"He's not 20 years old. No way. I'm going to have to see a birth certificate or something." - Antawn Jamison on LeBron James


 
 

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Friday, 12 February 2010

Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 21

In order to spice things up a bit, the next few players will be addressed by anagram only. We party hardcore over here. Get down with the funky stuff.


- Mend Arse Form

Desmond Farmer is in the D-League, trying to find one more NBA call-up from somewhere. In 29 games for the Reno Bighorns, Farmer is averaging 41 minutes, 24.4 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game, so those numbers certainly support his candidacy. However, his reputation around the league is far less supportive; Farmer tends to dominate the ball, is not especially good at it (3.7 turnovers per game), shoots too much (42%) and pouts when he doesn't. In trying to prove that he's more than just a catch and shoot player, he has inadvertently proved that he's mainly a catch and shoot player.

On the plus side, after initially not winning a spot despite his numbers, Farmer has been named as an injury replacement to the D-League all star game. He, Romel Beck, Brian Butch, Joe Crawford, Curtis Jerrells and Diamon Simpson replace Alexis Ajinca, Anthony Tolliver, Dontell Jefferson, Antonio Anderson, Sundiata Gaines and Joey Dorsey.



- I Faze Knacks

Nick Fazekas is signed with Dijon in France, where he has averaged 12.3 points and 7.8 rebounds in 25 minutes per game for Dijon. However, he has not played since the end of November due to injury. Sports24.com has more:

Coup dur pour Dijon. Touché à une cheville, Nick Fazekas est out pour trois mois. L’intérieur américain va devoir passer sur la table d’opération. Ancien de Dallas et des Clippers en NBA (26 matches, 4,1 pts), Nick Fazekas est arrivé cet été en Bourgogne. La JDA s’est mise en quête d’un pigiste médical pour pallier son absence.

Totally.



- Herpes Feet

A lot of people didn't know who Sonics draft pick Peter Fehse was a couple of months ago. However, they soon learnt after his draft rights were traded for Matt Harpring and Eric Maynor. At the time, this website's player page for Peter Fehse appeared second in a Google search for Fehse's name, and, given that it was one of the few that's actually been written, people wanting to learn about Peter Fehse used it as a means of doing so. Because of this, Peter Fehse became the most viewed profile page on this website. Good times.

(It's now second to Sarunas Jasikevicius. I've been meaning to find out why that is.)

Fehse's season last year was, inevitably, cut short by injury. Fehse has battled injuries since the day he was drafted, and they are the reason he never developed as a prospect. In fact, he's been set so far back in recent years that he's now with a club in the German thirddivision; the BSW Sixers. BSW, coached by recently retired former Mississippi State guard Chuck Evans, are 7-7 in the Regionaliga North, which ranks two rungs below the Bundesliga. Stats are unavailable, but he scored 13 points in their last game.



- I, Noel, Flex

Noel Felix, now 28, is still the same player he was when he was 24. He is currently plying his athletic trade in the D-League, where he averages 9.2 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.2 fouls and 0.9 blocks in 21 minutes per game for the Maine Red Claws. He has not taken a three all season.



- Fouls Recently

NC State's Courtney Fells went to summer league with the Orlando Magic, where he shot 14% and committed 8 turnovers in 53 minutes. He then moved to Cyprus, where he is signed with Proteas EKA AEL Limassol. If you've been following this series of posts you will know that there's no Cyprish statistics available - as well as the fact that I'm trying to avoid using the word Cypriot for no reason whatsoever - but we do have Fells' EuroChallenge numbers. In 9 games, Fells is averaging 9.9 points and 2.2 rebounds, with 89 points scored on 94 shots.



- Advertise Info

Bucks draft pick Andrei Fetisov is retired from basketball. He was last time we covered. And the time before that. He's been retired since February 2007. We probably won't cover him again.



- Leafy Chime

After leaving UCLA in 2006, Michael Fey has spent two years in China and one in Jordan. Before that, in 2006, he appeared on the Lakers summer league. He must have left some kind of lasting impression, because three years later, the Lakers brought him into training camp to (ostensibly) fight for a roster spot. He didn't make it - he was never going to make it - but Fey's return to America and subsequent trip to the D-League are quite the departure from a man previously doing the Samaki Walker Tour Of The Far East. Assigned to the Lakers' affiliate, the D-Fenders, Fey is averaging 12.1 points and 6.2 rebounds in 24 minutes per game.



