Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 42

- For Orlando fans wondering how Milovan Rakovic is doing, here's some numbers; for Spartak St Petersburg in Russia (not Florida), Rakovic is averaging 7.2 points, 2.1 rebounds and 2.4 fouls through 16 games in the Russian league. But as underwhelming as those numbers are - particularly those rebounding numbers from a 6'10 centre - you might take some solace in the fact that they're not too dissimilar from those of Fran Vazquez. Or you might not, considering that Vazquez was picked ahead of Danny Granger.

- Fan favourite Peter John Ramos started the year with Fuenlabrada Madrid in the ACB, averaging 6.7 points and 4.3 rebounds per game, but has since returned to his native Puerto Rico. Ramos has signed with the Quebradillas Pirates, but hasn't plyed a game yet, largely because the Puerto Rican league hasn't started yet. The Puerto Rican league has something of a Chinese league thing going on there, whereby fringe and former NBA talent go there to achieve something that they never previously attained in the NBA - stardom. Players either signed for the upcoming BSN season, or rumoured to soon be, include Ramos, Rodney White, Ricky Sanchez, Ruben Wolkowyski, Robert Traylor, Esteban Batista and Marcus Fizer. Not a bad front seven, that, especially at it would see Fizer playing point guard, just like he's always wanted.

- Allan Ray is in Italy, where he started the year not playing much for Lottomattica Roma (6.8 ppg in the Euroleague, 12.9 in SerieA), before being waived and joining Carife, where his numbers have improved to 16.9 ppg, 4.6 rpg and 2.4 apg).

- You had probably assumed that, when the Clippers quietly waived Zeljko Rebraca in April 2007, that that was it for him. Struggling with chronic back injuries, Rebraca hadn't played the entire 2006/07 season, and had managed only 29 unspectacular games the season before. But if you did think that, like I did, then you'd've been wrong. Rebraca kicked around for a few more months, before returning to give it one final shot with the powerhouse Spanish team Pamesa Valencia. It kind of worked, too - Rebraca returned to play in 6 games with the team, totalling 34 points, before retiring in December 2007, far more satisfied with this conclusion to his career than he would have been with the quiet waiving for Will Conroy that he had before. Good for you, Zellypoo!

- Justin Reed was one of the better players in the D-League last year, and made the training camp roster of the Philadelphia 76ers. However, he was then waived before camp even started (I never found out why, but I'm guessing it was injuries) and replaced by Cory Underwood. Reed later rejoined his D-League team of last year, the Bakersfield Jam, but hi numbers have slipped from 20.3/7.1/3.7 to 11.4/4.9/2.2.

- If you are eagerly awaiting and utterly dependent on any new shred of Don Reid news, there's something wrong with you.

- Jared Reiner is in Germany, averaging 10.5 points and 9.0 rebounds for Bremerhaven, but he hasn't played for nearly a month. A quick search reveals that this is due to a problem with his Sprunggelenksverletzung. I would love to play Scrabble in German.

- Felipe Reyes, Real Madrid forward and one of the better European big men for a while now, has made a big leap forward this year. Already good, Reyes has gotten even better just before his 29th birthday, and has taken last year's Spanish league numbers of 13.8 points, 6.9 rebounds, and and turned them into 17.4 points and 9.9 rebounds per game. He also averages 13.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game in the Euroleague. Unfortunately he's still undersized and unathletic, so his effectiveness in the NBA would be less spetacular. But if Luis Scola can make it, then Felipe Reyes can make it. I just don't think he'll bother.

- Former Virginia standout J.R. Reynolds is with ASVEL in France, the team that Tony Parker just bought a chunk of. (Also, for whomever it was that sent me an email asking what kind of standard ASVEL played to, sorry I forgot to respond, but here goes; a decent one. The French league is weak when compared to other leagues such as the Italian, Spanish and Greek, but it's OK, and ASVEL are the league leaders right now. They were also in this year's Eurocup, the second tier European club competition, although they didn't get very far. But Nick Fazekas and Chevy Troutman play for them, so there' some quality for you.) Reynolds averages 10.4 points and 4.3 assists in 22mpg, numbers which I'm guessing mean that he's playing more point guard than ever before. But this is just a guess. (If he is, and if he's doing it well, then his future prospects are looking brighter.)

