Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 3

Meant to make a great "Hack-A-Shag" joke in the last post, and forgot. Never mind. We'll save it for next year.


- Kenny Anderson

Anderson has not played since the 2005-06 season. His NBA career ended the year before, when he split the 2004/05 season between the Hawks and the Clippers, and after being waived by L.A. in March 2005, a 10 month wait ensued. Anderson then joined legendary Lithuanian team Zalgiris Kaunas for the rest of the season. It was the first and only non-NBA gig of his professional career. Chibbs averaged 2.4 points and 1.6 assists in the Euroleague alongside 5.9 points and 2.8 assists in the Lithuanian league, and then that was the end of his playing career.

In between those last two playing gigs, he was declared bankrupt.

The last time we checked in on Anderson, he had been named the head coach of the CBA's Atlanta Krunk. It was all supposed to be brilliant; for the 2007-08 season, the team hired Anderson as head coach, hired Kenny Smith's brother Vincent as the general manager, signed Grayson Boucher (And-1's "The Professor") and minor league superhero Zach Marbury (Stephon's brother) as a backcourt, announced Freedom Williams of C&C Music Factory fame as the majority owner, brought on Stephon's clothing company to be the team's uniform designers, and started shooting a reality TV show about the team. It was all supposed to be awesome. And then it wasn't. In their only CBA season, the Krunk went 9-41, a loss total which included 9 forfeits. Players were not being paid - at one point, the team was down to as few as five players as everyone kept bailing on them due to the lack of salaries. Their home arena was deemed unsuitable, so they had to play all their games down the stretch of the season on the road, and they also had no uniforms. To say it went a bit tits up sells it a bit short. I'm surprised they saw through the season.

The team was resold to new owners, moved to the PBL for the 2008-09 season, and changed its name and location to the Augusta Groove. They played one more average season, finishing 10-10, but had more financial troubles and folded. Anderson was there only for year one.

After it all went south, Anderson joined a clinic run by the NBA for retired players looking to begin coaching careers. At some point, he was also the coach of a SlamBall team. He is currently studying (not coaching) at St. Thomas's University in Miami, and is hireable for both speaking engagements and running workouts.

Anderson is also a very active Twat (Twitterer). Follow him here.



- Shandon Anderson

Shandon Anderson was covered in the 1996 draft round-up thing that was written back in September. Or rather, he wasn't covered at all, because there was nothing to say. In amongst all the talk about Travis Knight's hair and penis, I wrote this:

The Knicks finally got rid of Shanderson in 2004, over three years after the pointless Ewing trade that brought him in in the first place. Shandon then spent two years with the Heat for no real reason, and managed to win a ring in that time through almost no work of his own. I can't find anything that Shandon has done in the three years hence, but considering all the money he earned in the NBA, he has no real reason to get out of bed these days, so I wouldn't be surprised or disheartened if he just didn't bother.

We can do a little better than that now; in 2007, 11 years after leaving it unfinished, Anderson returned to the University of Georgia to complete his degree. He is now something of an entrepeneur; his foundation, the aptly named Shandon Anderson Foundation, is designed to serve as a mentoring thing for kids, as well as giving out multiple scholarships to impoverished kids in the Georgia area. He also owns a salon and spa facility in Atlanta, as well as a vegetable restaurant and wine bar.

Most importantly, Shanderson is a proud wearer of skirts. And that's a true story. If you don't believe me, here's a picture of Shandon Anderson in a skirt and a flat cap:



This. This is why you come here. God bless you Shandon for your complete lack of fear. I can respect that. And you're right, skirts ARE comfy. They're just a bit weird looking, is all.



- Rashad Anderson

Connecticut guard Rashad Anderson was the second leading scorer in Italy's SerieA last year, averaging 18.2 points per game for Udine. SerieA is the third strongest league in the world, behind only the NBA and the ACB. Yet despite being one of the best scorers in one of the best leagues in the world, Anderson this season finds himself on the bench for a D-League team. Seems like a backwards step, really.

