suns will now look at Damon Stoudamire as their next point guard target. I know very little about Goran Dragic, but I know that he's better than Damon freakin' Stoudamire. So this is not much of a consolation prize.

(You know who else is better than Damon Stoudamire? Salim Stoudamire! That's who you need, Steve Kerr!)

- James "Get The" Gist has signed for the elusive Italian stunner herself, Angelico Biella. (That "Get The" thing is an audible joke, by the way, and one that works really well if the name Gist is pronounced with a soft G, and if you have an advanced understand of English lower middle class colloquialisms. If you don't have such an understanding, but would like to develop one, then you've come to the right website.)

- Jermaine Jackson has signed with Udine in Italy. I have literally nothing else to say about that. Not a sausage. Bugger all.

- The draft rights to Kyle Weaver were traded by Charlotte to Oklahoma City in exchange for New Jersey's second round draft choice next season which Oklahoma City owns from the to Mikki Moore trade of whenever it was. Kyle Weaver was rendered obselete after the Bobcats signed Shannon Brown, and the Bobcats signed Shannon Brown almost immediately after I pointed out that no one had signed Shannon Brown, and that no one ever would. So, essentially, Kyle Weaver's plight - if you can call it that - is my fault. Whoops. Sorry about that, Kyle.

- My Call Mike Hall has signed with Armani Jeans Milano. The single best thing about the NBA is the fact that they have not gotten into the trend of selling the team names for commerical sponsorship. Yet.

- Ryvon Covile has signed for Orleans in France, not New Orleans in America. Both Ryvon Covile and Jermaine Jackson graduated from Detroit Mercy - a college which sounds like a WNBA team - and they are quite possibly the only people in the world to have ever graduated from there. Hooray! I thought of something to say about Jermaine Jackson!

- Walter Herrmann re-signed with the Detroit Pistons. Good move. I had assumed, without any real evidence, that Detroit's decision to not tender Herrmann a qualifying offer would mean that Herrmann would have pissed off back to the beautiful continent of Europe, from whence he came. But it would appear that their decision not to do so was solely one of financial motivations - Herrmann has re-signed with the Pistons on a one year deal that pays a significant amount less than the fully guaranteed qualifying offer would have done. So it works out better for Detroit this way. More importantly, they now have a bench player who can score, shoot from the outside, and who doesn't suck. They could still use a guard with a jumpshot - the backup guard rotation of Rodney Stuckey, Will Bynum, Arron Afflalo and probably Lindsey Hunter will hit about 39 threes between them, and you can guarantee that I'm going to bump this post if that number proves to be anywhere close to accurate. Yet Herrmann gives them a shooter and a perimeter scorer off the bench that they had previously lacked. Plus, he's Walter friggin' Herrmann. That's a positive in itself.


And now, ladies and gentleman, Mr Conway Twitty.