- My boy Charles Rhodes is letting me down. I watched him for the Mavericks in this year's Vegas Summer League, am duly impressed (as are Dallas, who bring him back for training camp) and spend my time singing his praises, and then he goes and does nothing with it. Playing in Latvia (eep) for Barons/LMT Riga, Rhodes averaged only 9.5 points and 6.2 rebounds in the Baltic league, alongside 12.7 points and 3.2 rebounds in the Eurocup, before leaving the team in January. He is currently unsigned, and I currenly feel like a bit of a numpty.

- Darius Rice is either with the Uruguyan team Atletico Atenas, or the awesomely named Filippino team Talk ’N Text Tropang Texters. Reports vary on that, although the Uruguyan team seems more credible. Other awesomely named Filippino teams include Darius's former team, the Purefood Tender Juicy Hotdogs, and the implausible Rain Or Shine.

- Maureece Rice's first professional season is going rather well. After a piss poor final season in college, where he scored 9.2 points per game on 34% shooting, Rice went undrafted, but somehow got a training camp spot with the Sixers anyway. (So did two other people in this post; Reed and Reiner. Weird.) He didn't make it, obviously, but he then went to the D-League and joined the expansion Erie BayHawks, where he's gone on to do ratehr well. Rice averages 15.8 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.2 assists for an above .500 Erie team who, frankly, could be doing a lot worse than that. Particularly since they start a swingman at centre.

- Finally, former Timberwolves big man Chris Richard - ignominiously waived for the holy trinity of Calvin Booth, Mark Madsen and Jason Collins this past October - was the first pick in this year's D-League draft by the Tulsa 66ers. Richard then averaged a slightly underwhelming yet All-Star worthy 12.0 points and 8.3 rebounds in 20 games for the team, before being waived last week due to injury.

(Sprunggelenksverletzung means "ankle injury", by the way.)

Summer signings, round 8

- The Knicks signed Anthony Roberson, which is the sort of move that I'm usually sceptical of, but which in this instance I'm rather pleased with. The Knicks guards, basically, are all terrible. Only a Knicks fan, or someone who likes contradicting my sweeping generalisations, could really disagree with that. But within that, they all share a common drawback - they don't shoot too well. Chris Duhon passes up more threes than he hits. Quentin Richardson may have once held the all time record for three pointers attempted in a season, but that doesn't mean he's a good three point shooter. Mardy Collins is worse at it than both. Stephon Marbury has never had good range, and he probably won't be there to open the season anyway. Jamal Crawford is a good shooter, but inefficient due to his own misguided idea of quite how good at it he is. (86% of Crawford's field goal attempts are jumpshots, which is a freakin' huge number.) This leaves only Nate Robinson, who shot a meagre 33% on three pointers last season. Roberson, if nothing else, provides them with a second decent shooter from the guard spots (or third if you count Nate, which you might want to, if you hate me and everything that I represent). So at the very least, Donnie Walsh appears to have spotted a flaw in his current roster, and found a small remedy for it. That's a start.

- Herbert Hill, renounced by the Sixers as a part of their devious cap room plan, signed with Le Mans in France. Earlier this month, Hill was arrested for DUI, and when you combine that with the fact that he didn't play a single minute in the NBA last season due to knee surgeries, you can see why he might have not seen a return to the NBA as being immedate.

- J.R. Reynolds also signed in France, with Asvel Basket. Fun fact - we bought our house from a man called J.R. Reynolds. He didn't go by "J.R.", sadly, but if I'd mentioned that before the fact, then it would have made it less spectacularly fascinating. And no one wants that.

- The Denver Nuggets are the kind of team that trades away their better players in salary dumps, carry only 13 players on the roster, and pay as many people the minimum as possible. So, true to form, they've filled out their bench with two more minimum salary players in Chris Andersen and Dahntay Jones. Having said that, a minimum salary bench foursome of Anderson, Dahntay Jones, Bobby Jones and Anthony Carter is actually quite good, so I'll shut up now. (By the way, they'd better not start Carter this year. Chucky Atkins is hardly a better alternative, but....Anthony Carter?? Seriously? Trade for a point guard or something. Jesus. Or, alternatively, keep your first round picks and draft one. I'm theorising wildly now.)

- Bobby Brown signed with Sacramento, and not Golden State as I mentioned in an earlier post. The lesson, as always - visit this website every day, but don't come here for news. Just for, you know, scathing views and pictures of Sam Cassell touching himself and salaries and stuff. Also, I'm never trusting anyone again.

