Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 7

Gilbert Arenas was suspended indefinitely today, where "indefinitely" is implied to mean "for the rest of the season at least." I don't really have an opinion on that, apart from to state the obvious. Which I won't do.

But here's one thing to note; the financial repercussions of the suspension.

Disregarding the possible voiding of the contract for a moment - I'm not a lawyer and won't profess to understand all the technicalities behind this - the suspension impacts the Wizards' current salary situation too. As things stand, the Wizards are about $8 million over the luxury tax threshold, and with no obvious means of getting under it. The players they want to dump (Mike James, DeShawn Stevenson) are undumpable, and they have nine players earning $3 million or more, tied with Portland for second in the league (the Knicks have ten). But this suspension gives them a means with which they can get nearer to getting under it.

50% of money not received by players suspended by the league is deducted from the team's cap. If a player loses an even $1 million in salary through suspension, then a team can deduct $500,000 from their salary cap number (and thus their luxury tax calculations). So by being suspended, Arenas has inadvertently aided the Wizards in their previously futile quest to dodge the luxury tax.

One thing I don't actually know is whether salary lost due to suspension is calculated based on games or days missed. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference to the general point though. So far in the season, 71 days have passed (not including today), and the Wizards have played 32 games. Therefore, regardless of whether you use 32/82nds of Gilbert's $16,192,079 salary ($6,318,860) or 71/170ths ($6,762,574), the fact remains that the suspension will cost Gilbert over $9 million if it is season long.

So if Arenas is indeed suspended for the remainder of the season, the Wizards will get about $4.5 million nearer to dodging the luxury tax. At that point, it becomes attainable.

How do the Wizards feel about this? Happy, surely. Must be. They needed to blow the team up because they built a bad one. They were losing, woefully underachieving, ill-fitting and WAY over budget. They mismanaged it badly, spending money badly and wasting basketball assets, compiling an inefficient roster of shooters and sulkers, and they were the most fail franchise in the NBA. Even moreso than the 3-31 Nets, who at least and a plan and some youth. Now, they've gotten an out clause. The Lord had mercy. Not sure why.

Sucks for the fans, though. The fans always are the victims. Sorry, people. Maybe next year.



- Andrew Betts

Betts is in Greece playing for Aris Thessaloniki. He is averaging 8.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game in the Eurocup, alongside 10.8 points and 5.0 rebounds per game in the Greek league. At age 32, Betts is not the player he once was, but he's still got a lot of love to give.

Aris played a Eurocup game last night that was on TV over here, but I forgot to record all but the last twenty minutes of it because I was too busy playing Farmville. It's this level of dedication to the cause that's going to see all my NBA ambitions fulfilled.



- Patrick Beverley

Heat draft pick Beverley is with Olympiakos. He started the year on the bench, played a bit, then moved to the inactive list as the team is only allowed to suit up 6 non-Greeks for every Greek league game. Beverley became the inactive list guy in late November, yet fought back to win the spot from Von Wafer, and ended up playing decent minutes for a couple of weeks. But then he was returned to the bench, as Olympiakos continue to have a rotation as consistent as Spencer Hawes. On the season, Beverley is averaging 4.8 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 0.9 steals in 17 minutes per game in the Greek league, along with 3.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, 0.9 assists and 1.0 steals in 13 minutes per game in the Euroleague.



- Tyrell Biggs

Pittsburgh graduate Biggs is also in Greece, as a team mate of A.J. Abrams, Kasib Powell and the insatiable Mark Dickel at Trikalla. His season to date has been pretty awful, however, averaging only 6.2 points and 2.3 rebounds in 20 minutes per game and shooting 36% from the field. If you need a 36% shooting power forward who grabs 4.6 rebounds per 40 minutes, then Biggs is your man, but you probably don't need that. Biggs was great in high school, so much so that he was a member of the Under-18 USA National team. But since then, not a whole lot has gone right.



- Nemanja Bjelica

I've tried not to mention too many upcoming draft prospects in this list; if I was going to do them all, I would have spent a good 14,000 words or so declaring my undying love for Dogus Balbay already. But Nemanja Bjelica is one that I will cover, mainly because I don't quite get it.

On the season, Bjelica is averaging 5.8 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.1 fouls and 1.6 assists per game in the Adriatic League for Crvena Zvezda, alongside 6.0 points, 7.6 rebounds, 2.4 fouls and 1.2 assists in the Eurocup. I have seen two Eurocup games of his this season, as well as multiple times in international competition for Serbia. And either I'm only catching him on bad dayys, or this guy is not the next Toni Kukoc after all. For all his supposed ball handling skills in a 6'10 frame, Bjelica never actually does any ball handling; more than anything, there's lots of standing in the corner, and very few touches. He defers the ballhandling to the better ballhandlers, which is kind of noble, yet also worrisome, because there always are some. He's not a very good shooter, is slender, and is offensively awkward. Can't say I see the intrigue here, really. Not until he refines his skill to the point that he can actually be a mismatch.



