- Chris Jefferies is a weird story. A first round draft pick back in 2002, Jefferies got an opportunity to showcase himself back in his rookie season with an injury depleted tanking Raptors team. He didn't do much with it, and he was a throw-in in the trade the following season that saw Antonio Davis and Jerome Williams go to Chicago. It was there that Jefferies won my heart, demonstrating a decent set shot, interested defense, and a staggeringly bad handle. Jefferies was waived during the following offseason, out of the league after only two seasons. He then signed in the ABA with the Visalia Dawgs, a team that tried to reunite talent from the Fresno area. The team changed its head coach and renamed itself partway through its first season to the Central Dawgs, finished with a 3-20 record, and then folded. Jefferies has not played anywhere since, and this was nearly 4 years ago now. A Hoopsworld article from this time in 2007 talked about how Jefferies was rehabbing after multiple surgeries, but nothing came of that. C-Jeff turns 29 in less than a fortnight's time, and his basketball career has been on hold for far too long now. Is he even trying to come back any more? If you know, let me know. Because I care about you, Chris Jefferies. We all care.
- Dontell Jefferson is in the D-League, and somewhat starring, as one of only three Utah Flashers that you will have ever heard of. (The other being James Lang and Ronald Dupree.) Jefferson averages 18.2 points, 4.9 rebounds, 5.6 assists and 3.5 turnovers a game on a decent Flash team.
- Horace Jenkins is with Eldo Caserta in Italy, but his scoring numbers are less than usual, averaging only 10.1 points per game. Then again, Jenkins is 34 now, soa slowdown will happen. Fun game: name as many Division 3 players that you can think of who made the regular season roster of an NBA team. I'll give you a clue; Horace Jenkins is one. DeeAndre Hulett is not.
- Brandon Jennings is in Italy with Lottomattica Roma, as well you know. He might not be having as much fun as he'd like, but the numbers are OK from a 19 year old American at Europe's highest level: Jennings averages 6.1 points and 2.1 assists in Italian league play, and 7.5 points and 1.1 assists in Euroleague play. However, Jennings is a combined 23% from three point range (15/65) and 37% overall (63/170), these numbers coming from the short European three point range to boot. I'm not smart enough to know where his draft stock is at the moment, but fully ready he is not.
- Pooh Jeter averages 16.3 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.8 assists for Vive Menorca of the Spanish ACB. A decent European career awaits; an NBA career does not.
- Britton Johnsen left the Jazz before training camp began to join up with a team in the Ukraine. It didn't happen, however, and Johnsen went unsigned for a while before joining up with PAOK Marfin Thessaloniki in Greece to start this year. In 4 games with the team, Johnsen has averaged 8.8 points and 4.8 rebounds.
- DerMarr Johnson is unsigned, as the NBA finally realises that he is not fulfilling the potential that they've been banking on for 7 years.
- I don't know what Ervin Johnson does now. At age 41, I don't think a comeback is on the cards.
- Linton Johnson made the Bobcats very briefly at the start of this season, as a part of their constant big man turnover. This came after being waived from the Wizards' training camp, bringing the number of teams that Linton has signed a contract with at some point (summer league excluded) to nine. Not bad. Johnson is currently unsigned, not even in the D-League, clearly waiting for the 10th to come a-calling. Might I suggest him to you, Cleveland?
- Remember Ken Johnson? So does Ken Johnson. The other KJ averages 7.8 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.9 blocks in German league play for Telekom Baskets Bonn, alongside 7.7 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in EuroChallenge play. Who was it who said the German league wasn't worth anything? You, sir, were wrong. Your league houses Ken Johnson. Therefore, the level of quality of that league speaks for itself.
- Finally, Arthur Johnson is unsigned, after spending last season with Eldo Caserta (look up to the Horace Jenkins bit). Johnson averaged 13.8ppg, 6.5rpg and 2.7spg for Caserta, but this was when they were a Lega2 team.
If you can't get enough Johnson, then despair not, for the next update brings more news of Johnson goodness - Alexander Johnson news will be coming your way shortly. If you can't want until then, here's some bonus Johnson: Trey Johnson just signed a ten day contract with the Cavaliers, meaning the league now has 4 Johnson's in it. And that's enough for anyone. Giggidy.
This post also written a while before being posted.
- Alan Anderson, after unsuccessfuly trying to become Memphis's 14th guard this summer, has signed with Triumph, the Russian team that earlier signed glamour model Nenad Krstic. Anderson's backcourt team mate will be former Celtic guard J.R. Bremer, who now holds a Bosnian passport and plays for their national team. ShamSports.com - News you need to know.
- Kimani Ffriend has signed with Mersin, a team in Turkey named after former alcoholic ill-toothed midfield dynamo.