- Speaking of the Warriors, they've been the busiest team in the NBA this offseason, but in one fell swoop, they pretty much finished up their business. After Kelenna Azubuike signed an offer sheet with the L.A. Clippers last week, the Warriors began negotiating with Orlando free agent guard, Maurice Evans, with whom they agreed a three year contract. However, Evans then changed his mind, and held out for more money. Golden State, rightly not willing to play silly buggers with an inconsequential player, countered by matching Azubuike's offer sheet, something which they weren't originally going to do. They then tidied up A.O.B. by trading for Marcus Williams to fill the back-up point guard spot (this actually happened beforehand, but play along), re-signed Monta Ellis to a big money long-term deal, and signed second round draft pick Richard Hendrix. A good couple of days for the Warriors then. Their only remaining drama on an otherwise completed roster is the re-signing of Andris Biedrins, which hasn't happened yet. True to form, rumours abound that a European team is about to offer Biedrins a highly competitive if not superior rate of pay. That comes to you from the incorrigable Fannation.com


- Speaking of the Clippers, a few hours before losing out on Azubuike, they made the sort of the trade that I absolutely love when they dealt Brevin Knight to Utah for their own former starlet, Jason Hart. I LOVE trades like this. Love them. How can you not? It's fantastic. It's a trade so wonderfully, awesomely pointless, that the right adjective simply does not exist. Great stuff. I've always wondered who initiates trades like this. Who picks up the phone first? Did they ring each other at the same time? What roster holes do the teams think they are filling? Did Utah, recognising their need for improved perimeter shooting, mistakenly identify Brevin Knight as the solution, inadvertently obtaining one of the only point guards in the league that shoots worse than Jason Hart? Or were both teams just in "anyone but him" mode? Good stuff. Plus, if you're a Bobcats fan, there's the added bonus of the two players involved once forming a two headed Bobcat point guard monster, and now they're being irrelevantly traded for each other. Good times all around. Stupid, but fun.


Also, speaking of the Clippers being stupid......well, the Clippers are stupid. If you take my salary figures as being entirely correct - a dangerous proposition at any time - then this is how the current Clippers salary situation looks:

Baron Davis: $11,200,000, ish.
Marcus Camby: $10,000,000
Chris Kaman: $9,500,000
Cuttino Mobley: $8,925,000
Tim Thomas: $6,049,400
Eric Gordon: $2,623,200
Jason Hart: $2,484,000
Al Thornton: $1,776,240
Nick Fazekas: $886,517 (qualifying offer/caphold, restricted free agent)
Josh Powell: $854,957
Mike Taylor: $442,114
DeAndre Jordan: $442,114

Total: $55,183,542


That, against a salary cap of $58,680,000, leaves the Clippers with just under $3.5 million to finish up their roster. It's not an exact figure, because Baron Davis's salary is not guaranteed accurate (it's within $100,000 of that, at least.) It is, however, near enough to make my point.

The reason I mention this is that, if it were for slightly better cap management, they could have even more cap space. I shall explain.

As you probably know, the salaries for first round draft picks are set by the rookie salary scale, a scale of pre-determined numbers that dictate the salary for each first round draft slot, for every year of the current CBA. There does remain a bit of room for negotiation, though - players can sign for up to 120% of the amount outlined by the scale, or for as little as 80%. It is standard for all teams to sign their players to the full 120% of the scale: it is very rare for anyone to take anything differently. (The only two players in recent years to do otherwise were Sergio Rodriguez, who took 100%, and Ian Mahinmi, who took 80% in the first year of his rookie deal to help the Spurs avoid the luxury tax. Whether he did this magnanimously, or because the Spurs wouldn't offer differently, is unclear.) Eric Gordon, as is the custom, signed for the full 120%.

However, in the window between drafting a first rounder and signing them, the draftees have a cap hold for 100% of the rookie scale only. Thus, by signing him to the 120% of the scale while still under the cap, the Clippers just lost $437,200 in cap room. ($437,200 is the difference between 120% and 100% of the rookie salary scale for the 2008 7th pick.)

This may seem inconsequential, but it might not be. If you take that $437,200, add it to the $484,000 difference between the salaries of Jason Hart and Brevin Knight, add that to the $854,957 cap hold of the completely unguaranteed salary of the completely inconsequential Josh Powell that could easily be done without, add that to the $884,228 that could have been saved by not signing Mike Taylor and DeAndre Jordan already (unsigned second round picks do not have a cap hold), add that to the $886,517 that would have been opened up had Nick Fazekas been renounced, add the $3,496,458 of cap room from the maths outlined above, and subtract $1,768,456 for the four roster charges that would be charged for only having 8 players under contract.....