- Infirm, If Naked

Nebraska product Kimani Ffriend is signed in Cyprus, and, as described earlier, there are no statistics available for Cyprianic basketball. All I can tell you is that Ffriend has scored 36 points in Apollon's last two games. And that when you translate his name into Greek and back again, it comes out as "Fred."



- Snivelled Face

Pittsburgh graduate Levance Fields was undrafted, despite his decent Khalid El-Amin impression to end last season. After pairing up with Fells at Orlando's summer league, Fields moved to Russia, where he signed with Spartak St Petersburg. There, he averages 13.7 points and 3.9 assists per game (6th in the league) in the Russian league, alongside 8.9 points and 4.5 assists (8th) in the Eurocup. Fields exploded for a 36 point outing in the Russian league on December 11th, shooting 13-16 in only 35 minutes, but he's scored only 15 points on 30 shots in the four games since.

By the way, Khalid El-Amin currently leads the Ukraine in assists.



- Fish Record

West Virginia graduate and former Bobcat D'Or Fischer is spending a second season with Maccabi Tel-Aviv. Maccabi fans are a fickle bunch sometimes, and they (or at least, those that I know) seem to be clamoring for Fischer's release. His numbers are down from last year, which isn't helping. But his numbers aren't bad; 6.0 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 2.0 blocks in 20 minutes per game in the Israeli league, alongside 6.3/4.5/1.3/1.5 in 18mpg in the Euroleague. I think the fan's problem is more to do with the fact that he's American.



- Cradle Fight

Gerald Fitch led the Turkish league in scoring last season, and by quite a long way as well. He averaged 28.2 points per game (albeit in only half the season) and has since left Turkey to go to Spain. Playing for Fuenlebrada, Fitch is averaging 20.4 points in only 28.8 minutes per game, alongside 4.8 points and 2.7 rebounds. The 20.4 ppg leads the league, which means that Fitch has now led both the Turkish and Spanish leagues in scoring in consecutive seasons. Even if he has to chuck a bit to do it, how much more can a man do?



Finally....

- Racism Furze

Marcus Fizer was a member of Maccabi Tel Aviv in the 2007-08 season, but popped his knee out (again) before the season ended. He was under contract to Maccabi for the 2008-09 season as well, but missed the start of the season recovering from the knee injury and was waived in January as a part of the regime change. He played in only two games. Fizer then spent last summer in Puerto Rico, where he averaged 16 points and 5 rebounds. He hasn't played anywhere since then, but last week he signed in Puerto Rico for their next upcoming season, joining a team called Guaynabo. His team mate there will be Antoine Walker.

Antoine Walker and Marcus Fizer on the same team. That's a team that just got interesting.

(A furze is a type of shrub.)

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Monday, 27 July 2009

A.D. Vassallo Made Me Have An Epiphany, That Well Hairlined Bastard



As you might presently yourself fully be aware of, one of the specialist areas that this website focuses on is on the life, times, careers and skillsets of players on the fringes of the NBA. (The other specialisms are; the NBA salaries and all the technical aspects that go along with them, player's criminal histories, references to English things that you don't really understand, occasional misogyny, overly complicated wordplay, and stealing jokes from Family Guy. So, something for everyone there.) The spectrum of the site runs broader than that, and tries to encapsulate everything NBA related, but those are the areas of particular focus. I try to bring you things that you can't get elsewhere in the online NBA world, and ne'er moreso is this true than in the scrub tracking.

It's something that I love to do in life. Some men go to sleep at night holding their dicks; I go to bed at night holding import player's rebounding statistics from the last Chinese Basketball Association season. (Not really; I hold my dick too. But you get the idea.) Following scrubs is pretty much all I do, so much so that I had to visit Google to remind me of what the word "sex" means. Oh and believe me, the internet carries that information.

Maybe it's because of my nation's jingoistic identity as a perennial lover of the underdog, but since day one of my NBA fandom, something has always drawn me to the crap players more than the good ones. My "favourite NBA players of all time" list includes Rick Brunson, Fred Hoiberg, Chris Jefferies and Marcus Fizer, for God's sake. I even have Fizer's name on a jersey somewhere. Perhaps I should sell it back to him.

