Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 19

- Byron Eaton

Eaton went undrafted out of Oklahoma State because he didn't have NBA talent. He joined the D-League and was assigned to the Tulsa 66ers, but he plaayed in only 2 games, totalling 1 point, 1 assists and 5 turnovers. Tulsa then released him in December. The fact that he's 5'10 and 260lbs might be why:





- Ndudi Ebi

Former Timberwolves draft pick Ebi spent last year in Italy's SerieA, but this year downgraded to LegaDue, the division below. (Why LegaDue is not called SerieB, I do not know.) The obvious benefit there is to Ebi's numbers, and he's responded with averages of 16.1 points, 13.4 rebounds, 3.1 steals, 1.4 blocks and 1.3 assists per game. He leads Rimini in rebounds (with no one else having more than 4.5), steals and blocks, and is second in points only to Carlton Myers.

Carlton Myers used to be one of the best scorers in Italy, averaging over 20ppg in SerieA for about 26 years. Myers has played all but 7 games of his 19 year career in Italy and turns 39 in late March, so he's a long way out of his prime, but even at this ripe old age he is scoring a very efficient 17 ppg at a decent standard of basketball. This is not comparable to his best, though, for Carlton Myers once scored 87 points in a SerieA game. This occurred as recently as 1995, and here's a, uh, really awkward video of some of it.



But it's not as awkward as this picture of Carlton Myers naked.

Carlton Myers is pretty much an Italian, despite the name, being born to an Italian mother and spending basically his whole life there. However, he was born in London, as was Ndudi Ebi. Rimini also boast another Englishman, Mike Bernard, a former South Florida bench player and English international. Because of this trio, Basket Crabs Rimini are my favourite Italian second division. Also factoring into that decision is the fact that their name is Crabs Rimini.



- Corsley Edwards

Former Sacramento Kings draft pick Corsley Edwards is in China....or he was, until he broke his finger this week and returned home. On the season, Edwards is averaging 29.3 points, 8.3 points and 2.7 assists in 39 minutes per game, shooting 55% from the field, 69% from three point range (somehow) and 78% from the line. Included in there was a 50 point outing and a 47 point outing, and in 15 games he never scored less than 20. Pretty good, Corsley. Pretty good.



- John Edwards

John Edwards spent two years in the NBA. He signed as an undrafted free agent out of Kent State with the Pacers in 2004, played spot minutes in 25 games, and then the Hawks signed him to an inexplicable two year, $2.08 million contract in the summer of 2005. After one year with Atlanta - in which he totalled 70 points, 48 rebounds and 76 fouls - the Hawks traded him back to the Pacers as filler in the Al Harrington deal. The Pacers then waived him, and after a training camp contract with the Timberwolves in 2007, that was it for John Edwards in the NBA.

Edwards has spent two of the last three years in the D-League, seemingly aware that the knock on him is his "rawness." Last year for the Sioux Falls Skyforce, Edwards averaged 9.3 and 6.9 rebounds in 21 minutes per game, fairly sedate numbers for a centre-starved league. Those numbers are particularly sedate when you consider that Edwards is now 28 years old. You can't be raw forever.

He did not initially return to the D-League this year, instead signing with Kolossos Rhodes in Greek's AI League. In theory, he was going to provide an NBA calibre frontcourt along with recent Heat draft pick, Robert Ntoziep. In practice, though, he was not very good. Edwards played only 36 minutes on the entire season, totalling 12 points, 5 rebounds and 8 fouls. Kolossos then waived him and signed David Monds as his replacement.

This was only the second time in his career that John Edwards has signed outside of America, and after his release he returned to what he knows best, joining the Bakersfield Jam of the D-League. In 5 games Edwards is averaging 7.2 points, 4.4 rebounds, 4.0 fouls and 1.8 turnovers per game. He's the same player that he ever was. And therein lies the problem.



- Chuck Eidson

After being sufficiently badass enough to win the Eurocup single handedly (kind of) for Lietuvos Rytas last season, Eidson went where the money was and signed for Maccabi Tel-Aviv. In the Israeli league he is averaging 10.2 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.5 assists, alongside 13.1 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game in the Euroleague. Maccabi fans kind of hate him at times, but then again, Maccabi fans kind of hate everything at times.



- Howard Eisley

This time last year, Eisley was working for the Nets for free as a "coaching associate", which is basically a player development coach. Having no evidence to the contrary, I am going to assume that he's still there.



- Obinna Ekezie

Former Maryland and Atlanta Hawks big man Ekezie last played in April 2007. In February 2008 he established a new online venture called ZeepTravel, with the aims of being Nigeria's primary travel portal. Here is Ekezie talking about it.






