Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 17

It's days like yesterday that remind me of why I spent a good three weeks of my life making the anagram feature. Greg Oden's anagram is "engorged," and by Jove did that turn out to be fitting(ish). In amongst the two hundred and seventy jillion jokes made about Oden's goods the other day, none seemed more apt than that.

The day Tayshaun Prince comes out as a lingerie model is the day I start worrying if those things are actually premonitions.


- Dan Dickau

Dickau signed with the Suns for preseason, instead of signing with the Celtics as was first thought. He played in 5 preseason games, totalling 14 points and 7 assists in 39 minutes, but did not make the team. He was never going to, really, because even though the Suns had open roster spots to play for, they're the Suns. Since being waived by Phoenix, Dickau has not signed elsewhere, which seems strange for a 31 year old man whose career will be on the downslope soon. Perhaps he's injured.



- Kaniel Dickens

Dickens is in France, averaging 9.3 points and 3.8 rebounds per game for Nancy. However, he has been unbelievably inconsistent with his scoring. In 12 games, he's scored in double figures only four times, with three of those games being 22 points or more, and with with six other games of scoring 4 points or lower. His scoring totals on the season read 8, 6, 24,4, 0, 28, 3, 1, 11, 2, 22, 2. Can't get much more up and downy than that. That's like a hummingbird's heart monitor.



- Michael Dickerson

Dickerson made a surprising return to basketball in training camp 2008 when he signed with the Cavaliers after five years out of the game. He did not make the team - he was never going to - and then he sat out the rest of the year. I think I read somewhere that he went back to touring the world, which is what he'd been doing since his initial retirement.

Dickerson then tried again this summer when he tried out with the Memphis Grizzlies. Another training camp offer was not forthcoming, but this time Dickerson took his game elsewhere when he signed in the Spanish second division in early December, joining a team called Palencia. He has played four contests for the team, playing in professional games for the first time since March 2003; in those 4 games, Dickerson has totalled 87 minutes, 47 points, 12 rebounds and 0 assists. The Spanish second division is quite a ways below the standard he used to play at, but it's still a gig. And as a 34 year old man coming back from 7 years out of action after retiring due to injury, it's a pretty good start.



- Alain Digbeu

After a decade split between Italy, Greece and Spain, Digbeu returned to his native France this past summer. He signed with Strasbourg and averaged 11.1 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game in 8 contests, but Strasbourg got off to a terrible start, and Digbeu was one of many players released in a bid to shake things up. (His replacement, Anthony Roberson, is currently second in the French league in scoring. So it worked.) Digbeu remains unsigned, and was injured at the time of his release. Giggidy.

A while ago, I touted the idea of the New Orleans Hornets trading Hilton Armstrong to the Clippers and Ike Diogu to the Hawks (in exchange for Digbeu's rights) to get under the tax. The Hornets didn't quite do this; they salary dumped Armstrong, but onto the Kings (whom I hadn't previously considered candidates for reasons I'm not sure of), and moved Bobby Brown to the Clippers, as was their perogative. I don't think they gave up any cash in the Brown deal, which would explain its advantages over salary dumping Diogu, but that in itself is a rather damning slant on their finances; they'd rather trade a healthy player at a position where they need depth, rather than pay a few quid to dump an injured player whose salary is keeping them in the tax territory and who will not play for them this season.

It's also not a glowing endorsement of Bobby Brown, really.



- Vlade Divac

This time last year, when we checked in on Vlade Divac, he was trying to become the President of the Serbian Olympic Committee. A few weeks after that post, he did just that, signing a four year commitment to the role.



- Juan Dixon

Dixon was one of the Hawks eight training camp signings, and later one of their seven cuts. He later moved to Greece and signed with Aris Thessaloniki, where he formed a backcourt with Keydren Clark, the former two time NCAA scoring leader. After a few weeks of those two not passing to each other, Aris changed things up and released Dixon, who had averaged 11.6 ppg and who then went on to sign with Unicaja Malaga a couple of weeks ago. Dixon is off to a blazing hot start with Malaga, scoring 17 points in his first Euroleague game with the team, and averaging 23ppg in his first two ACB games.