- Darnell Marcus Lamar Fizer was released by Maccabi Tel-Aviv after not recovering from the knee injury that caused him to miss the end of last year. Guaranteed cone-tracts are not necessarily a bad thing. (Bonus points if anyone spots the TV show reference there.)
- In case the Eurelijus Zukauskas news from the last update wasn't niche enough for you, here's some news of former Sonics draft pick, Paccelis Morlende. Patch has signed with Ural Great, a team in Russia. As if the team name wasn't great enough, the team plays in a town called Perm, something which I hope is enforced in the town like jury duty would be. Paccelis Morlende haircut updates to follow.
- Kings forward Shareef Abdur-Rahim announced his retirement after a long and futile effort to recouperate from a right knee injury. When the New Jersey Nets tried to make a sign and trade deal for Abdur-Rahim in August 2005, they announced the trade, and then Abdur-Rahim failed his physical because of his knee, despite having never missed a game in his NBA career because of knee trouble. The Nets were roundly mocked for this. But, you know.....I guess they were right. The trained professionals saw coming what we the public couldn't, and we held that against them. Whoops. Shareef signed with Sacramento to a five year deal after the Nets trade fell through - the Kings only got one decent year, one mediocre year, and one non-existent year out of Shareef, and now he's had to retire with two seasons left on his contract. The world owes you an apology, medical examiners.
- Stephane Lasme, recently waived by Miami, has signed with Partizan Belgrade, a Belgradian team that don't have a red star for a logo. This news will hit some Golden State Warriors fans hard, still bitter from the day that their team waived Lasme. There there. You have Rob Kurz now, for at least one more week.
- Another Spurs draft pick - forward Viktor Sanikidze - has signed with Estonian champion and former Vulcan, TU/Rock. From Estonia to Bruce Bowen's replacement. You heard it hear first. And by that, I mean you won't hear it anywhere else, because it's stupid.
- Finally, Washington signed DerMarr Johnson, Linton Johnson and Taj McCullough for training camp. If Linton gets passed over for the other two, I'll be shocked and appalled. We're all pulling for you, Linty, despite you being the 16th man on a 15 man roster.
(That count includes Juan Dixon, who we'll get to in a minute.)
As always, there's no reason for any of this post. I just wanted to give this picture another airing.
Speaking of Ron Artest looking a bit daft, did you ever see his music videos? Here's three of them.
Get Lo
Fever
Whatever the hell this is. (Do yourself a favour and skip the first two minutes.)
Dare I say that they're not bad, considering? It's all relative, obviously. But as second careers go, he's not done too badly. It's a bit amateurish and non-descript, but it's better than anything DerMarr Johnson has ever done. Perhaps Ron needs to work on his approach to the publicity, though.
Well, after Wikipedia'ing DerMarr Johnson's name in a bid to find out when he suffered his car crash, I noticed that apparently DerMarr Johnson does a bit of rapping under a soubriquet.
This was news to me, so I took this nugget of information to Youtube to see if it was true.
And it bloody was.
Here is DerMarr, aka "Boss Slim", in the music video for a seminal smash named "Zoom", a concept with which the camera man is struggling.
If you're overwhelmed by the stagnant unoriginality of the beat, the severly played-out instrumentation of the genre, the truly inspirational soul-searching depth of the lyrics, or the rank amateurishness of the music video shot on someone's phone, you've missed the point. The point is that the Spurs just got more bling. This is a rare and special thing, given that the team's current quota of bling is more or less solely in the form of Tony Parker. And if you have ever seen Tony Parker rap, then you'll know why this was a bad thing.
There'll be a follow up post on this as and when I can be arsed.
When you spend $162 million on only three players in one offseason, you're generally making a commitment to those as core players. Denver did this last offseason with Nene, Carmelo Anthony and Reggie Evans, investing in two power forwards despite also having the massive contract of Kenyon Martin firmly entrenched at the position, as well as Joe Smith and Eduardo Najera on hand to stand around looking sheepish.
When you then trade your only significant expiring contract and both first rounders this season (and Andre Miller) for soon-to-be-fading star Allen Iverson, you're making a subsequent commitment to for it all with what you have. You're foregoing the few assets you have, placing yourself deep into luxury tax territory to try and put your team over the top.
It's noble. And they could not realistically turn down the Iverson deal because of the small price tag. But, in the short term at least, it hasn't really worked.
Denver hasn't had their shooting guard position solved for a number of years. The days of the Kiki Vanderweghe era saw such greats as Predrag Savovic and Vincent Yarborough blemish the position, and while Vanderwghe did pursue a number of options to fill the position (ranging from Manu Ginobili to Clyde Drexler, of all people), the best he could manage was a brief flirtation with Voshon Lenard. New GM Mark Warkentein picked up The Prodigy Formerly Known As J.R. Smith from Chicago as a potential solution to the problem, but all that brought Denver was a tidal wave of emotions: from amusing highs (career high 37 points vs Chicago) to humiliating lows (being benched for stupidity during the playoffs, being called out by his coach, killing his friend in a car accident). And the two headed monster of Yakhouba Diawara and Von Wafer isn't getting it done.