- Joseph Blair

Blair has not played since March 2009 when he left Spartak St Petersburg. In the season up until that point, he had averaged 8.2ppg, 8.0rpg and 1.5apg in only 24mpg, with the season's major highlight being his initiating of a brawl that to 16 players being ejected. Somehow, Joseph was not one of the 16. Good times.

I don't know whether he's retired, injured, or just out of work. What I do know is that neither of his websites work any more; both blairplayers.com and josephblair.com now both redirect to a picture of this doable blonde:





EDIT: Retired, apparently.



- Lavell Blanchard

Former Michigan standout and Raptors signee Blanchard is in the Ukraine playing for Khimik. He averages 17.6 points and 9.4 rebounds per game in the EuroChallenge, alongside 13.4 points and 5.5 rebounds per game in the Ukranian Superleague. I like the way some leagues like to prefix the word "league." Gives it a slight dictatorial whimsy to it.



- Corie Blount

Still in prison, I think.

It's hard to know for sure, but Corie Blount seems to have a Twitter account. On it are no Tweets, but there IS a picture of a man that looks decidedly like Corie Blount wearing a sombrero. Happy about that. But is it the best potentially-real NBA player Twitter account out there? No; that honour belongs to James Posey, whose only two tweets are pretty divine.



- Tony Bobbitt

After two years out of the game, Bobbitt reappeared in the D-League this season. For the expansion Maine Red Claws, Bobbitt is averaging 8.4 points, 2.1 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.5 steals in 20 minutes per game, shooting 44% from the field, 46% from three point range and 93% from the foul line.

Despite a jury's recommendation that the man who killed Bobbitt's mother in a premeditated murder should be given the death sentence, the judge overruled the decision and instead sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. I've never written that before.



- Dejan Bodiroga

Bodiroga, who retired in 2007, was the general manager of Lottomatica Roma until recently. He left the team in June 2009 and is currently a candidate for the vacant role of President of the Basketball Federation of Serbia.



- Calvin Booth

Booth spent last between Sacramento and Minnesota, for whom he put up a PER of 39.8. God bless one minute sample sizes. He is now retired, if not officially, and is trying to get a post-playing basketball career going. Booth is in the NBA Players Association Coaching Program, and attended the Reebok Eurocamp on his own dollar, to enhance his knowledge base and hsi credentials as a scout. What all this crescendos to, we'll wait and see.



Finally.....

- Will Blalock

Blalock is in the D-League, a teammate of Bobbitt's at the Maine Red Claws. He got back into the NBA this October as a training camp invite of the Nets, but he never stood a chance of making the team due to the Nets contract situation, a contract situation which is also currently preventing from trading Eduardo Najera's 2010 unfriendly contract to the Mavericks. For the Red Calws, Blalock is averaging 6.3 points, 5.5 assists, 2.7 rebounds and 2.2 turnovers in 24 minutes per game, while struggling a bit with his weight.

But there is a reason for all of that.

In last year's Where Are They Now series, I wrote the following:

Will Blalock averages a piddly 5.6 points, 2.4 rebounds and 2.0 assists for Artland Dragons Quakenbrueck.

In the summer, I wrote this:

......while Will Blalock is very much a point guard, I don't think the answer to the Pacers' point guard problem lies in a man who averaged 4.5 points and 2.1 assists in the German league last season.

And at the start of training camp, I wrote this:

He spent the 2007/08 season mainly in the D-League (with a brief Israeli flirtation in there somewhere), and then he spent last year in Germany, where he averaged 4/2 for Quakenbrueck. That means he's gone from 4/2 in the German league to a spot on an NBA roster. Strange times. Someone buy the movie rights.

What I was too busy being flippant to notice was that Will Blalock had a stroke in March 2008. I keep my ear pretty to the ground and have almost no life outside of basketball, yet somehow I did not know about this. It seems to have gotten MSM coverage at all, and while this article carries the story, it wasn't written until over a year after the fact. Therefore, the news completely bypassed me until Jonathan Givony told me about it yesterday. And so that's why those slightly acerbic comments were written by a man who wants to be remembered as being funny and interesting, but who is actually neither.

Sorry, Will Blalock. And congratulations on your comeback thus far.