Did you know Juan Dixon's parents were both heroin addicts who died of AIDS when Juan was 16? I did not know that. What a horrible thing that is. Good for Juan to have become what he's become.



- Nigel Dixon

Florida State/Western Kentucky product Dixon is signed with South Korea, and has split the season between two teams. He started with the Anyang KT&G Kites, for whom he averaged 17.5 points and 8.1 rebounds in only 20 minutes per game, and then he moved to Sonic Boom KT, where he remains and for whom he is averaging 8.7 points and 4.6 rebounds in 24 minutes per game. The first one of those is a lot lot lot better than the other.

Between the two teams, Dixon is shooting 62% from the field and 43% from the foul line. Those are both very Nigel Dixon-like numbers.



- Michael Doleac

Doleac has retired from basketball and now studies at the University of Utah. He initially planned to study medicine, but changed his mind after becoming a father, and instead returned to do a master's degree in physics. Doleac is now also training to be a teacher, and serves as the graduate manager there for the university's basketball team.



- Henry Domercant

Domercant is into his second season with Montepaschi Siena, who lead Italy's SerieA with a 15-0 record. Siena last year got to the quarter finals of the Euroleague (losing to eventual champions Panathinaikos), went 29-1 in SerieA's regular season, and later won the championship. So they're pretty good. Domercant, a scoring machine and holder of a dubious Bosnian passport, averages 9.8 points in the Euroleague and 9.1 points in SerieA.

On Sunday, the 15-0 Montepaschi Siena are due to meet the 0-15 Martos Napoli, who have lost their last 4 games by a combined 324 points. This can only end well.



- Quincy Douby

As mentioned in an earlier post, Douby currently leads the Turkish league in scoring. He signed with the Toronto Raptors towards the end of last season, signing through 2010 with conditional guarantees along the way. He was waived in November to avoid one of these guarantees, and did not play a game for the team this season. Douby is now a member of the last placed 1-15 Turkish team Darussafaka, where he averages 21.9 points per game and yet is unable to stave off the losing. At the weekend, for example, Douby put up 23 points in 28 minutes - along with a very un-Doubyike 3 steals and 3 blocks - yet Darussafaka still lost by 26. The team's second highest scorer in that game was Jermareo Davidson. And no team should look to Jermareo Davidson to be the second leading scorer. The domestic players for Faka are not really contributing a damn thing, and that's why they are where they are.



- Marcus Douthit

Providence graduate and former Lakers draft pick Douthit signed in Russia to start this month, but has not played much, nor has he played well. In four games for Krasnie Krilya Samara, split between the Russian Superleague and the EuroChallenge, Douthit has totalled 47 minutes, 16 points, 14 rebounds and 10 fouls, shooting 38% from the field and 66% from the foul line.



Finally.....

- Zabian Dowdell

Dowdell spent last year in the Italian second division, which was perhaps an odd place for him to be given that he is capable of more than that. Dowdell got injured in the summer, which kept him out of action for a few months, and then last month he joined up with the Tulsa 66ers of the D-League. He averaged 12.9 points, 3.0 rebounds and 3.7 assists per games for the team, but only lasted for 10 games before moving on to Unicaja Malaga to pair up with Juan Dixona bove. In 23 minutes of 2 games for Malaga, Dowdell has totalled 5 points, 2 rebounds and 1 assist.



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.

Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 13

- Carlos Delfino is still with Khimky in Russia, despite the rumours of a return to the Raptors ramping up a bit after Toronto dumped Hassan Adams off to the Clippers a fortnight ago. However, while these rumours may not be unfounded, they sure are illogical. Let me tell you why the Raptors dumped Hassan Adams - they dumped Hassan Adams because Brian Colangelo gave Adams a guaranteed contract in July, something which Hassan then used as an excuse to not work very hard, showing up fat and unable to do the one thing that he's quite good at - running around off the ball. Additionally, Hassan Adams is not very good, which in hindsight was another reason not to give him that guaranteed contract. However, because Colangelo did, he brought the team so close to the tax threshold ($1,107 beneath it, to be exact) that the team could only carry 13 players in order to stay under it. When their big man injury situation got so bad that they had to sign somebody (Jake Voskuhl), the Raptors had to shift a contract in order to get underneath the threshold again. Adams was the logical choice - he was the final man on the bench, filled no team needs, had an appropriately sized yet easily moveable, and should never have been on the team in the first place. So the Raptors gave the Clippers some money as an incentive for taking on Hassan's dead weight cap number. THAT'S why the Raptors moved Hassan Adams. It wasn't a precursor to some move for Carlos bloody Delfino.

Let me ask you something - when you're so staunchly obliged to stay under the luxury tax that you can't even sign the irrelevant Jake Voskuhl without having to make corresponding roster moves to free up the money, while carrying the league minimum players all season in a bid to save further money, are you really going to throw a few million at a backup wing player, who just played his supposed career season with you and who still wasn't very good, chucking like Berry and somehow managing to shoot slightly less than his piss poor career average of 40% shooting? No, no you aren't. No matter how desperate you are for a short term fix,, Carlos Delfino isn't it. He's especially not it when obtaining him means roundly buggering your extremely delicate salary situation. And so that's why the Raptors won't be signing Carlos Delfino this season. Or if they do, they're dumb.

(By the way, Delfino averages 11.4 points and 4.1 rebounds in Russian league play. It's all good information.)

- Tony Delk retired from professional basketball in November 2007. This retirement lasted a mere manner of months, as he quickly unretired to join a team in Puerto Rico. Three games later, Delk retired again, and is now a "technical advisor" to that same Puerto Rican team, the Gigantes of Carolina. I assume that this means he mends the Jumbotron every now and then, and plays lots of Minesweeper.

- Derrick Dial is currently in the D-League with the Tulsa 66ers, which isn't really the place for 33 year old journeyman. Nevertheless, Dial is there, and he averages 11.3 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 38% shooting, as the sixth man on a Tulsa team that averages 21.3 turnovers a game. And that's a lot of turnovers.

- Dimitris Diamantidis is in his fifth season with Panathinaikos, averaging 10.4 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.6 assists in Euroleague play.

[Did I really just say "chucking like Berry"? Jesus. You'd better go. I wouldn't read me either.]

- Guillermo Diaz averages 17.6 points and 2.0 assists for Eldo Caserta, the Italian team that Jamar Butler also just joined. The 2.0 assists is a team high (tied with Butler, although Butler has played only three games), so there's clearly not a lot of passing from the Eldo backcourt there. Although that's probably not that surprising, coming from a backcourt featuring Guillermo Diaz, Horace Jenkins and Shan Foster.

- Dan Dickau is unsigned, and still trying to add to his healthy old list of NBA Teams That Dan Dickau Has Belonged To For At Least 8 Minutes - the Lakers are supposedly interested in him.

- Kaniel Dickens is in the Italian second division. He was in the first division, but his team - Napoli - went bankrupt, and so Kaniel had to look elsewhere. For Cimberio Varese, playing alongside Randolph Childress, Dickens averages 14.3 points and 7.1 rebounds, both team highs. While writing Kaniel's name just now, I noticed that an anagram of it happened to be "Dick Linesnake", which might just be the best name for a male porn star that I've ever heard. That, or he's an Anchorman character. Good times.

- Michael Dickerson's random comeback didn't last very long. Signing with the Cavaliers for training camp, after five and a half years out of the game, Dickerson faced impossible odds to make the team, and didn't overcome them. After being waived, Dickerson went back where he came from - to India, on a voyage of "spiritual discovery". Alrighty.

- Alain Digbeu - some old French git whsoe rights the Hawks still own - started the season with Kavala/Panorama in Greece (a team that seemingly couldn't decide which name to use), but left earlier this month. Whether he jumped or whether he was pushed, I couldn't say, but the 7.1 points per game on 36% shooting probably made him livewithoutable.