- Frank Elegar

Drexel offshoot Elegar, who made his name with a strong showing at the Portsmouth Invitational in 2008, is signed in Turkey. Playing for Bornova, The Elegarnce averages 12.5 points, 7.1 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game.

Elegar has a teammate called Ihsan Yalcin Azizmahmutogullari. An anagram of that is oh shut up.



- Lior Eliyahu

Before Omri Casspi came Lior Eliyahu. Yahoo, an athletic Israeli forward whose rights are owned by the Houston Rockets, left his native Israel this summer and joined Caja Laboral in Spain. The side effect of that has been a dramatic decline in playing time; Eliyahu averages 17.9 minutes per game in the Euroleague, but only 12.8 minutes per game in the ACB. He averages 7.1/3.6 in the Euroleague and 4.4/1.8 in the ACB.



- Carl Elliott

George Washington product Elliott spent the first two years of his previous career with the Sioux Falls Skyforce and Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the D-League. This summer, however, he gave it all up and moved abroad, to the basketball hotbed that is Finland. Hmmmm. I'm not up to date on the salary structure of Finnish basketball, nor am I even out of date with it, but I can't imagine it pays a whole lot better than the D-League. And the standard isn't better.

Elliott is playing for the deliciously named Honka Playboys, the team better known for producing the mighty Petteri Koponen. He is averaging 17.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.7 steals per game, shooting 50% from the field and 26% from three point range.



- Chris Ellis

Another Skyforce ex, Ellis started the year in Uruguay playing for a team called Union Atletica, where he paired up with former NBA player Art Long. Ellis averaged 11.7 points and 8.6 rebounds in 7 games; Long is averaging 15.4/9.9 through 14. Ellis has since moved to the Ukraine, which is about as far away from Uruguay as you can get geographically, if not alphabetically. He has played one game for his new team, Dnipro, totalling 2 points, 6 rebounds and 3 turnovers.



Finally.....

- Tyrone Ellis

Tyrone Ellis, Southern Nazarene's finest, is spending his third season with Cajasol Sevilla in Spain's ACB. He is averaging 11.3 points and not much else on the season, shooting 42% from the field and 40% from three point range. Ellis takes 6 three pointers a game, which gives you some idea of his role on the team.

Ellis holds a Georgian passport, one obtained through those hitherto unexplained means that sometimes seem to befall decent American players in Europe. [Georgia is a country, by the way. Zaza Pachulia plays for them.] Another American Georgian passport holder is Shammond Williams; both Ellis and Williams have had the common decency to at play for the national team of the country whose generous gift of a passport greatly enhanced their basketball careers. That's the way it should be, Dan Dickau.

Let Me Drago Pasalic You Up And Down

In keeping with my new policy of talking about every game that I watch that isn't an NBA game, here's what I observed from last night's Eurocup game between Iurbentia Bilbao and the home Lithuanian team with a Yorkshire inflection, Lietuvos Rytas. Go.

- Bilbao's lineup features only three Spanish nationals; point guard Javier Salgado, backup guard Paco Vazquez, and a really slow inside player with a massive head and greasy mullet called Salvador Guardia. The rest of the team was made up of foreign players, and it was pretty stacked; former, future and potentially future NBA talent on show included former Bucks forward and avid partygoer Damir Markota, former Jazz and Timberwolves swingman Quincy Lewis, former Heat tryerouter Luke Recker, former Chicago Bulls summer league participant Drago Pasalic, Mavericks second rounder Renaldas Seibutis, former Nuggets guard Predrag Savovic, the man the legend known as Frederic Weis (who did not play), Latvian international guard Janis Blums, and Croatian international big man Marko Banic.

- Lietuvos, meanwhile, had only two players that weren't Lithuanian - former South Carolina point forward Chuck Eidson, and Serbian big man Milko Bjelica, whose name sounds more like a lovely pudding. The rest of the team was made out of old clunky Lithuanians. (Eidson was awesome, by the way, and easily the best player in the game, despite all the talent and internationals on the court. But we'll come to this later.)

- For Bucks fans who fancy a cheap laugh at the expense of Damir Markota, I've got good news - he was pretty awful. Markota came off the bench in the first half, and did nothing at all, but for some reason he started the second half in place of Pasalic. He then proceeded to get involved on every possession, and normally in a bad way. On his team's first trip down the court, Markota took a contested NBA range three pointer with about 7 seconds gone in the half. It missed. On the next possession, Markota was stripped by Donatas Zavackas while standing at the top of the arc, leading to a Zavackas one-on-none breakaway layup. And it was a one-on-none breakaway layup because Markota decided not to bother chasing him. Over the next few possessions, Markota grabbed a good offensive rebound before missing the 4 inch putback, took another 27 foot three (which also missed), shouted at the refs, threw a terrible pass into the corner which Javier Salgado somehow caught and turned into a circus three, and was then subbed out for Pasalic. He later returned, and played most of the second half, grabbing several rebounds, but remained very out of the game on offense. He also spent the entire game with a huge wedge of cotton in his left ear, that was in keeping with the Bilbao team's desire to wear stupid apparel; Luke Recker wore black knee high socks and a full beard, which made him look a bit like a lumberjack battling with his repressed homosexuality, and Quincy Lewis wore a bizarre sky blue full length lycra elbow support thing that could conceivably have come from a fetish website. It was all a bit odd.

