Summer signings, round 9

- Charlotte re-signed Ryan Hollins yesterday, in a move that, by itself, is fine. Hollins is a worthwhile prospect, and they're making only a small commitment to him. It's a move that can't really fail. But it does mean that, with Alexis Ajinca and Jermareo Davidson already under contract, Charlotte now has three centres who can run and jump and shit (well, I think we can all shit), but who don't have too many pre-requisite skills, and none of whom are ready for big time minutes. This seems like a weird priorities list.

- While we're on the subject of uninteresting Bobcat centres, their former (and perhaps future) training camp fodder Deji Akindele has signed with Scavolini in Italy. For fun, here's a Babelfish translation of the Italian press's coverage of Akindele's performances for the Toronto Raptors summer league team.

We have gone to analyze the figures of new pivot biancorosso the Deji Akindele. Along of the Spar Digging, in first left with the mesh of Toronto Raptors, it has left in quintet, and in the defeat against the Kings in 22 minuteren it has put to sign 13 heads, with 4 at 8 from 2, and 5 at 5 to the free ones, flavored from 7 bounces. In the challenge lost against Denver, in the 12 minuteren in Akindele field it has totaled 3 points, with 1 on 2 from 2, and 3 bounces. Against Philadelphia, the pivot nigeriano in 17 minuteren it has put 8 points, and recovered 7 bounces.

It is now my mission to accomodate "flavoured from 7 bounces" and "signed 13 heads" into day-to-day NBA verbiage.


- The Utah Jazz surprised all of us who cared by match Oklahoma City's offer sheet to C.J. Miles, despite it being for 4 years and about $15 million. Considering that they've barely used Miles in the three years that he's spent there, it seems like quite an investment in a bit-part. They'd better actually use him now. As for Oklahoma City, maybe they could spend the money a bit better now that they've had a reprieve.

- Golden State found their 15th man by signing Anthony Morrow out of whichever college Anthony Morrow last played for. Having watched Anthony Morrow in summer league, I can tell you that Anthony Morrow can shoot. This takes Golden State's "guards who can shoot" count up to a staggering two (the other being Marco Belinelli). Unfortunately, Anthony Morrow can't dribble, leaving Golden State's "players who can serve as the primary ball handler" count at 0. Something to work on there.

- Edin Bavcic, Sixers draft pick, has signed for the incorrigible Kepez Bid Antalya in Turkey. Can't even think of a cynical comment here.

- Nik Caner-Medley is about to sign with Pierrel Capo D'Orlando in Italy. Again, I can't think of a cynical comment here. I'm sorry, but we're having a heatwave over here, and on top of that, I have a migraine and can't see out of my right eye. You're lucky I'm even bothering. TheChrisDuhonLapdanceClub.com - the only NBA website to make you feel guilty about reading its content.

- Guillermo Diaz had an "NBA Escape" clause in his contract with Italian team Peps Elvo Juvecaserta, but since that didn't get exercised (and I can guess why), Diaz is going back there next season.

- An earlier blog post talked about how free agent guard Maurice Evans initially agreed to sign with the Golden State Warriors, before changing hismind after deciding that he wasn't getting enough money. The Warriors then looked elsewhere. But Evans got what he wanted on the end (if signing in Atlanta can ever be called that) - a 3 year, $7.5 millionish deal from the Hawks, where he can try and fail to replace Josh Childress. Everyone's a winner. But mainly Golden State.

- Mustafa Shakur has signed with Procul Haram in Poland, alongside the impossibly named Koko Archibong. Pape Sow recently left Prokom (which is the team's real name, not the web of 70's music-based deceit that I spun you earlier), which is a damn shame, because a bizarre number of Prokom games are on TV over here, and it's ALWAYS good to see Pape Sow. Mustafa Shakur.....not so much.

