"I don't have to shoot from more than two feet. I'm top 50. I've got 23,000 from where I shoot." - Shaq after Danny Fortson challenged him to take more jumpshots.
Despite coming from the unpleasant town of Aldershot, Joel Freeland has turned into a fine player. Still in Spain, Freeland has moved from Gran Canaria to Unicaja Malaga, lured by the promise of Euroleague ball. Freeland is averaging 9.9 points and 5.0 rebounds in 19 minutes per game in the Euroleague, alongside 11.5/4.5 in 20mpg in the ACB.
It's not just my national bias talking - although that inevitably factors - but Joel Freeland is awesome. He has size, athleticism and skill; decent offense, decent rebounding and decent defense. He's not a star player, but he's a rotation calibre NBA player and all around superhero. Taking him 30th in 2006 was an Eyenga-level gamble by the Blazers, but it's worked, and while his selection is not enough to justify trading down from 3rd to 6th in 2005 (thus going from Chris Paul to Martell Webster), it certainly helps.
Freije is playing in his homeland, Lebanon. Despite being born in Bismarck, North Dakota, Freije has some kind of ties to Lebanon in his heritage and now represents them at international level. I have absolutely no numbers for Freije's play with the Lebanese club Sporting Al Riyadi, but at the Asian Championships this summer, Freije averaged 15.7 points and 4.6 rebounds. He also likes to spend his summers in Puerto Rico, where he averaged 20.3 points and 6.8 rebounds in 30 games last year.
Freije has a Canadian/Lebanese teammate called Omar El Turk, who sounds more like an Anchorman character.
Russian international swingman Vitaly Fridzon is into his fifth season with Khimky, averaging 9.6 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game in the Russian league, 9.4/3.0/2.8 in the VTB United League, and 6.5/2.4/2.0 in the Euroleague.
Ex-Fresno State forward Hiram Fuller is now a Libyan national, via means entirely different to those of Matt Freije. Fuller represented Libya at the 2009 African Championships under the name of Hesham Ali Salem; amongst his teammates was ex-Bulls forward Randy Holcomb, known then as Raed Farid Elhamali. I don't think I want to know how this happened.
For his domestic basketballl, Fuller has gone to Mexico, where he averages 14.5 points and 6.8 rebounds for Fuerza Regia Monterrey.
Gadson is in the D-League, playing for the Dakota Wizards. He is averaging 9.9 points and 3.7 assists per game.
Gadson is also one of the few people covered on this website that used to play in the British Basketball League. (And by "few", I mean very few. It's him, Andy Betts, and that might be about it. Not even Joel Freeland did that.) For the Brighton Bears in late 2005, Gadson averaged 21/5/5 on a team that featured Luol Deng's brother, Ajou. The head coach and owner of that team was Nick Nurse, who now coaches the Iowa Energy. Nurse wanted to move the Bears to the D-League, but the move didn't come off, so he went back to the States without them.
The Brighton Bears then folded and no longer exist.
Even before he signed with the L.A. Lakers for training camp, Massachusetts graduate Gaffney had signed with Galil Gilboa in Israel. The team let him come back to America for camp, and he rejoined them after the Lakers waived him. However, Gaffney played in only one game for the team before breaking his foot. He was released from his contract and is now back in America rehabbing.
Gai then moved to the USBL for the rest of that season with the Dodge City Legend, and spent the 2006-07 season with the Wilmington Sea Dawgs in the ABA. (Spelling it Dawgs will make it appeal to youngsters!) He spent another summer in the USBL in 2007 with the Albany Patroons, then moved to Poland for the 2007-08 season, where he averaged 4.8 points, 2.9 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game in the Polish league for ASCO Slask Wroclaw.
All four of those teams have now moved on or gone under. Slask Wroclaw went bankrupt; their second team became their first team, and they play in a faraway Polish lower league, out of sight and mind. The Sea Doggies moved to the ABA to the PBL in 2007, and have moved again this year to the Continental Basketball League, an upstart league born out of the ashes of the old Continental Basketball Association that currently features four teams and will begin its first ever season shortly. The Patroons returned to the CBA in time for its final season, but died when the CBA did. And the entire USBL no longer exists, although there are small whispers of a rebirth after two years out of the rotation. Nothing to reinforce it, though.