- Speaking of Recker and Lewis, they kind of sucked a bit. Recker was never in the game in the first half, turning down good shots and taking bad ones, while supposedly in there as a speciality shooter. He improved in the second half, working his way around screens (mainly from Guardia) for open looks, and playing decent help defense. And Lewis was extremely quiet, barely taking any shots or touching the ball on offense. Bilbao got very little offense from the wing positions in general, as no one other than Spanish national point guard Javier Salgado was able to get into the lane. The other primary ball handlers that Bilbao used - Janis Blums and Paco Vazquez - were completely taken out of the game by an unrelenting Rytas defense that denied almost all penetration and took away the passing lanes. Seibutis was the only other guy to get to the rim, and he did this precisely twice. Bilbao's offense was predominantly featured around Banic, who demonstrated good moves and good touch around the rim, using head fakes and spin moves to get himself open shots. However, at 6'9 and 230, with no athleticism to speak of, and no apparent interest in defense or rebounding, Banic looked like what he was (a decent player in high level European competition, going up against similarly clunky continentals with receding hairlines) and not what I'm really looking for (possible NBA players). And for those Bulls fans wondering....yes, Drago Pasalic's jumpshot is still absolutely mint. He showed a nice hook shot, too, and he's also grown his hair out. But he still sets the softest screens in showbiz.

- Lietuvos were basically all about Chuck Eidson. Technically playing the small forward, Eidson took most of the lead guard duties, and made about 12 great passes to only 1 crap one. He was easily the best passer on the court, and he was probably the best shooter too, albeit with a bizarre and anomolous 2-7 night from the free throw line. Eidson's weaknesses were quickly self evident - he has almost no right handed dribble, carrying the ball on one of his two attempts to go right and getting blocked on the other, and he wasn't fast or athletic for a 6'7 player. But he was very skilled, with ball handling that belies his height, a jumpshot that looked smooth both off the dribble and off a curl, plus them's there quality passing skills. He reminded me of Lamar Odom, if Lamar Odom couldn't rebound or play defense, and if he wasn't athletic. And if he was 4 inches shorter. And if he could shoot. And if he wasn't actualyl Lamar Odom. (Basically, the likeness started and ended with them being left handed. Maybe Kasib Powell would be a better comparison. Or Luke Jackson. Or maybe no comparison at all would be a good comparison.)

- A non-name dropping name drop coming up - I once had a conversation with an NBA general manager about the future of the Lithuanian national team. We agreed that there wasn't one. With that in mind, I paid particular attention to the Lithuanian players that Rytas has on show (as well as Bilbao's Litho, Seibutis). Most of them were over or dangerously close to 30 years of age, and the only three who weren't that played (Arturas Jomantas, Steponas Babrauskas, Justas Sinica) were three of the four players used off of the bench, along with Milko Bjelica. Bjelica, a 24 year old centre, showed little. Sinica, a skinny 6'8 23 year old forward, was largely docile, and took only three shots, all three pointers with a very slow release, making one. Babrauskas didn't look to be the 6'5 that the packaging suggested, but he displayed a decent jumpshot, albeit while playing exclusively off the ball. The one who showed promise, though, was Jomantas; a 6'7 swingman, Jomantas looked pretty fluid with the ball, and made two open three pointers (albeit while missing two others really badly). His ball pressure was good, and his help defense on inbounds plays or when trapping Paco Vazquez on the pick and roll was consistently effective. His work rate was good (as it was for all players, even Markota; they truly cared), and he fought for rebounds that weren't rightly his. Jomantas was, however, a bit slow. Seibutis, meanwhile, played almost exclusively off the ball as the two guard, which seems far more sensible of a position for him than the point guard he is occasionally confused into being. What few shots he took were good looks that he made smoothly, and he looked quicker than I remember. A massive red flag, however, was his defense - often charged with the matchup on Chuck Eidson, Sighbooties barely obscured Eidson's path to the rim, and could never seem to make Chuck drive right, as he so badly needed to do.

That is all I've got. There was another Eurocup game on, featuring Khimky versus Dynamo Moscow. But while I did watch it, I was busy priming a rifle, with which to then shoot myself in the head. That's how bad the commentary was. I'd explain further, but I daren't.

Rytas won, by the way, by a score of 73 to 71. You can find the box score here.