- The Sixers signed Royal Ivey, who TOTALLY helps their backcourt shooting woes. (Seriously, the worst shooting teeam in the NBA by a country mile goes and signs Royal Ivey? Royal Ivey????? That's a good plan, is it? Oh, and by the way, I'm going to contradict my own Royal Ivey player profile here, but Royal Ivey is NOT a good defensive player. If you don't believe me, feast your mince pies on this. Spectacularly bad.)

- Ryan Gomes re-signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who quietly have re-signed Gomes and Craig Smith for less than the cost of one DeSagana Diop. Well done them.

- Sasha Vujacic re-signed with the L.A. Lakers for some years and some million. I got nothing. Seriosly, it's a world of hurt in my head right now. How am I supposed to think up witticisms? All I can think of is the pain relieving qualities of a shotgun?

- Zabian Dowdell. Nancy. No. Gone. Google. Ow. Pain. Hot.

Bed.

Taking Shots, By Keith Glass (Oh, I see what he did there.)

Keith Glass is a basketball agent. You may or may not have heard of him.

He isn't a powerhouse agent - you know, one of the ones that you've heard of, such as Arn Tellem or Mark Bartelstein. Indeed, unless you're exceptionally hardcore and boring like me, then you may have heard of him only from reading the literature of Paul Shirley, who is one of Glass's clients, and who neatly ties into Glass's self professed niche market of Tall White Boys. Glass's list of current and recent NBA clients is, as far as I can tell, limited to Shirley, Scott Skiles, Royal Ivey, Jackie Butler, Quincy Douby and Joseph Blair.

That list probably didn't get you semi-erect, no matter how much you love Scott Skiles.

Still, something else that you also probably didn't know about Keith Glass is that he has written a book, a somewhat autobiographical venture called "Taking Shots: Tall Tales, Bizarre Battles, and the Incredible Truth About the NBA".

(Ridiculously cheap second-hand copies of this book are available from Amazon Marketplace. I also bought an album by a band named Midget Handjob from there while buying this book, purely so that I could say that I got a midget handjob for £1.99. I lead an exciting life. But anyway, back to the topic at hand.)

This book is, in many ways, interesting. To say that may not seem like particularly incisive book reviewing on my part, but remember that I'm not a particularly incisive book reviewer. Nor am I a book reviewer at all. Nonetheless, "interesting" is still the most apt adjective that I can muster to describe the book, despite its chronic overuse.

I use "interesting" in place of "good", not because the book is bad, but because of some rather indefensible flaws.

The book covers topics as diverse as The Adventures of Thomas Hamilton (for those unaware, Thomas Hamilton was an NBA player in the 90's, represented by Glass, who was really really fat, and who had little interest in doing anything about that), Glass's days as an assistant coach to Larry Brown (for those unaware, this was for the UCLA Bruins in the 70's, when Keith had a truly shocking moustache), and the Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf saga (for those unaware, buy the damn book). With 13 chapters for 13 different mini-stories, interest (there's that word again) is peaked. If you're fascinated by Keith Glass the man, there's some to be found. If you're an avid collector of black and white photographs featuring a man with a jewfro in a black leather jacket, then this book should speak to you. If you're looking for some insight into how agents do what they do, there's some of that, too. And if you're looking for amusing tales of NBA people that you've heard of, then there's some of that thrown in as well.

But, undermining all of these high points are three flaws that shine through relentlessly:

1: The book suffers from really sloppy editing. Whether this is the fault of the editor (or lack thereof), or whoever printed this particular version of the book, I couldn't say. But it really is truly sloppy, with commas frequently in the wrong places, or missing altogether. Many names are misspelt, due to what can only be sloppy typing, unless someone out there really does think that the NBA Commissioner's name is Davis Stern. This might not seem like a deal breaker, but it is annoying, and really kills the cohesiveness of the writing - then again, with Glass's tendency to rant about whatever he wants whenever he wants, cohesiveness is never entirely secured anyway.

2) Keith repeats himself. Quite a lot.