For the Iowa Energy, Anderson is averaging 10.5 points, 3.5 rebounds and 0.6 American assists in 20.3 minutes per game off the bench. The Energy are pretty stacked and have a 10-1 record, but if Anderson came back to the D-League for lesser money thinking it would be the next step to cracking the NBA, then he probably wasn't expecting to be coming off the bench behind Cartier Martin and Pat Carroll.



- Antonio Anderson

Antonio Anderson is also in the D-League. After going undrafted out of Memphis this summer, Anderson went to camp with the Bobcats, but he never really had a chance of making the team. He was then taken 12th in the D-League draft by the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, three places after Rashad was. For the Vipers, Anderson is averaging 41.9 minutes, 17.5 points, 6.9 assists, 4.4 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 0.7 blocks per game, shooting 46% from the floor and 30% from three point range, all while starting at was is essentially the small forward position. (Decide for yourself whether it's him or Garrett Temple that's technically the shooting guard. Can't say it matters much.)

The Vipers are the D-League affiliate of the Houston Rockets, and Rockets big man Joey Dorsey is on assignment there. He's putting up numbers, too. In 29.4 minutes of 10 games, Dorsey is averaging 14.4 points, 13.6 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.3 steal and 1.4 blocks per game, shooting 64% from the field. It looks good, doesn't it? But somehow, in only those 29 minutes per game, Dorsey is also averaging 4.0 fouls and a ridiculous 4.0 turnovers. How do you turn it over 4 times a game in 30 minutes when you don't touch the ball on offense very often? How many moving screens can one man set? Baffling times.



- Martynas Andriuskevicius

As I've said about 23 times in the past, Andriuskevicius is somewhat symptomatic of part of the flaw in NBA thinking. Andrew's Cabbages is 7'3 tall and fairly agile for that size; it's that combination that got him drafted and two years of guaranteed money. (It certainly wasn't because of an accomplished skillset or a history of solid production.) But the flaw there is with the 7'3 measurement. It may well be accurate, but Marty is only as tall as he is due to an abnormally long neck. Were it not for that, he'd be only a normal 7 footer, if such a height can ever be considered normal. What advantage is he to gain from having a longer neck than his peers? Not a lot. Maybe he can see the play unfolding slightly better than his matchup can. But if he hasn't the skills to do anything about it, where's the advantage? Measurements can lie, and while they do matter, they can also be blinkered. They're important, but not THAT important. Ask the western conference playoff team currently starting a 6'6 centre how much it's holding them back.

Anyway, that's just a rant, not a circumstances update. As for how he's doing these days, Andriuskevicius is into his third season with Alicante Lucentum in Spain. On the ACB season, he is averaging 8.6 points and 4.1 rebounds, numbers both down from last season. He also averages 2.6 fouls in only 17 minutes per game, in a league where you foul out when you reach 5. But he does have 120 points on only 71 shots, which is pretty fantastic.



- Rafael Araujo

Araujo, whose nickname should really be "Epic Fail", is back in his native Brazil, signed with a team called Paulistano. Put a space in the right place, and that becomes a believable name for a hitman. Brazilian statistics are a bit difficult to find, and it doesn't help that he seems to now exclusively be known as "Baby." But as far as I can tell, he was averaging 13.5 rebounds and 8.7 rebounds per game. (If anyone can read Portuguese, feel free to construct a better translation.) At the very least, here's a recent shot chart of his. He's red number 55.

Araujo was never THAT bad. Below average, yes, and a monumentally bad draft pick at #8. But he has NBA talent, if only as a 12th man. This is about as much balance redressing as I can muster.

He's 29 years old now.



- Robert Archibald

Robert Archibald and his hybrid accent are to be found in the same place that they're always found - Spain. Playing for Unicaja Malaga, Arch is having a pretty bad year, averaging only 5.2 points, 2.9 rebounds and 3.2 fouls per game in the ACB, improving to 8.2 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.8 fouls per game in the Euroleague. Nevertheless, his team mate there this year is fellow Brit and Aldershot's finest, Joel Freeland; others you will have heard of include Omar Cook, Shammond Williams, Nedzad Sinanovic, Taquan Dean and Gorgeous Giorgos Printezis. And this is why the ACB is the best league outside of the NBA. Even the middle-of-the-road teams are stacked.



