Summer signings, round 19

The site went down for a few hours due to some problem with GoDaddy's Tomcat servers parsing information properly or some shit. The site's content was still there, but it just wouldn't let you see it. This problem has happened before, and by God, it'll happen again. That's what you get when you make cutbacks on running costs in order to be able to afford to run a website out of your own pocket without earning a single penny back in advertising revenue due to your carnal philanthropic desire to give the viewing public what they want. The tradeoff is occasional downtime. And run-on sentences.

Maybe one day we'll redesign the site in a new format, into one less archaic, more flexible and more reliable. Maybe we'll use a new URL. Maybe we'll use new automation and all that jazz. Maybe one day we'll have a focus group to plan all of this. Maybe all this has already happened. Who knows?

More importantly: Conway Twitty!!!! (And some signings news as well.)


- It has been announced that Demetris Nichols has re-signed with the Chicago Bulls. This news may have appeared on this site before. While I don't claim to have been the first to know this news, or to have tapped up Nichols himself or anything (giggidy), I'm still going to use it as some leverage for when I next need you to believe me on something. You are hereby forewarned.

- Devean George has agreed to sign with the Dallas Mavericks for the third time, after almost doing them a favour when he voided the first Jason Kidd trade back in February. It's also been announced that the Mavs don't plan on extending Kidd, which doesn't seem like a bad idea given how quickly Kidd's decline has become. However, the side effect of that is that the Mavericks are now in grave danger of having traded Devin Harris and two first round draft picks in what amounts to little more than a salary dump and Antoine Wright. That won't be pretty if it happens. Trading Kidd's mahoosive expiring at some point this year might not be a bad idea.

- Hey Bulls fans! Do you remember back when we had P.J. Brown's expiring contract, and were trying to use it as the main ingredient in a trade for Pau Gasol, but the deal was doomed to fail when outgoing Grizzlies General Manager Adam West decided that he wanted every decent young player in the Western world in exchange for Pau, rather than the salary savings offered up by Brown's contract? Do you remember how bitter we were when this didn't go down? Do you remember how much that bitterness was reaffirmed when, twelve months later, the Grizzlies changed their minds and traded Pau to the Lakers for what was, primarily, salary relief? Do you remember how we lambasted the Bulls' sexy General Manager John Paxson for not turning Brown's contract into at least someone useful? Do you remember how we particularly rued not trading for Donyell Marshall and Shareef Abdur-Rahim? Well, a quick update. Donyell was just waived by Oklahoma City with a year of his contract remaining, and he is basically done. Shareef is even more done - he has two (count 'em!) seasons remaining on his contract, coming off of a season in which he had 6 games, 10 points and 9 fouls total, and the cost of him not playing well will be $12.8 million over those two years. In hindsight, maybe now we can see why the Bulls were right not to deal P.J's expiring salary for any old shit, and were right to just let it expire and use the salary saving themselves. This rings particularly true when you consider how, right now, we're trying to tightrope the luxury tax while re-signing Ben Gordon. Food for thought there. (Also: the New Jersey Nets copped a lot of stick when they voided their agreement to trade for Shareef because of knee trouble found in his medical, despite Shareef having only missed I think one game the previous season with a knee problem. In hindsight....it looks like they were right.)

- From Donyell to Dorell: Dorell Wright re-signed with the Heat for a certain amount of money over a certain amount of years. For a few years now, Pat Riley and company have excitedly spoken excitedly about how excited they are about their new exciting athletic and exciting lineup, just to then resort to form and use old farts such as Alonzo Mourning, Antoine Walker and Jason Williams to win either the lottery or the NBA Championship. It was a cute act which got Smush Parker some guaranteed money. However, since most of the old guard has gone now, their vision of an athletic lineup is about to come to fruition, whether they like it or not. (Giggidy.) As things stand, the Heat's non-golfing front 9 are to be Mario Chalmers, Daequan Cook, Dwayne Wade, James Jones, Dorell Wright, Michael Beasley, Shawn Marion, Udonis Haslem and Mark Blount. Apart from Haslem and Blount, that's a lineup of all good jumpers, if not all good jumpshots. And even Blount moves pretty good for a centre. Deeper down the bench, there are yet more good atheltes to be found, with players such as Yakhouba Diawara, Marcus Banks, Joel Anthony and Stephane Lasme. The Heat have finally found an identity. Good for them.

- Speaking of the Heat and players and stuff, Earl Barron signed in Italy with Fortitudo Bologna. He wasn't young or athletic enough to fit in, I guess.

- JamesOn Curry didn't sign with Hapoel, but instead signed in France with Pau Orthez. The French league is never a particularly good place to sign if you want exposure, so I'll assume that the money's good.

- Luke Jackson is supposedly going to sign with the Blazers, and, for those who didn't know or care before now, Luke Jackson went to college at Oregon. So there's some ties there. Jackson's NBA up to now has sucked elephantitis testicles, but he's not entirely useless (or he wasn't, at least). It's getting harder and harder to say this after so many chances up until now, but maybe THIS is the time that Jackson finds his niche and is able to fashion out a career as a bench contributor. There's some ability in there, somewhere. Then again, if you saw him play for Miami last season, then you won't foresee such a breakout as being imminent. (Fun Luke Jackson fact: he's only played 724 minutes in his NBA career, and he's about to turn 27. But he did score 30 in a game once, despite only scoring 252 NBA points in his career. Fun fact. The downside of this - take away that one game, and Jackson is a career 33% shooter. Eep.)

- Petteri Koponen isn't going to sign with the Blazers this year, as he has signed with Virtus (not Fortitudo) Bologna instead. The contract is for four years, but has an NBA escape clause after each year. So he'll probably come over when Sergio Rodriguez buggers off. (I like Sergio Rodriguez. I think we all do. But he probably shouldn't have come straight away. Giggidy.)

- Theo Ratliff has re-signed with the Philadelphia 76ers, his former team of a few years ago. Theo will replicate the lynchpin role that Calvin Booth recently vacated, that of the crappy third string centre who'll only play when necessary, and who will block shots and foul with comparable frequency. It's a vital role for any team.

- Some bonus trivia for you here - former Pistons centre Ratko Varda is still alive and bricking, this week signing for Zalgiris in Lithuania (the only Lithuanian team that you've ever heard of.) Also, in even more bonus news, former lottery pick Sharone Wright is also still hanging about the world of professional basketball despite disappearing from these shores about 28 years ago. (And by "these shores", I mean the NBA.) Wright, whose NBA career was emphatically derailed by a serious car accident, has toiled away in the lower leagues of basketball since then, continuing to make a living. Now 35, he finds himself playing for the Eiffel Towers Den Bosch of the Netherlands league, where he's signed through to be an assistant coach for the next four years, and for whom he also still plays a bit. But I have no idea why there's a Dutch team called the Eiffel Towers. It's not like the Netherlands is short of its own cultural landmarks that can be used to flesh out their professional basketball club's names. Although admittedly the "Eiffel Towers" is a bit more romantic than the "Opium Dens". (Note to Dutch people: only joking! Lovely country. Nice people. Great accents. And those mid 90's Ajax teams were so legendary that I once wrote an English essay about them. And Arsenal goalkeeper David Seaman once signed my Ajax shirt. Both of those are true stories. Go Ajax. Go the Nedderlandsch. By the way, I've never actually been to the Hetherlands before, and am relying on the word of others for my opinion of the country's natural beauty. It's a bit like what I do with any opinions I have on O.J. Mayo.)


And now ladies and gentleman, Mr Conway Twitty.