.....and you get $5,274,904. That's the cap room that the Clippers COULD have right now.

As mentioned above, it's not an exact figure, but the point it demonstrates remains valid. Right now, the Clippers have just a fraction less than $3.5 million in cap room remaining, but if they'd thought about it a bit more, they could have nearly $5.3 million. It wouldn't have cost them a significant player, either: Gordon, Jordan and Taylor would still have been signed, but just a bit later. And the idea that Fazekas and Powell would have been snapped up in the mean time - or the idea that it would have mattered in any way if that had happened - is extremely far-fetched.

The Clippers could have one and a half times their current cap space.
The difference between $3.5 million and $5.3 million in cap space over the span of a 5 year contract is $10.44 million dollars. A contract starting at $3 million over 5 years with maximum raises totals $20.3 million, and a contract starting at $5.2 million with maximum raises totals $30.74 million.

To put it another way, it is potentially the difference between Hedo Turkoglu and Eduardo Najera.

But, alas, it's too late. They can still renounce Fazekas and waive Powell, but it won't be optimum. The Clippers could have traded for Marcus Camby, signed Baron Davis, and still have had as-near-as-is an MLE left over. But they won't now.

The lesson, as always - screw Danny Ainge. (No, wait, sorry - I'm just stuck on loop saying that. I mean, screw Elgin Baylor. Yeah, that one.)





- And finally, speaking of Sam Cassell touching himself, here is Sam Cassell touching himself.



That will never stop being disturbing.

Where Are They Now? Part 31

Still don't know what's wrong.

---

Don Reid hasn't played since leaving Detroit, and while there was rumours of them re-signing him not so long ago, they amounted to nothing.

Jared Reiner is playing for Bamburg in Germany, where he averages roughly 11 points and 8 rebounds.

J.R. Reynolds went undrafted and wound up playing for Vanoli Soresina, a rather poor Italian team. Reynolds averages 17.9 points, 3 and a bit rebounds, and 3 and a bit assists.

Darius Rice is a member of the "Purefoods Tender Juicy Giants" in the Phillipines, which is the greatest name for a sports team ever.

Anthony Richardson started the season for Ludwigsburg in Germany, but left for reasons that I am not sure of. Also playing for Ludwisburg - Vincent Yarborough. Awesome.

Norm "N" Richardson is fantastic, and I tracked his career like an avid fan should. After falling out of the NBA, N went to the D-League with the now-defunct North Charleston Lowgators, where he played out of position for the greater good of the team (professional!) and made Karim Shabazz look better than he was. N then went to France, where he won some kind of cup, and then announced his retirement "to pursue business interests" during the celebrations. It must have gone south, because 4 months later, N unretired and signed in Venezuela. Since then, he's been around the block, got a training camp invite one time with the Toronto Raptors, and continues to try and prove the world how brilliant he really is. This season, Norm was playing for Poloni ain Poland alongside Paul Miller, where he averaged 15.5 points, 5 rebounds and 3.5 assists, demonstrating the all-around game that made him world famous.

Rick Rickert was a member of the New Zealand Breakers this season, a team which is confusingly in Australia and not New Zealand. (No, really, it is. At the very least, it's a New Zealandish team who play in the Australian league. Answers on a postcard.) Rickert missed most of the year with a back injury, and averaged 17.8 points a game in the brief time that he did play. His team mate was former Heat guard Kirk Penney, who averaged 24 points a game. So that's nice.

Filiberto Rivera - or, if you'd prefer, Philip Rivers - is back in hs native Puerto Rico, averaging 11.6 points and 6 assists a game for a team called Baloncesto. His teammates include Bimbo Carmona, and Angela Reyes, that guy who everything thought the Bucks had signed, but they hadn't. (Darius Rice, mentioned above, played 6 games for Baloncesto, averaging 19.2 points and 6.7 rebounds a game. Carmona averages 19.4 ppg and 6.3 rpg.)

Anthony Roberson is playing for Beykozspor in Turkey, and the usual comment about Turkish statistics applies here. (I.E. there are none.)

Lawrence Roberts signed for Olympiakos in Greece for two years back in the summertime, but left before playing a game. I used to know why, but I forgot.

Bernard Robinson was waived by New Orleans immediately after being acquired on the day before opening day, and has not played since season. He may or may not be injured.


BONUS OLUMIDE OYDEJI NEWS: Olumide signed today for Granada in Spain as a replacement for Michael Bradley, who was let go due to being shit. Good times. Well, not for Michael Bradley.