- Koko Archibong

Archibong played in the Euroleague last year when he was a member of Polish team, Prokom Sopot. He was pretty shockingly bad in it, though, averaging only 2.8 points, 3.5 rebounds and 3.1 fouls. This year he's moved to Germany and joined the Dusseldorf Giants. (I don't have an umlaut thing on my keyboard, and I'll be damned if I'm bothering to find one in charmap.) On the season, Archibong is averaging 14.1 points and 6.7 rebounds, leading the team in both categories.

In keeping with the unofficial German league rules, Dusseldorf have almost no German players in their rotation. In fact, they have only 1; the backup point guard, Gordon Geib. But they do have a German coach, a man named Achim Kuzcmann. And he has one of the finest moustaches that you will ever see in the basketball world.



That is imperious, messianic, divine, and truly, truly uber. Well played Mr Kuzcmann.



- Darrell Armstrong

Armstrong last played in the 2007-08 season with the Nets, playing in 50 games as a backup. He tried out for the Suns partway through last season, but did not make the team. He is now retired, if not officially, and is an assistant coach with the Mavericks.

He does not have an imperious moustache.

Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 2

- Chris Alexander re-emerged as a vaguely interesting prospect last season, despite being 28 years old, after a campaign that saw him average 11.6 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.0 blocks a game in the D-League for the Sioux Falls Skyforce. He turned that into first a contract in the Phillipines, and then a training camp contract with Oklahoma City. As Alexander is a centre, he must have fancied his chances on the length-crazy Thunder, but he didn't make the cut. After the Phillipines thing ended (where he won the title of "Best Import" in the championship series), Alexander went back to the Skyforce this season, and averaged 6.9 points and 8.5 rebounds before leaving the team on Christmas Eve, for reasons which either weren't announced or which I can't find. More importantly, here's an update on the length of his neck.



- Shagari Alleyne is now a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. He goes by the name "Skyscraper". I think this means his NBA dream is over.

- Lance Allred was waived by the Cavaliers, and has gone back to the D-League with the Idaho Stampede. He averages 14.7 points and 9.2 rebounds, and would be the most NBA-desired big man on his team were it not for the presence of Jermareo Davidson, who averages slightly better (17/11) and who is nearly four years younger. Tough break for Lance.

- Hawks draftee David Andersen has left Russia and forgotten how to rebound. For Barcelona, Andersen is averaging 10.5 points and 3.7 rebounds in nearly 22 minutes a game. The second tallest guy on the team (behind Daniel Santiago, who plays less than him), Andersen is a mere third in rebounds, comfortably behind Ersan Ilyasova (7.9 rebounds a game) and Fran Vazquez (6.5). That's not the best effort, really, and yes I know that he's playing increasingly further away from the hoop these days. Perhaps he shouldn't.

- Just this very day, it was announced that former Bobcat guard Alan Anderson has followed Nenad Krstic out of Triumph Lyubertsy of Russia, and instead signed with Cibona Zagreb. Anderson averaged 10.6 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.8 steals for Triumph, and presumably left because they stopped paying him. I can retract this presumption if need be.

- Derek Anderson and Shandon Anderson remain unsigned. It's basically impossible to know when players are officially retired, but I'm willing to bet that Shandon is, and that Derek is still loosely working out and waiting for the phone to ring. Meanwhile, Kenny Anderson gave it up, and is now the head coach of a Slamball team. True story.

- Rashad Anderson has broken away from his above namesakes and is playing professional basketball for Udine in Italy. Anderson leads all of Serie A with a 20.3 points per game average, but he only averages 2.5 rebounds and 1.2 assists to go along with that, which is something that we should use to make sweeping unfounded judgements about his selfishness. Or we could not, it's up to you.