3) A more apt title for the book would be "Why Everything That Went Wrong When Larry Brown Was Around Wasn't Larry Brown's Fault". (Glass and Brown's lives, both professional and personal, are heavily intertwined in ways that Glass elaborates fully on, and that I can't be bothered to explain. The offshoot of this is that Glass somehow works the topic of Larry Brown into pretty much every issue he talks about. And never is anything Larry's fault in Keith's stories.)


This gets amusing in places, for at times it borders upon the hallowed "Old Man's Amusing Rant About The Way Things Were" turf that can occasionally carry Boston Celtics broadcasts. Glass appears to have written the book to rant about things that piss him off, rather than to recant interesting tales for the purposes of entertainment. And that's fine. A positive side effect of this is Glass's staunch defiance and insistence that he is right, and also in several cases his willingness to call those out by name who have annoyed or wronged him. (This is something that his client Shirley could, and should, have done way more often in his book, which will be reviewed soon.)

Another positive side effect of Glass's ranting was when, while ranting about how to fix the USA's recent Olympic bronze medal winning woes, Keith's 'This Team Would Win Easily' roster included Quincy Douby and Jackie Butler. That was fun. I bet Paul Shirley was pissed off, though, for seemingly Jared Jeffries took his place.

But it also leads to agendas, as seen above with the frequent mentions of Larry Brown. Glass points out what he believes is wrong with the NBA, some of which is obvious, some of which is insightful, some of which still rings true, some of which has been corrected, and some of which he's just wrong about. His solutions to the problems are sometimes lacking, and sometimes not cohesive - for every good point addressed (e.g. the need to rectify the system in which as player can fire an agent with no forewarning or severance, as often as they so choose), he tells you something that you already know (we are all aware of the excessive timeouts at the end of games, and the NBA is aware enough of our awareness to have addressed it slightly), and something that makes you wonder where the hell he's going with it (players fouling out is far from the top of the NBA's problems list, Keith).


Taking Shots tells you a lot of things that you want to hear, and some other things that you never thought that you wanted to hear. It provides a genuinely insightful view into the workings of the NBA from an inside perspective, and sheds light on some luminary NBA personalities. All this is done with a small but pleasurable dollop of humourous garnish, as well as the bizarre inclusion of the aforementioned picture of his jacket. Yet in doing so, Glass sets out to prove some other points about things that are clearly bugging him, and the doesn't prove them very well.

And no matter how "interesting" the book is, that doesn't excuse having no one proof-reading it.

30 teams in 36 or so days: Atlanta

Atlanta Hawks

Players acquired via free agency or trade:

None



Players acquired via draft:

First round: Al Horford (3rd overall), Acie Law IV (11th overall)



Players retained:

None



Players departed:

Royal Ivey (unsigned, crap), Slava Medvedenko (unsigned, crap), Esteban Batista (unsigned, crap)



Bobbins:

The Hawks got lucky, I think they would admit that. The Joe Johnson trade of 2005 left the Hawks owing two first round picks to Phoenix. One of these had already been conveyed, and was used to select Rajon Rondo last year, whom Phoenix then stupidly sold to Boston. The other pick was still outstanding headed into this summer, and was only top 3 protected, meaning that Atlanta had to win a top three spot in the lottery.

They did this, despite only having the fourth worst record and thus only the fourth most chances of moving up (I say "only", but that's enough to make it a statistical improbability). For that, they should be bloody thankful - had they not done so, they would have had a mediocre roster, with only an MLE and the number 11 pick to work with to improve it. And that would not have been fun. Ironically, the three teams with worse records than Atlanta (Milwaukee, Boston, Memphis) all failed to move up, thus proving the worthlessness of statistical probability.

(Incidentally, the number 11 pick itself was also subject to changes in the lottery - the pick was Indiana's as a part of the Al Harrington last summer, and had top 10 protection on it. Had Indiana moved up in the lottery, Atlanta would not have gotten it, and had Indiana moved up into Atlanta's place moving Atlanta out of the top three, Atlanta would have had no first rounder at all this year. Which would have been bad.)