Also, there's some good news in there somewhere. Blalock is not what he was - yet - but he has returned from a stroke to play professional basketball to a pretty good standard. Another former NBA player to have had a stroke was Juaquin Hawkins, who suffered one in January 2008 while playing for the Gold Coast Blaze in Australia. He returned to play in Australia the following season, and also played in the IBL this summer. He was not as good as he was before the stroke, but that might well be explained by the way he just turned 36. The downward progression in his statistics is pretty normal for a man of that age.

This, therefore, should be good news to former Wizards and Hornets big man James Lang, who suffered a stroke only six weeks ago. Those two have returned to play the game coming back from the same ailment as he. And so for Lang, it's not over either.

Kirk Snyder is mentally incompetent

San Francisco Chronicle: The Kirk Snyder story gets just a little bit weirder, as Snyder is found to be unfit for trial, and apparently refuses to eat.

A judge has found former NBA player and Nevada Wolf Pack star Kirk Snyder not competent to stand trial and ordered that he be force-fed.

Warren County Common Pleas Judge Neal Bronson made the ruling Thursday. He says Snyder has rejected all medications and food and has been hospitalized twice.

Per Local12.com, Snyder has now been sectioned for a year.

Dude. Strange times.

When the story of Snyder's violent outburst initially broke, I had assumed - naturally, if a bit libellously - that Snyder was just a bit powdered up one night, having a crappy evening, and decided to enact revenge on the man whose dog pissed on his lawn the previous morning. Something along those lines, at least. Despite the savage and random nature of the beating, I would have rather believed that it was one bad night of coke-fuelled angst that did not necessarily indicate a pattern of violence and instability, and that maybe Kirk's real issue was just a minor substance problem that could be (relatively) easily sorted.

Unfortunately not. It would appear that Kirk Snyder really has gone a bit crazy. And that's not cool.

A search for any kind of history for Snyder turns up nothing. Snyder may have had a spat with his coach at Nevada, and he suffered from failing grades for a time, but there was nothing there to suggest that he was a future candidate for suicide watch. Nor did anything happen (publicly, at least) in his NBA career that made us wonder if Snyder would one day go on to refuse food and be confined to a psychiatric hospital for a year. And while playing in China last year, scoring big and rebuilding his resume, at no point did we think "this has all the makings of a man who's going to break into his neighbour's house and savagely beat him in full view of his wife". Just didn't pick it.



Also, while we're updating the Kirk Snyder story, here's a video of Corie Blount being sent to prison. Cheech joke and all. You have to put up with a lengthy and somewhat pointless speech from a judge who is clearly revelling in having multiple cameras filming him doing a day's work, but it's worth watching if only for the stunning bowtie on offer from Blount's defense attorney. There's a leniency plea if ever I've seen one. Had it been a spinner, Blount might have been acquitted.

Corie Blount gets one year in prison

ESPN.com: Judge somehow finds it impossible to believe that Corie's stash was for personal use only.

Former NBA player and University of Cincinnati star Corie Blount was sentenced to one year in prison on Wednesday in a plea arrangement resulting from drug charges.

Blount, 40, had pleaded guilty in Butler County Common Pleas Court last month to two felony counts of marijuana possession after prosecutors dropped two trafficking charges.

Blount was arrested Dec. 4 after sheriff's deputies intercepted 11 pounds of marijuana sent to him at a relative's house. Investigators said they found another 18 pounds in a subsequent search of his home.

Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 6

- Joseph Blair is averaging 8.2 points and 8.0 rebounds for Spartak St Petersburg, while also shooting 43% from the free throw line. So maybe Blair's scouting report on himself (see his profie) wasn't too off-message. Joseph also wrote a New Year's message, for us, his fans. You can read it here. (Note: even though Joseph himself says that he's not in St Petersburg, he is. Someone should tell him.)

- Will Blalock averages a piddly 5.6 points, 2.4 rebounds and 2.0 assists for Artland Dragons Quakenbrueck. The Artland Dragons of Quakenbrueck play in Germany. Their leading scorer is called Adam Hess. Make your own jokes here.

- Corie Blount is....indisposed.

- The last time we checked in on Tony Bobbitt, the man who killed his mother had just been convicted. That's not something I've ever said before. (Note: The link given in the previous post no longer works, so try this one.) Unfortunately, there's no new Tony Bobbitt news to report, since he has not signed anywhere this season. So I guess we'll have to leave it at that.

- Dejan Bodiroga, formerly the best player in Europe, retired a while ago and is now the General Manager of his final team. Lottomattica Roma.

- In keeping with tradition, Curtis Borchardt has had many injuries in recent years, limiting his court time drastically. He's also been injured again this season, and missed 4 weeks of action. But upon returning in mid-November, he's played very well for Granada, the team he's been with since leaving the NBA over three years. So well has he played, in fact, that he was named the MVP for the month of December. Or at least, I think he was. My ability to read Spanish isn't up to much. Borchardt averages 13.8 points, 9.5 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game on the season.