One of the most grating aspects of this devotion, though, is the fanboys. Every player, no matter how insignificant they are to the NBA landscape, has their fanboys.

Sometimes they're hired help. They could be their business managers, agents, or friends who passed the bar exam that pretend to be agents. Sometimes they're family members. Sometimes they're just the guy's road meat. But whatever form they take, every player has their fanboys, their defenders, their online entourage, people who take it upon themselves to tell you everything that player has ever achieved, everything they're ever going to achieve, and usually (if you've been somewhat derogatory) how much of an uninformed twat you are.

It's rarely fun, but it's usually daily.

To be constantly told that you don't know anything when you're trying your best to know everything is deflating, but perhaps to be expected. It's easy to know everything about somebody, and it's impossible to know everything about everybody. But if you don't, someone will bite their thumb at you, denounce your opinions and besmirch your family. They know more than you, and they need you to know that. And because they know more than you, you know nothing. No matter how hard you try.

Which brings me sluggishly to my point.

None of us really know anything. Us NBA fans, we have our opinions, and we shout about them to anyone who'll listen. We're convinced that we're right, and we opine about this in arrogant, often condescending ways. We think we are right in what we think about all players, and we think that if we don't know someone, they're not worth knowing. And boy, are we confident.

But the reality of it is is that we don't really know anything. We know a fraction of a percentage of the bits that we think are interesting, and we denounce the bits that we don't. Rather than know everything, we know the bits that we want to know, and then tell the people who don't care for the bits that we do that they are wrong.

This would be normal and tolerable if we were nice about it. But for some reason, sports discussions are only able to exist if one or all parties involved happen to be a self-effacing little cockturtle, whose views and delivery are suitably close-minded and authoritative. Regardless of the fact that we are passing judgement on a group of elite athletes having the kind of career that a microscopic minority of human beings can achieve, us cockturtles are somehow the ones in the right. It would be like Ime Udoka and Ronnie Price denouncing your abilities as a lumberjack; it's not their place to say anything.

In short, we're all annoyingly self-assured in our own ignorance. And so I for one am going to start being a whole lot nicer about that.

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Wednesday, 21 January 2009

Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 17

- Gerald Fitch was unsigned until very recently, as he joined the Turkish team Kepez BLD Antalya only last week. Antalya are currently second to last in the Turkish league, and Fitch arrives as the replacement for leading scorer and former Magic training camp invitee, Torell Martin, who retired to run a country pub in the southernmost corner of Wales. (OK, no he didn't. But he did leave.) Fitch has not yet played a game for his new team, and I'll be sure not to tell you when he does.

- D'Or Fischer is with Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Israel, a rare and special boast for any big man to be making, given the extremely high turnover of big men that Maccabi have had this year. Also currently with Maccabi is one of my favourite players of all time, Marcus Fizer, who has just recently returned from a year long absence due to a knee injury. I don not really know why I like Marcus Fizer so much, so please do not ask. It denies all rational reasoning, but it is what it is, and there it is. Fischer averages 9.2 points, 6.2 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 2.0 blocks in Israeli league play, along with 12.6 points, 7.8 1.5 assists and 1.6 blocks in Euroleague play. Fizer has totalled 13 points and 5 rebounds in the three games of his comeback.

- Gary Forbes was acquired by the Tulsa 66ers from the Sioux Falls Skyforce just a matter of hours ago. Tulsa traded Chris Ellis to get him, he of the recent update. For Sioux Falls, Forbes was the sixth man, and he averaged 16.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 2.0 assists in his time there.

- Alton Ford has also just left his D-League team, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, and has signed with a team in Zhejiang, China. Which Zhejiang team it is, I'm not sure. Ford averaged 9.9 points, 7.2 rebounds, 2.4 turnovers and 4.0 fouls in 28 minutes per game for the Vipers, who now have only two players left over 6'5 - Marcus Hubbard and Kurt Looby, former backup at Iowa. Remember things like this the next time you see Courtney Sims's D-League stats.