- And finally, an update on two players that have already been mentioned, but whose circumstances have since changed. Justin Frazier has signed with the San Antonio Spurs on a ten day contract, although what the Spurs think they'll see in those ten days that Austin hasn't shown over the last 12 years is a bit baffling. And, after describing at reasonable length how former Lakers guard Maurice Carter was seemingly out of basketball, he has just this week gotten back into it, as he was acquired by the Rio Grande Valley Vipers of the D-League.

Spooky coincidence? Maybe. But I'd like to think that I'm responsible for him getting employment. I'm not, but I like to think it anyway.

Summer signings, round 28

- Continuing a recent tradition, the Knicks signed Allan Houston for training camp, seemingly not telling him at any point that he's just not going to make the roster. Don't worry, we won't call it a comeback. Their other camp signee, swingman Dan Grunfeld, has equally little chance, but he's going to enjoy his moment in the spotlight nonetheless.

- The Lakers chose to re-sign Didier Ilunga-Mbenga because he's tall and nimble, the fact that he's about to turn 28 and has never doen a damn thing be damned.

- Jamon Gordon has signed with Trikala in Greece. Insert your own yodelling reference.

- Three months after drafting him, and many weeks after pretty much all other first rounders were signed, the San Antonio Spurs finally took care of business and signed George Hill. More importantly, however, they also signed Salim Stoudamire. I'm sort of happy about this. Salim's a good player and a good fit for the Spurs, but he's now one of 18 players on a 15 man roster, and one of only a few without a guaranteed contract. Also, if San Antonio decides to keep an extra shooter - and they should - then the odds favour Desmon Farmer, a man coming off a blazingly hot season down in the D-League, and no less of a fringe NBA talent than Salim. Desmon's advantage over Stoudamire is that he is of a nromal shooting guard's height, whereas Salim is a comparative midget. With Hill now signed, Tony Parker as the lifelong starter and Jacque Vaughn here whether they like it or not, the Spurs probably won't want four guards that are 6'2 or under. And that's a damn shame.

- The Carl Landry saga is finally over, and in a really shoddy way. After maintaining for ages that they wanted the MLE (or at least, that's what we public were told), Landry and his agent Buddy Baker ended up signing a paltry 3 year, $9 million offer sheet from the Charlotte Bobcats. The Rockets matched almost instantly, scarcely able to believe their good fortune. When was the last time someone held out until training camp, and won? Carl Landry hasn't. Sasha Pavlovic didn't. Anderson Varejao didn't. So, Ben Gordon, if you're watching.....let's end the charade. In additional Rockets news, GM Daryl Morey says here that he expects Maarty Leunen to sign with a club "associated" with Efes Pilsen in Turkey. God knows what that means.

- Juan Dixon has returned to the Wizards as a half-arsed but far cheaper replacement for Roger Mason Jr, who signed with the Spurs earlier this summer. On an non-guaranteed minimum salary contract, it's a good move for Washington, but one which leaves Linton Johnson stuck on the outside as the 16th man. Damn you and your guaranteed contract, Stewie Griffin.

- Kaniel Dickens signed with Italian club Napoli way back in the day, but since that date, Napoli have found themselves in trouble for cooking the books, not paying proper taxes or pension payments. Their registration in the Italian league has since been revoked, and Dickens has left the team. He has stayed in Italy, however, and signed with Varese. Gary Forbes, another player who recently signed with Napoli, has also left the team, and is as yet unsigned.

- Former Raptors camp fodder LaVell Blanchard has signed with AEL Limassol in Cyprus. Cypriot basketball news! Right here! Get some!