- Ruben Boumtje Boumtje didn't pan out as an NBA player. Nevertheless, now 30 years old, Boom Boom averages 7.9 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.3 fouls for EWE Baskets Oldenburg, a team battling for the German title.

- Justin Bowen left the D-League and went to Australia. For the Gold Coast Blaze, Bowen is averaging 17.6 points and 7.8 rebounds. No jokes here.

- Brandon Bowman is but one more player now playing in Germany, leading his team with averages of 15.1 points and 5.3 rebounds while playing alongside Vincent Yarborough. However, as far as I can tell, his team has no players with the surnames of famous Nazi war criminals, so I'm not seeing why I should care. (Note to all German readers out there - please don't be offended. And if you are, feel free to rip the shit out of my country's former leaders, and to point out our nation's atrocities in conflicts such as the Boer War. We were right old bastards, we were.)

- Lastly, Earl Boykins has caused himself a bit of a scandal. After becoming the highest paid player in Italy this summer, Boykins requested that his team, Virtus Bologna, let him go home over Christmas for a four day break, but Bologna refused. Boykins then exacted his revenge by "striking" for a game (whereby he Gilbert Arenas'd it up by refusing to take a shot in 21 minutes, despite being the team's leading scorer), and then went home anyway. The team announed that they would cut Boykins, but his agent Mark Termini grovelled Boykins's way back into favour, and he has remained with the club, even though they probably all hate him now. The lesson, as always - this threat of a mass European migration really doesn't appear to be too serious right now.

Corie Blount arrested for felony drug possession

Former Sixers, Bulls, Suns, Raptors, Lakers, Warriors and Cavaliers big man Corie Blount was arrested and charged with felony marijuana possession.

The following quote is from WLWT.com, although pretty much everywhere is carrying the story:

The Butler County Sheriff's Office said Blount was arrested Thursday after taking possesion of a package mailed to him containing 11 pounds of marijuana.

The sheriff's office said deputies located a second package of 11 pounds of marijuana and a third package with seven pounds of marijuana at Blount's Liberty Township home.

What the article doesn't mention is Blount's minimal yet interesting history. In 1999, on Christmas Eve, Blount was pulled over for having tinted windows and no front number (license) plate. The police also seized the cash that Blount had on him, an impressive total of $19,435, and handed it to the DEA, after a K-9 unit smelled "drug residue" on it. Blount claimed that the money came from the sale of a car, and had to sue to get it back. No drugs were found on Blount or in the car, and he was not arrested or charged with anything. But the lesson, as always: don't go around with five figures worth of currency on you (unless it's Lira or Egyptian pounds), or people might get the wrong idea. And don't then get arrested nine years down the road for drug possession.

Still. (AND HERE'S THE PUNCHLINE!) You know what they say: Blount by name, blunt by nature!

(I'm ashamed of that joke and might kill myself.)


EDIT: I guess personal use is out of the question, then?

TMZ.com - Blount's love of blunts gets him popped

Finished!!!

The world's best NBA salary information website can once again consider itself to be the world's best NBA salary information website, for that is all now up to date. This is earth-shattering news to at least 1 other person. Perhaps.

(Sorry if that came across as a bit arrogant, by the way. I'm going for a new-wave, confident approach. All this pessimism and self-deprication leads to nothing but internal strife, I've found. So, yay, everything is superb! And that.)

(Also, if you see me end sentences in the phrase "and that", or add the word "like" for no reason, they're just Englishisms. Don't look for hidden meaning.)

In addition to this anticlimactic joy (oh wait, the pessimism has crept back in), I have also added another brilliant feature that no one will look at. The character issues page has existed for quite a long time, in various stages of disrepair. However, I have expanded upon it. Every player profile now has a "criminal issues" link on it (I couldn't think of a snappier way to phrase it), which provides a nice l'il pop up for you lazy people with that players criminal history (or lack thereof) on it.

This might not sound particularly interesting, but it has led to me creating a page for every single player in the website's database. All 958 of them. And for each page, I've done the necessary research. This is important, for it means that we now have nearly-up-to-date information on all of these players, including those that you have never heard of. And it has led to interesting finds. For example, you may not have previously known that Corie Blount was once arrested and had $19,435 of cash confisctaed from him on general principle. But by God, now that you do, you're going to tell all your friends. And previously, you harbored no ill will towards Bryant Matthews, until you realised that he was a dirty sexpest.

It's all truly interesting stuff. Hopefully.

This information brought to you by ShamSports.com, where the power of obsessive compulsive disorder is harnessed. Infrequently.