Similarly, since leaving Poland, Deng Gai has disppaeared from the basketball map. The only thing I can find about him is his Facebook page. And his name is more common than you might think, which makes Googling info on him harder than you might think.
Deng Gai fact: The aforementioned Ajou Deng is Luol Deng's brother, and Deng Gai is Luol's cousin. The clue was in the name, I think.
Charles Gaines is currently 8th in China in rebounds, and 2nd in scoring. Loyal readers will know already that that means big numbers, and Gaines' line doesn't disappoint; 38.8mpg, 29.6ppg, 11.2rpg, 1.5apg, 1.1bpg, 2.1spg, 63% FG, 71% FT. Only a few short hours ago he shot 14-17 en route to 33 points and 8 rebounds in a win over Stephon Marbury's Shaanxi team. Got to love Chinese basketball.
After three years in Italy, Gaines has taken the unusual step of joining the D-League this season. It's unusual because he's 29 years old and not on the verge of a call-up, so there doesn't seem to be a lot of reason for the big paycut. Playing for the Bakersfield Jam, Gaines is averaging 13.5 points, 4.0 assists and 2.7 rebounds in 33 minutes per game, shooting 48% from the field and 40% from three point range. Solid all around numbers, but only solid.
Reece Gaines fact: Reece Gaines's first name is Clifton. That is all.
Gansey has not had a great professional career. After going undrafted out of West Virginia in 2006, he signed with the Miami Heat after summer league, but did not make the team after nearly dying of MRSA. He missed that season, and while he returned in the 2007-08 season, he posted only 10ppg in the Italian second divison. This was perhaps expected given the whole near-death thing, and definitely fair, but nonetheless a slow start. Last season saw only an 8.7ppg average in the German league, and he returned to America this season with his three year professional career still not exactly underway.
In the D-League draft, Gansey was picked with the 2nd pick of the 6th round by the Idaho Stampede, inauspiciously ranked behind such as Derrick Mercer of American and backup Duke forward David McClure. He played in 11 games for the Stampede, and averaged only 9.6 points and 4.2 rebounds, still not quite cooking on the gas he was at West Virginia. But then in January, Idaho traded him to the Erie BayHawks for Donell Taylor, and that was opened the floodgates. In 14 games for Erie, Gansey's averages have shot up to 18.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per game, way more like his glory days. Erie are making him put work in; he averages 44.1 minutes per game and has played all 48 minutes in 6 of 14 games, and played 52 of 53 in another. But after missing so much of the early part of his career, that's probably a welcome proposition.
Garbajosa played for Khimky last season, alongside Vitaly Fridzon. Khimky made the final of the Eurocup as favourites before losing to Chuck Eidson's Lieutuvos Rytas team. He left Russia after only one season and returned to his native Spain, joining up with Real Madrid. He is averaging 7.4 points and 3.7 rebounds per game in the ACB, alongside 8.5 points and 4.1 rebounds per game in the Euroleague.
As always, if you want to keep tracks of the transaction of these players without having to wait until every January, use the transaction indexes for all three of the NBA, the D-League and the world at large. Every relevant transaction is in there. Even the Taiwanese ones.
- Richie Frahm has not been signed since his not exactly explosive summer league performance with the Dallas Mavericks summer league team. I watched all of those Mavericks VSL games, and Frahm - a shooter - often chose not to shoot, which seemed silly on a team clearly auditioning shooters. Other things that I learnt from these games: Reyshawn Terry's a decent shooter, Shan Foster's a very good one (the last update excluded), Keith McLeod remains terrible at all manner of shotmaking, and Renaldas Seibutis is still having an identity crisis. And Rick Kamla's side parting is one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
- British LEGEND Joel Freeland (a legend if only for the fact that he's English) is in his third year with Gran Canaria, Spain. And he's finally getting somewhere. Freeland averages 10.3 points and 4.2 rebounds in the Spanish league, numbers that rise to 15.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in Eurocup play. If Greg Oden continues to disappoint, then......well, sod that, Joel Freeland is already better than him. FACT. (Note: not a fact.)