- Omar Cook signed for Malaga in Spain. If you take a keen interest in those NBA players (or near-NBA players) who wind up playing for other countries because they can obtain passports based on residence (such as Jabari Smith playing for Qatar, J.R. Bremer playing for Bosnia, or Chris Kaman playing for Germany), then add this one to your list - Omar Cook has received a Montenegran passport, and will probably play for their national team once they commence international competition next year. Other eligible Montenegran players that you may have heard of include Nikola Pekovic (31st pick of the Timberwolves in this year's draft), Mladen Sekularac (2002 second round pick of Dallas, now belonging to Golden State after he was thrown into the Erick Dampier trade), Predrag Drobnjak (smelly journeyman), Zarko Cabarkapa (former Warriors first rounder whose back held him back), and Slavko Vranes (Knicks second rounder in 2003 - very tall, very bad). Good information all.

- Jiri Hubalek is the name of the man unflatteringly referred to in this post as "some white guy". That post mentions how Hubalek (going under the pseudonym of "some white guy") was to sign with the Phoenix Suns for training camp. Well, scratch that - Hubalek has instead signed with Solsonica Rieti in Italy. If you're eagerly awaiting news of who replaces him in Phoenix, wait until the next post. If you can.

- Finally, Robert Pack has packed it all in, and has been hired as an assistant coach for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers of the D-League. That right there represents the best pun that I've ever made. Pity me.

Summer signings, round 24

- As the old saying goes, no news is good news, except when there's no news about Alain Digbeu. But thankfully, there now is some! Huzzah! Digbeu has signed with Kavala Panorama in Greece, the team that also just signed Cavaliers guard Billy Thomas from off the street. Insert flippant comment.

- Speaking of the Cavaliers, the guy that Cleveland signed at the same time as Thomas - forward Kaniel Dickens - has signed with Napoli, where he'll sign heads and flavour bounces with the best of them.

- Still speaking of the Cavaliers, they also signed their second round pick this year, Darnell Jackson. The latest season of the British version of Big Brother featured an albino black guy named Darnell and, for those who can't imagine it, here's what an albino black guy looks like:


Thus marks the first and only time Big Brother will be referenced on this website. Christ it's bad.

- Sebastiani Rieti is another Italian team, apparently one with problems getting Americans to like them. In recent months, the club signed both Donnell Harvey and Tim Pickett, but both players have already been dumped by the team. Pickett's contract was voided by the team after he twice told them he had arrived in Italy when he hadn't, and Harvey was kicked off the team for "disciplinary" reasons before even playing a game for them. Donnell Harvey also failed to turn up for the Bobcats summer league team this year citing a "family emergency", so things haven't gone quite right for him of late. To replace either or both of these players, the team has already signed Roderick Wilmont, and is (or was) expected to sign Ricky Minard, which is great news if 2004 Sacramento Kings second round picks is your thing.

- Arvydas Macijauskas was waived by Olympiakos after breaking his foot. Man. They're strict in Europe. Hurt yourself? You're off the team. Tough break. Tough on injuries, tough on the causes of injuries.

- Marcus Slaughter has signed with Bremerhaven in Germany, a team not named after J.R. Bremer's pubes, despite how it may appear.

- And finally, the Golden State Warriors remain busy. After drafting Kosta Perovic back in 2006, the Warriors then waited a year before signing him to a three year contract that ranged somewhere between 5 and 6 million dollars last offseason. Twelve months and ten points later, that experiment has already ended, as the Warriors waived Perovic so that he can sign a three year contract with Pamesa Valencia of Spain. Once again, Chris Mullin gets away with his own mistake, and us salary people are excused from making excuses for Kosta's weird salary. In addition to this move, the Warriors signed two scrubs for training camp named DeMarcus Nelson (because Marcus is never enough) and Rob Kurz.

They also signed Dion Dowell, but you knew that already.

Summer signings, round 21

This edition of our fun and voluptuous Summer Signings is highlighted by the fact that there's almost no one in it that you've ever heard of. If all the players in this list get into 80 NBA games combined next season, I will be shocked. In fact, I'll be justifiably flummoxed if even three of them make a roster. It's a sparse'un this time. Onward.