You would think that trading for Allen Iverson, one of the finest scoring guards of all time and still at the peak at his game, woud solve the problem. Yet Denver is currently experiencing what Philadelphia had to figure out for all those years: it's all right having Allen Iverson, but who do you put alongside him?
Iverson and Steve Blake made for an effective offensive pairing for their brief time together last season, with Blake's pass-first nature complimenting the pass-last style of Iverson, and with Blake's jumpshot making a brief return after a half season away. But defensively, the duo combined to give Marcus Camby his inaugral Defensive Player Of The Year award, unable to keep anybody in front of them and without the height to in any way trouble shooters.
So what did the Nuggets do to rectify this?
They lost Blake to Portland, and replaced him with the aptly named 5'11 Chucky Atkins, a man with Iverson-like delusions but with Chucky Atkins-like ability.
Brilliant. There's the needed compliment right there.
In their only other offseason move of note, Denver made another trade with Philadelphia (note to all GM's out there - they're onto something here. It's good to trade with Billy King), swapping 85th string power forward Evans (by the way, why DID they pay their fourth stringer that much? Did we ever get an answer on that?) for Steven Hunter and Bobby Jones. Jones, should he make the roster, adds abslutely nothing of value, but does have an unguaranteed contract, which could turn out to be a nice saving for a team mired deep into luxury tax territory. And Hunter, if nothing else, is a man capable of playing the center position, even if he does play it very badly while rebounding without due care and attention. More importantly, they save on a year of salary, even if that saving is three years down the road. Every little helps, and all that.
Next season:
It would be nice if I was able to open this stanza with a comment along the lines of "A lot depends on whether star Kenyon Martin can bounce back from injury and finally fully realise his potential". But I can't. Because it's not happening. Not only is Kenyon Martin not a star, but he's also not getting back to where he was - microfracture surgery in each knee can do that to a man. A player who relied almost exclusively on explosiveness isn't much good when you take that explosiveness away. If Martin can return as a rebounding role player, he can help the team. But if he doesn't, he's just dead weight. Very expensive dead weight, at that.
Still, only 4 years and $60 million to go.
Being without Martin didn't hinder the Nuggets on-court progress, though, as Nene had something of a breakout season last year. Given a 6 year, $60 million contract despite only having played three whole minutes the previous season - bad business that they've gotten away with so far - Nene performed well, putting up 12 points and 7 rebounds in only 26 minutes a game, while providing good interior post defense. The pairing of he and DPOY winner Camby went some ways to counteracting the Nuggets pourous perimeter defense, while also making for a decent offensive pairing.
If nothing else, the Nuggets can boast a starting lineup of Camby/Nene/Anthony/Iverson/whoever, one of the league's most talented lineups out there. Who the "whoever" is going to be, though, remains a concern. If it's Atkins, they have problems - the man is a bench scorer, pure and simple. If it's J.R. Smith, they have problems - the man is an idiot, pure and simple. If it's Yakhouba Diawara, they have problems - the man is not very good, pure and simple. And if it's someone else, I'll be amazed.
More important than who the fifth starter is, though, is the age old question of whether Iverson and Anthony can co-exist (and by "age old", I mean "9 month old"). This question was never definitely answered last year, and it's the key to Denver's entire future.
If they can co-exist effectively, and if the team stays reasonably healthy (they'll never be truly healthy. I mean, they have Iverson, Camby and Martin, for God's sake) they could drag a Denver team into a position to surprise a few people, winning homecourt advantage and maybe making some inroads in the playoffs.
But if they don't bring the best out of each other, and if the Nuggets have their usual woe with injuries or worse, then this Nuggets franchise is again looking at a low playoff seed and a first round exit. And at that point, they're possibly a season away from losing Iverson and starting again.
With a youth movement currently consisting of J.R. Smith and Linas Kleiza, they could do with avoiding that kind of mediocrity.
Sham is a miserable and self-effacing little bastard, whose basketball opinions are often riddled with bias, insecurity, and rank immaturity. He has also never played the sport, and the only game he has ever been to see was a Ware Rebels game back in 2001. The night bus didn't show up and he had to walk the 9 miles home. It was after this that his passion for basketball really took off.
He considers himself to be Britain's foremost NBA expert, an arbitrary title that carries with it no basis in fact, or any worldly significance. He also wrote this section of the website in third person narrative, purely for reasons of arrogance.
Copyright ShamSports.com, 2005-2010. Every published word on this website
is copyrighted to the website's owner, including (but not limited to)
the really stupid ones that I wish I'd never written.