- Matt Freije started the season in Lebanon of all places (is it Lebanon, or The Lebanon?), before moving to China. For Fujian SBS XunXin, Freije averages 19.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and 1.2 blocks, shooting 37% from three point range. His high scoring teammate is the seminal Chris Porter, who is into his fourth season with the team, with a short Philippines break in between. Porter averages 23.7 points, 13.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists, shooting 41% from three point range. But I think he's had it cut.
- Hiram Fuller was recently part of the Pau Orthez turnover, and left the team earlier this month. In his 6 games with the team, Fuller averaged 6.0 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 3.2 fouls.
- Lawrence Funderburke is out of the news, seemingly dining out on the success of his two books. I have read neither. Have you? Additionally, his youth foundation have made a new range of videos, which is exciting.
- Cheyne Gadson started the season with International Rescue, averaging 16 points and 5.4 turnovers in 5 games, before he was traded to the L.A. D-Fenders. In 11 games, Gadson averaged 8 points, before leaving the team without permission earlier this month. Not a great idea.
- Deng Gai has not played since a brief stay in Poland last year. As you may already know, Deng Gai is a part of the big Deng family of basketball players, highlighted by Luol. Luol's cousin is called Kur Deng, and he plays (or used to play) for North Iowa CC. He's 23 and could barely crack their team, averaging 2 and 2. One of Luol's seven brothers is Ajou Deng, a professional player in England who went to college at Fairfield, as did the aforementioned Deng Gai (Luol and Ajou's cousin), who briefly played for the Sixers. (There's another brother who plays professionally called Deng Deng. He's somehow worse than all of them.) Bonus Dengs fact - Luol used to go by the name Michael. Is this section getting confusing? I hope so.
- Reece Gaines averages 14,4 points, 2.5 2.9 assists and 2.5 steals for Angelico Biella in the Italian league. A sack of shit he may have been in the NBA, but he's put together a decent European career. That sentence wasn't particularly grammatically sound, but the message was.
- Charles Gaines is but another of the San Antonio Spurs's training camp signings currently stashed away on their D-League affiliate, the Austin Toros. Gaines averages 14.3 points and 10.3 rebounds, although the D-League's official website lists his birthdate as January 1st, 1900, which makes him the second oldest player in the D-League behind Geno Carlisle.
- Mike Gansey is averaging 5.8 points and 3.4 rebounds for the struggling German team, J.R. Bremerhaven.
- Jorge Garbajosa is playing for Khimky in Russia, averaging 8.3 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.9 assists in Russian league play, along with 9.0 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists in Eurocup play. And I've finally got his buyout amount.
- Alex Garcia is back in his native Brazil, where he averages 17 points and 9 rebounds for Pinheiros. This post died away a bit at the end, didn't it?
All those who read my diary type thingy from last year's preseason game in London will notice how I have a little bit of problem with Five's marketing policy of the sport, which seems to want to solely appeal to the "hip hop" (which you can probably go ahead and change to "young black") market. Of the ten courtside interviews conducted that day (Brian Scalabrine excluded), all ten were of black celebrities, this coming immediately after an advertising campaign exclusively focused on the street demographic. (If that last sentence wasn't enough of a clue, I'm white. Bravo, top hole, jolly good chap, rather bracing, tea and scones, "I say Biggles, how awfully uncouth", et cetera. Basically I'm from a Battle Of Britain war film.)
Apparently my opinion fell on deaf ears, though. This may have been my faultWhy Five Suck for never actually voicing it to anyone other than your powerless selves, but still. I was right, and changes needed to be made.
They weren't.