- Sharrod Ford plays for Virtus Bologna, and averages 10.3 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks in Italian league play. In the EuroChallenge, Ford averaged 12.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.3 blocks.

- Joe Forte is still dislikeable. Starting the year with Fortitudo Bologna (not the same team as Sharrod Ford's Virtus Bologna), Forte totalled 49 points and 7 rebounds in his first two games for Fortitudo, before being released due to general unpopularness. (At least, I think that was it. There was definitely some kind of bust-up. Either way, Qyntel Woods is also on that team, so it wasn't the most functional unit.) Forte later signed with Snaidero Udine, who are currently last in the Italian league first division, despite the presence of both Forte and Rashad Anderson. Forte averages 12.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, 3.7 steals and 3.2 assists through 6 games.

- Danny Fortson is out of the game and out of the headlines. Probably best.

- Shan Foster has forgotten how to shoot, averaging only 9.7 points per game on 31% shooting from the three point line while playing for Eldo Caserta in Italy. Shan Foster wihout his jumpshot isn't much of a player, so I'm assuming and hoping that he'll find it again.

- Former Grizzly Antonis Fotsis is playing for Panathinaikos back in his native Greece. Fotsis averages 7.8 points and 4.2 rebounds in Greek league play as the backup to the other former Grizzly Mike Batiste, former Maryland star Andrew Nicholas, and Dimitris Diamantidis, and there's no shame in coming off of the bench behind those three.

- Tremaine Fowlkes signed in the ABA, but left during preseason. I hope it's not because he wasn't good enough. That would be bad.

- Finally, and most spectacularly, former Warriors guard Luis Flores is another one playing in Israeli, averaging 19.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and 1.6 assists while starting at shooting guard for Hapoel Holon. The other starting guard for Holon is called, and I quote, Lior Lipshits. I am not making this up. No, really. I'm not. I'm really not.

Steeve Ho You Fat, Frank Arsego, Albert Pooholes...y'all just got served.

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Friday, 26 September 2008

Summer signings, round 27

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.

- Goran Dragic finally decided to join us, signing with Phoenix for four years after completing the World's Longest Buyout©. It bears repeating that San Antonio, who originally drafted Dragic, traded him to Phoenix for roughly nothing, even though they were in need of guard help. So what does Phoenix see that San Antonio didn't? We vill zee.

- 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.)

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Thursday, 10 April 2008

Where Are They Now? Part 12

Daniel Ewing is starring for Khimky in Russia.

Olu Famutimi isn't starring for Khimik in the Ukraine.

Desmon Farmer is playing for the Rio Grand Valley Vipers Minge in the D-League. He recently scored 49 points in a game, which is quite a lot of points. And Farmer also recently became the D-League's all time leading scorer. That's an accomplishment, at least.

Peter Fehse is playing for the New Yorker Phantoms of the German league. It's not impossible to make it back to the big dance from such a nowhere, as Awvee Storey recently left the very same team and has spent all season with the Bucks (if that counts as the NBA). But Fehse's problem is that he's awful. A 2002 second round draft pick of the Sonics, Fehse would be the least likely to make the NBA of all the unsigned draft picks whose rights are still owned by an NBA team, were it not for the presence of a man further down this post.

Noel Felix is playing for Hapoel Jerusalem in Israel. Or rather, he's not playing for them. Someone over there with some sway has obviously missed the memo which accurately states that Noel Felix is not shit, but THE shit. It's a shame. Someone liberate him next year.

Rudy Fernandez is playing for Barcelona, but not for much longer. He also recently axed a basset hound. As you do.

Andrei Fetisov is the ultimate "who the hell". A draft choice by the Bucks back in the dark ages of Nineteen Ninety Freakin' Four, Andrei never made it to the NBA. Given that he's now 36 years old and retired, the dream is probably dead. Still, the Bucks do still own his rights, for he hasn't been retired for long enough yet for them to lose them.

This is worth elaborating on, actually. You're probably wondering, why the hell are Milwaukee keeping onto his rights, when they have no intention of signing him at any point? Well, the answer is that they're using him for his trade value. That probably seems like a stupid statement, given that the draft rights who will never join the league have about as much use as a chocolate teapot. But it's not about the value of the rights per se: it's more of a technical issue.