- Én finalement, Martynas Andriuskevicius is signed with Alicante in Spain, where he averages 9.4 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.2 fouls a game. You know why running this website has been worthwhile? I can type Martynas Andriuskevicius without having to stop and look it up. And Wally Szczerbiak as well. Good times. I shall now experiment with lethal overdoses of needle drugs.

They call me Sham Slidy. I'm back. Etc.

What is better than a holiday? I'll tell you what's better than a holiday: a full English breakfast is better than a holiday. It really is. Eggs, beans, a copious amount of sausages, bacon, toast, hash browns, mushies, black pudding if you've got it, OJ......yes, yes, that is definitely better than a holiday.

Another thing that is better than a holiday is two holidays, and that's what I've been having. This explains what looks to the casual observer like my continued absence. My last blog post, dated about three weeks ago, spoke of an impressive, overdue and highly important return to action, and yet this is only my second blog post of the whole season, after a month of November that saw only one feeble effort. A cynic would say that I've been away, and a particularly ruthless Mozambiquey (Mozambiquish?) Army General might have me shot for dereliction of duty.

However, that Mozambolian Army General would be wrong, and so would the cynic. I have not been neglecting this website, nor have I been neglecting you, dear viewer. Instead, I have been having a working holiday, if such a thing is possible for an unemployed man. While the blog hasn't been updated, the rest of this webshite has. In recent days, I have:

1: Provided a better vehicle for the site's increased focus on world basketball. (Look left.) While this remains an NBA focused website, a large part of that is documenting the players on the outskirts of the league with a realistic chance of being in it one day. For this reason, the rosters section has been expanded greatly, and player movement worldwide will now be documented via the worldwide transactions page, and the accompanying blog that'll probably never be used. The players database has also been expanded to contain such hugely important people as Joe Forte, Ansu Sesay, Rashad Anderson and Pablo Prigioni, so that they too may now not be written about. These developments come off of the background of the staggeringly mildly successful series of "Where are they now?" blog posts of last season, and such blog posts will now be made on that blog instead. Because I said so.

2: Begun the D-League coverage that was initially planned about two years ago. As the blurb above describes, this website is increasing its focus on the players just outside the NBA, and this is the reason for the sudden and uninspiring new D-League focus. A lot of the players in the D-League are crap and will never make the NBA, so the coverage will only focus on those with a perceived chance. For example, the insatiably named Xavier Whipple may never get a profile on here, whereas Antoine Jordan already did. This will probably be the high point of Antoine's life, and if Xavier Whipple kills himself in the coming days, then it was only a coincidence. All of this exciting new material can be found in the menu to the left, to the left. Mmmmmm. To the left, to the left. Everything I made in the box to the left.

3: Added more lookalikes, for those who like that sort of thing. I do.

4: Expanded the database, so that it now covers almost 10 million players. (Or 1,100. Whichever. Either way, it's more writing that I haven't yet done.)

5: Built three new features that you can't see yet. (Oh! The! Suspense!)

6: Written a DraftExpress post that you also can't see yet.

7: Completed the 2009 free agents lists, now available in three new and improved flavours: by name, by team, and by position.

8: Finished the overdue, slightly pointless but entirely unique 2008 Offseason Review.

9: Updated all the pre-existing information, including (but not limited to): assistant coaches lists (see team pages), depth charts, rosters, cap holds, D-League affiliates, and everything except the salaries because I can't be bothered with them yet.

10: Written the player profiles for T.J. Ford, Anthony Roberson, Chris Kaman, Jared Reiner, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Matt Barnes. (Only 800 to go!)

11: Finished the character issues section.

12: Agreed to be the host of a new, Around The Horn style podcast, featuring the four most pre-eminent Chicago Bulls podcasts on the web (Bulls Beat, Bullseye, Bullscast, and the other one). More details on this as, when, and if I can be bothered.



So you see, I do do stuff. (Note: my working holiday comes with less photos than my actual holiday. Be grateful.)