Right now, our national team is making the headlines, and actually becoming significant on the world stage. With Luol Deng, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Joel Freeland, Dan Clark, Nate Reinking and (hopefully) Ben Gordon in our team now, amongst others, we finally have a side worth knowing about in Europe, and we've recently qualified for the European Championships, after only recently being so bad of a basketball nation that we were ranked behind Chinese Taipei in the world rankings. In addition to this, the NBA apparently loves us and our swanky new arena, resulting in the rare but special sight of an annual proper NBA game played in this country. (Note to other countries out there: if you build a spectacularly pointless dome shaped building to "celebrate" the new Millennium, then after you flush millions of pounds down the shitter as it struggles to be financially viable for the one year of its existence, it eventually becomes worthwhile when you completely rebuild and re-design it into something entirely different to what it was before! FISCAL FINANCIAL PLANNING FTW!). For the first time since I've been alive, and for the first time perhaps ever, basketball has a modiocum of significance in this country.
And who do we get to bring the sport to the general public? Why, it's only the blackest fifty one year old white man in rural Lowestoft, Tim bloody Westwood.
Just not good enough, is it?.
Try a bit harder next time. Find someone who knows something about the game, rather than vapid "celebrity" interviews of people who pretend to love the game but only when doing so gets them free airtime. Try and blag some interviews with the NBA people on show, or even with some of the American press sent to cover the game. Fuck it, interview me. I scrub up all right in a tie, and I actually know proper English words and stuff about basketball and stuff. I also don't gesticulate with my hands like a crack addled twat, and pensioners love me. I look perhaps a bit too much like Andrew Bogut to be good TV material, but......Tim Westwood? Are you kidding me?
Can you see why we might not have the biggest fan base for the sport in this country?
I don't care what colour they are, but let's try and get some people who know of the sport that they supposedly "love". Maybe the broadcast could then be used to relay some interesting facts, snippets or insights into the game. And then maybe it could be used to inform and entertain the public. You know, like they did back in the olden days.
Alton Ford, ex-Suns forward, is playing in the Bosnian league. The Bosnian league. That's all I have to say about that.
Sharrod Ford, another former Sun if for a few days, is playing for Premiata Montegranaro in Italy.
Danny Fortson's big contract expired finally last season, and Seattle had no interest in re-signing him. He has not played since.
Tremaine Fowlkes has one-upped Alton Ford in the "who can sign in the most obscure basketball league around" sweepstakes, by signing for Al Jalaa Aleppo in the Syrian league. The effing Syrian league. How about that? He's not even the only ex-NBA'er on the roster, but we'll come to that later. (I have no doubt that the Syrian league pays well, though.) Fowlkes has also recently signed up to play next season for the "Fresno Legends", an expansion ABA franchise that, like all expansion ABA franchises, has pretty much no hope of survival. I'd think about sticking in Syria, Tremaine. (Note: the idea that this ABA franchise is doomed before it even begins is purely speculative and somewhat slanderous.)
Joel Freeland is playing for Gran Canaria in Spain. He's also going to be awesome. You heard it here first, unless you heard it from somewhere else first.
Deng Gai - Luol Deng's cousin, who joined the Sixers for one training camp and who had absolutely no shot at making the team - is playing for Slask in Poland, smiling toothy smiles at the pretty ladies as they go by. (Maybe.)
In the most eagerly anicipated news of the last 14 years, Reece Gaines is playing for Benetton Treviso in Italy. You probably know that Benetton Treviso is a good team, and therefore it's weird to see Reece Gaines there. Well, I'd explain it to you if I could, but I can't. Also, some bonus "What Happened To Shitty Ex-Magic Guards" information: Jeryl Sasser is playing for Al Arabi in Kuwait (see comments re: Syria), alongside his brother Jason. So that's fun.
Alex Garcia is playing for Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Israel (more specifically, in Tel-Aviv). I've said it before (I think), but I'll say it again - the NBA scrub fest that Tel Aviv has on offer is pretty special. Garcia, Vonteego Cummings, Marcus Fizer, Yotam Halperin, Terence Morris, Lior Eliyahu, Will Bynum, Esteban Batista, David Blunthenal, Nikola Vujcic.......
Hiram Fuller spent some time in France and is now playing for Mayaguez in Puerto Rico.
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.
- Joel Freeland
- Matt Freije
- Vitaly Fridzon
- Hiram Fuller
- Lawrence Funderburke
- Cheyne Gadson
- Tony Gaffney
- Deng Gai
- Charles Gaines
- Reece Gaines
- Mike Gansey
- Jorge Garbajosa