In trades, both teams have to give up something. What that something is, is up to them. A player, pick, or cash are options. But sometimes, they don't want to (or can't) give those things up. So they have to give up at least something, even if only as a token gesture. That's where these scrubs draft rights become useful. They can act as the "something" given up in a trade. A team can give up the draft rights to a player as their outgoing half of a trade, and add in nothing more if they so wish (or are so able).

That may sound like it's farfetched, and would never happen. Yet it does. It's rare, but it does occasionally happen. For example, when Peja Stojakovic left Indiana to sign with New Orleans, Indiana asked New Orleans - with a cash incentive to convince New Orleans to help them - to make the transaction a sign-and-trade, rather than an outright signing. The act of doing this garnered Indiana a mahoosive trade exception, which allowed them to promptly acquire Al Harrington, something that they could not previously have done without the trade exception. However, the trade had Indiana giving New Orleans some cash and Stojakovic, but New Orleans not giving out any players or draft picks back to Indiana. (And why would they add any? They're the ones doing Indiana the favour.) This meant that they had to give up something else in the trade, and the thing that they wound up forfeiting were the draft rights to Andy Betts, a beautiful and fantastic Englishman drafted in 1998 who won't play in the NBA. It's not much, but it's 'something'. And that's all that they needed it to be.

Another recent example, from this past trade deadline, saw the Memphis Grizzlies as the third team in a two team trade between Houston and New Orleans (again). The Rockets traded Mike James and Bonzi Wells to the Hornets for Bobby Jackson, in a move to get Houston under the luxury tax threshold. However, New Orleans welcomed the new players (well, Bonzi, at least), but they needed to give more outgoing salary to make the trade work for them. So they needed to include the minimum salaries of Adam Haluska and Marcus Vinicius. Houston could afford to take back Haluska, but not Vinicius as well, for that would put them back into the tax territory and make the whole move rather pointless for them. In stepped Memphis, who took on the salary cap number of Vinicius to make the trade possible, and who then promptly waived him. However, to take on Vinicius, the rules, as always, said that Memphis had to give up at least something to make the deal work. The 'something' that they chose were the draft rights to Sergei Lishouk, a no-name drafted in 2004 who did not pan out, and who will never join the NBA. Had they not held Lishouk's rights for all of these years, they wouldn't have been able to deal them, and thus they wouldn't be a part of the trade.

(Why Memphis wanted to be in this trade in the first place is a bit baffling, given that they didn't get any cash, players, or a pick for their troubles, and just seem to have taken on someone else's committed salary without getting any incentive to do so. Strange times. But hey, Memphis has made stranger moves this season. See also: the Pau Gasol trade, and the bizarre decision to sign Casey Jacobsen and Andre Brown to completely unnecessary minimum salary deals before signing Juan Carlos Navarro, which left them with only enough caproom to sign Navarro to a near-one year deal, which left J.C. signing for only one year, which means they now run the risk of losing him or having to overpay to keep him. Still, great organisation at heart. Also, note that Memphis actually got back some draft rights, too - since Lishouk was their only player whose unsigned draft rights they held, they asked Houston for one back, and got those of Malick Badiane. Badiane won't ever join the NBA, but the 0.05% possibility of him joining is ever so slightly more attractive to Memphis than the 0% certainty of Venson Hamilton - another scrub whose rights Houston owns - will ever join the NBA, and so that's why they asked for Badiane's instead. This bracket is getting longer and even duller so I'll shut up now.)

Captivating stuff, clearly.

Very rarely, retaining these rights is worth something. For example, this past summer, Washington bagged a first round pick from Memphis for the rights to Juan Carlos Navarro, and San Antonio used the value of Luis Scola's rights to be able to weasel their way under the luxury tax. Sacramento tried to get a first round pick for Dejan Bodiroga back in the early part of this decade, and the Bulls could turn Mario Austin's rights into maybe something of value if they wanted to do so. For the most part, though, these players attatched to these draft rights are utter bobbins, and thus the value of the rights in trades is used only as a technicality.