The downside of all this is that I might blog a bit less. As an aspiring NBA General Manager with no qualifications or skills to speak of, it's important that I use this website as my curriculum vitae to demonstrate my large and hopefully accurate knowledge of the NBA, and the players both in it and on its fringes. This is the reason for all the expansion. Will it work? No, but I'm doing it anyway.

But anyway, who the hell cares about all that. That's all just self congratulatory bollocks. Let's bring the noise. Here are some of my opinions on stuff.

1: The Al Harrington/Jamal Crawford trade looks like the epitomy of a win win trade. For a discontented player who had absolutely no worth on the depth chart, the Warriors managed to get a much needed short term fill-in at point guard, and a man who also isn't a bad fit alongside Monta Ellis, assuming that Monta ever plays for the Warriors again. Meanwhile, New York got a player that Mike D'Antoni can occasionally pretend is a centre (it's not that farfetched - Al Harrington played a lot of centre in his Hawks days, albeit not very well), while more importantly opening up a few more million in 2010 cap room. The Warriors have no 2010 ambitions, so they sacrificed something that they didn't want for something that they sorely needed. They will, however, suck anyway. (Incidentally, it's kind of a shame how things have worked out with Chris Mullin. He made a lot of mistakes in his early days in charge, but then put them right, and assembled a fine young roster. But then his superiors somewhat sold him out, Baron Davis let him down by opting out, and Ellis let him down by falling off a bike that he shouldn't have been on. Now he has a team with a poor record, a clusterfuck of a roster, and a contract that's about to run out with an owner that has completely different ideas to that of his own. It's a shame. For a while there, things really went his way. Oh well.)

2: Additionally, moving Zach Randolph and Mardy Collins to the Clippers for Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobley was also a coup for the Knicks. For all the bellyaching I did about Donnie Walsh's summer moves - overpaying for a backup in Chris Duhon, drafting Danilo Galinari at number 6 who allegedly has no chance of being a star and who has the depth chart stacked against him, and dealing one of the team's few reasonable players in Renaldo Balkman to save money after overpaying for Duhon and being unwilling or unable to move the crappy players in front of him - I give Walsh the plaudits for finding a plan (2010), and executing it well. The fact that we're currently having to watch David Lee as a full time center is secondary - the Knicks had the balls and the patience to trade two of their three best players for unwanted bit parts, all for a one year saving on their salaries. Rarely is the 2010 plan (or any capspace plan) worthwhile for the teams involved. But in the Knicks case, it was. And now they've facilitated it. So well done them. As for the Clippers, God knows what they expect to achieve. Getting a 20/10 (not 2010) player for spare parts should always be desirable, but in this case, it isn't. And I can't write much more about their side of the deal without borrowing too heavily from this piece what I's already wrote.

3: The seminal baseball journalism blog FireJoeMorgan.com has closed down, as its proprietors - people with jobs - have decided to do those jobs instead. This seems like a misuse of their time, but whatever. The point is that they'll be missed. (For those unaware, FireJoeMorgan.com was a baseball site that didn't cover baseball, but which covered other people's coverage of baseball. It was not merely a campaign to fire Joe Morgan, as the URL would have suggested. Acerbic to a tee and with a turn of phrase that would make Pynchon weep, the site made baseball writers and broadcasters - particularly the one whose name was in the URL - look really bloody stupid. Yet it did not entirely set out to do this - all that the team behind it had to do was to let the writers write whatever they like. The writer's stupidity was all their original work. FJM just let them hang themselves with line breaks and the occasional bit of sense. That's all that was needed for the ridiculous old boys network that governs Major League Baseball - and those who cover it - to show their true inanity, as they spewed forth their eternal semi-ons for the easily rectifiable myths that have ensured their job security up until now. Sadly, it looks like they'll now get away with it. Damn shame.)

Finally, and most importantly, number 4: It only occured to me the other day just how phallic an overhead shot of half a basketball court looks.



That is all. I am now off to watch all the games that I've missed out on.