- Casey Jacobsen has signed with ALBA Berlin in Germany. In a previous blog post, I asked semi-mockingly for someone to do some research into which players have been to the German league and still been able to come back to the NBA. Two people mentioned Jacobsen, who was the German league finals NBA in 2007 before spending last season on the bench for the Memphis Grizzlies. This move completes the Grizzly German sandwich (giggidy), but it doesn't really undermine my insinuation that the German league is a bit shit, does it? Casey Jacobsen is all right, but a fringe NBA player. In between these two German stints, he scored 107 points on 115 shots in the NBA, as his jumpshot decided to take the year off. And now he's gone back to Germany where he'll probably star once again and become a champion of the serfs. What does this say about the German league? Basically nothing more than what I've already implied - it's a bit weak.

By the way, one of the two people who told me about C-Jake was an agent, who shall remain nameless. In Googling to see whether this nameless man is, or has even been, Casey Jacsobsen's agent, I found this search result:

"casey jacobsen girlfriend ipmessage lolita masturbation free pregnant women having sex"

So, something for everyone there.


- In a bizarre move, the likes of which have never previously been seen as interesting, the Suns and the Rockets swapped young guards D.J. Strawberry and Sean Singletary. This move is interesting (if you're a nerd) because it's a move that could save both teams money. The Rockets are trying to save money to be able to re-sign Carl Landry and Dikembe Mutombo without paying the lxury tax too much, if at all, and the Suns are trying to save money because they're the Suns. So in this deal, they may have both found what they were looking for. With the minimum of 13 players under contract once Goran Dragic officially signs his deal, the Suns depth chart is pretty much done, and Strawberry figured to be the last man on it again. However, as a second year player, he was to earn the minimum of $711,517, whereas a rookie on the minumum would earn only $442,114. Therefore, swapping Strawberry and Singletary saves the Suns the difference between those two sums ($269,403), doubled for tax ($538,806), and yet they lose nothing on the court, because neither player is going to take it. (Note: Singletary's salary is only partially guaranteed, contrary to what it says elsewhere on this webshite, but he'll make the team anyway, because if he doesn't, they'll have to pay someone else as well.) The Rockets meanwhile take on the more expensive player, but Strawberry's contract is not guaranteed, and so they save the whole of Singletary's salary, while also losing nothing on the court. It's all very interesting stuff if you're the kind of person that will forego a social life and regular sex in order to reinvest that time into calculating Greg Buckner's trade kicker.

(Note: If the Rockets keep Strawberry, then forget I said anything.)


- Joe Crawford has signed with the Lakers for training camp where he can once again do what he did in summer league and outplay Coby Karl. While challenging Tim Duncan to a fight.

- Kaniel Dickens has signed with Napoli, in Italy. See how obsure the list is this time around? Kaniel Dickens represents one of the bigger name players on it. At least he actually played in the NBA last year. That's more than what this next fella did.

- Mario Kasun and Barcelona have mutually agreed to terminate his contract. I don't know why, but we can speculate wildly. Maybe he doesn't think he was being paid enough. Maybe he wasn't getting enough minutes, in his own opinion. Or maybe he had a fight with Andre Barrett. Actually, yeah, it's that.

- Orien Greene has signed for MyGuide Amsterdam. And, if anyone out there should need a guide to Amsterdam....start with the cafes, follow the stench of sex, and work backwards. Soon enough you'll find a 70 year old woman seated in a shop's front window dressed in nothing but stockings and a suspender belt, knitting. As national identities go, it certainly pisses our one of fish and chips, Amy Winehouse, an arbitrary powerless monarchy and drizzle.

- Rod Benson has signed with SLUC Nancy in France. I don't know what the SLUC stands for, but if you change the last letter slightly and put it all in lower case while still suffixed with "Nancy", then it makes for quite a realistic soubriquet for the aforementioned 70 year old woman seated in a shop's front window dressed in nothing but stockings and a suspender belt, knitting.