To retain these draft rights, all the team has to do is extend them a contract offer by a certain date every season. With the exception of unsigned first round draft choices, of which there are only six, (Joel Freeland, Petteri Koponen, Rudy Fernandez, Frederic Weis, Tiago Splitter and Fran Vazquez), these offers can be - and in practice, always are - fully unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. (In the case of the first rounders, the minimum is 80% of the rookie scale contract for their draft slot that season, with the usual guarantees of any rookie scale contract. Don't try too hard to figure out what the hell I just said, because you'll achieve nothing but boredom.) The players can in theory sign these contracts if they want, but in practice they don't. There's no point. In the case of the truly scrubby players, the NBA franchise will just waive the player before their plane even arrives. As such, these players rights continue to be held by the NBA teams for as long as the player keeps playing in professional leagues other than the NBA. (The teams lose the rights to the players exactly one year to the day after the expiration of the player's most recent professional contract. So if they keep playing, and the team keeps extending the offers, then the player's rights continue to be held.)

It has happened before where such offers are accepted when they aren't supposed to be. It rarely ends well. After the 2006 draft, the Lakers heavily advised their second round draft pick J.R. Pinnock to to go Europe, for there was no way he was going to make the roster that year. They extended the minimum offer of the one year unguaranteed minimum salary contract, but told J.R. not to bother signing it, for it was futile. Pinnock didn't listen, signed the contract, went to camp to battle for his place, lost, got waived, and now his rights - and his ticket back to the NBA one day - are gone forever. The same situation happened this summer with Demetris Nichols, who went to the Knicks despite them asking him not to, just to get waived. (His story has a happier ending - he was subsequently claimed off waivers, twice, once by Cleveland and once by Chicago, and ended up seeing out the season.) However, sometimes, it's been productive - Chris Duhon signed with the Bulls against their wishes, went to training camp, won his roster spot fair and square, beating out the two rival point guards with guaranteed contracts in Jermaine Jackson and Mike Wilks, and Duhon wound up starting most of the year for them and earning himself a $9 million conract. Carl Landry of Houston is also staring down a very nice payday after taking the same risk and succeeding. But generally, it's a stupid idea for stupid people, and so it is not common practice to accept these offers.

ShamSports.com - where genuinely useful information and childish use of the word "minge" in the same blog post happens.

Kimani Ffriend is playing for Paris Levallois in France.

D'Or Fischer is playing for Bree in Belgium. Yes, I know brie is a cheese.

Gerald Fitch is playing for Tissetanta Cantu in Italy, alongside Denham Brown.

Marcus Fizer - the great Marcus Fizer, one of my favourite players of all time for no explicable reason whatsoever - is playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel. He was the subject of a specialised workout this summer, attended by represntatives of many NBA teams, in which he apparently shone. Yet he still didn't get. What's a guy got to do? (Apart from, you know.....correct his slightly huge flaw of having no basketball IQ whatsoever. And get back to the correct side of 29.)

Luis Flores plays for Indesit Fabriano in Italia Lega Two-ah. How good a team can be when sponsored by a third rate washing machine manufacturer, we'll wait and see.

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Monday, 13 August 2007

Some Euro signings you may give a shit about

Some players and free agents who signed in Europe (or other countries in general) that you may or may not care about. I have tried to keep the relevance to those who either get spoken about as good signing candidates, those who were in the NBA last year, or those of significance who made summer league rosters this year. I can't name everybody. Well, I could, but I don't care enough.


- Martynas Andriuskevicius is about to sign for Joventut in Spain.
- Luke Schenscher signed for Bamburg in Germany.
- P.J. Ramos signed for Fuenlabrada in Spain.
- Michael Bradley signed for ALBA Berlin in Germany.
- Will Blalock signed for Hapoel Jerusalem in Israel.
- Marcus Fizer signed for Maccabi Tel Aviv, also in Israel.
- Nikoloz Tskitishvil signed with Teramo in Italy.
- Ersan Ilyasova signed with Barcelona. In Spain. Obviously.
- Julius Hodge signed with Varese in Italy.
- James Singleton signed with Tau Vitoria in Spain.
- Lawrence Roberts signed with Olympiakos in Greece.
- Jared Reiner signed with Murcia in Spain.
- Zeljko Rebraca signed with Pamesa Valencia in Spain.
- Bracey Wright signed with Aris Thessaloniki in Greece.


More when I can be arsed.

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