- Sean Marks has signed for the New Orleans Hornets. How the hell does he do it? He's not a bad player by any means, but...well, he's never really done anything, has he? And yet he's now about to start the ninth year of his NBA career. 8 years, 127 games, 391 points, and still more offers of work. Just doesn't make sense. But fair play to him nonetheless.

- Memphis signed Hamed Haddadi, the only player in the Olympics to average a double double. Another fine move by a fine organisation.

- The trail blazing Portland Trail Blazers signed their 15th, 16th and 17th men in Luke Jackson, Steven Hill and Jamaal Tatum, albeit not necessarily in that order. I have already rambled about Jackson, and have nothing to say about the other two, so that's the end of that torrent of NBA insight. Quick! We're near the end!

- And finally, former Clippers guard and ABA journeyman Fred Vinson has returned to the Clippers as an assistant coach. After reading about this news, I faffed about for a while, and then went to bed. Yet clearly the news had a lasting effect on me, because I then proceeded to dream about Fred Vinson. I dreamt that me, Fred Vinson and Fred Vinson's wife, Mrs Fred Vinson (I don't even know if she exists) were out to dinner in a restaurant. The three of us were huddled around a table designed only for two. I had a steak diane, Mrs Fred Vinson had soup, and Fred Vinson had a largely undistinguished plate of brown. There was laughter, merriment, and much guffawery. I can't remember a single topic of conversation, but dammit, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that I dreamt that I was out to dinner with Fred Vinson.

You don't want to be like me when you grow up.

Where Are They Now? Part 10

Willie Deane - who is not my lover, just some bitch who says that I am the one, in a non-Matrixy way - is playing in the seminal Bulgarian league, for the even more seminal Lukoil Akademik Sophia. Impressively, he is not the only person from this series of posts to play for that team, so all fascinated viewers can wait until we get to the letter S before we find out who Willie's backcourt teammate is.

F.W. Andrew DeClercq slipped out of the league with knee problems, and hasn't been heard from since trying to make a comeback with the Bulls in late September 2006, a weird month for Chicago that saw them give tryouts to almost every free agent big man on the planet - including Shawn Kemp, who didn't turn up - before all of them managed to lose to Martynas Andriuskevicius. Weird times.

Tony Delk is either playing for Carolina in Puerto Rico, or he isn't. Sorry about the uselessness of that - I just have conflicting information.

Derrick Dial disappeared for ages, but has this month reappeared in the D-League, playing for the Tulsa Cockerels. (See previous comments, re: the reformation of D-League teams nicknames into easily truncated juvenile sex talk.)

Guillermo Diaz didn't take his NBA kick in the balls too badly, and is playing for Pepsi Caserta (sponsored by Coca Cola) in Italy.

Kaniel Dickens has starred in the D-League all season, enough so to get two ten day cotnracts recently from the Cleveland Cavaliers. He is now once again in the D-League, playing for the Colorado Balls.

Do you know who Alain Digbeu is? No, no you don't. And nor do you care. Digbeu was a draft choice by the Atlanta Hawks from several million years ago. You've never heard of him because you've never needed to hear from him - his insignificance is so all-empowering that he doesn't even gain afterthought status. Still, if I've now turned you onto the idea of following Alain Digbeu's career - and the Hawks do still own his rights, so you never know! - then you'll be orgasmic to learn that Digbeu is playing for Alicante in Spain. Fun times.

Vlade Divac is long since retired, and now works for Real Madrid in a role which he freely admits leaves him having to "literally do nothing". Lucky bastard.

Nigel Dixon recently played for San German in Puerto Rico, and is still fat.

Marcus Douthit is playing for Antalya in Turkey. By the way, if anyone knows what happened to Marcus Douthit in that extortion trial of his from a few years ago, I'd like to hear it. I can find absolutely nothing that says what became of it, just that he was charged.

Zabian Dowdell is playing for Nancy in France.

Christian Drejer, former Nets draft choice and apparently arrogant as all hell (allegedly), is playing for Lottomatica Roma in Italy, alongside Gregor Fucka, whose name I just wanted to type.