Despite that little but of sorely needed good fortune, things could have been so much more profitable for Atlanta this offseason, were it not for a few things not quite falling their way. As welcome as it was to move up to the number 3 spot, the position is something of an anti-climax in this 'two superstars' draft: it only needed one more spot, and Atlanta had either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant to call their own. And if Billy Knight hadn't decided that the holy trinity of Speedy Claxton, Lorenzen Wright and Anthony Johnson was so valuable that it was worth spending nearly $12.5 million for next year (and, in the case of Johnson, also costing the Hawks their 2007 second round pick), Atlanta would also have had maximum cap room this offseason.

So that's a bugger.

(That trio, by the way, combined to score 597 points on 658 shots for Atlanta last year, at a scintillating 39% shooting, 54% from the free throw line. And they aren't there for their defense. Wright is now a third string center, and Claxton and Johnson are fighting it out for the 3rd and 4th string point guard spots. Feisty!)

Still, regardless of what mistakes had been made prior, General Manager Billy Knight made the correct picks with his two first rounders. Needing a young power forward/center with an inside scoring game, and a point guard who could distribute the ball, play some defense and not suck too much, Knight chose Horford and Law. The two not only figure to be a good young tandem to add to an already highly talented young core of players, but who also sound like a very believable name for an accounting company. And that's what matters, really.

Seemingly working to a budget, with both Josh Smith and Josh Childress to have their extensions (if signed) kick in next season, the Hawks haven't made any roster moves outside of these draft picks. With 14 roster spots filled with guaranteed contracts, the Hawks didn't have a lot of room to play around anyway. The only sub plot to develop from the Hawks offseason has been surrounding the man himself, Esteban Batista.

Left unrestricted by the Hawks, Batista has attracted a modicum of interest around the league, largely based off of his performances in the FIBA tournament this summer. It sure wasn't for his performances in his first two seasons in the NBA - Batista played 576 minutes in his two seasons and 70 games with the Hawks, the majority of which came in garbage time. Given my undue and inexplicable love for terrible basketball players and the garbage time in which they shine, I endeavoured to try and watch every single minute in which he played, and came fairly close to doing so. All Batista managed to demonstrate to NBA standard was his rebounding psoitional sense, and good strength. Everything else was lacking. In layman's terms, he did sod all.

And yet now, he's strangely hot property, due to his fine performances on the big stage as Uruguay's personal one man show. Hmmm. Maybe he got better or something. Or maybe I'm just wrong about stuff. That would be bad, but a fair comment.



Next season:

Last season, I pencilled the Hawks in for roughly 38-40 wins. I did not document this anywhere, which was probably best, given that they missed this mark by the worryingly large margin of 10 games.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see why they did so. Never a particularly deep roster to begin with, only one Hawks player managed to play over 72 games (Shelden Williams with 81), and even All Star Joe Johnson's consecutive games streak ending at 376, playing in only 57 contests for the year. Additionally, the unmitigated disaster that was the signings of Speedy Claxton and Lorenzen Wright did not help anyone, nor did the deadline trade for Anthony Johnson. Point guard play all season long was a massive weakness, as you would expect from any team which featured Tyronn Lue as its best, most consistent option at the position. And the backup center soap opera continued to disappoint with no real resolution to be found.

Despite all of what went wrong, though, I don't believe that a similar prediction for next year would be too out of the question. Point guard remains a concern - Claxton's knees may never be good again, and who knows how well or how quicly Law adjusts - but the Hawks should have more luck with injuries this year, and they also have an extremely talented roster, something often overlooked. With a lineup scheduled to feature Josh Smith, Joe Johnson, Shelden Williams, Horford + Law Ltd, Josh Childress, Zaza Pachulia and Marvin Williams, Atlanta boasts a young rotation full of talented players who continue to improve, and who have mostly been together for quite a while now. While as a team they continue to struggle for consistency, their talent level counts for quite a lot, and having young role players like Salim Stoudamire and Solomon Jones on hand too is a further bonus.

Although they've had to trawl through some hard times, some bad luck and some mismanagement to get there, the Hawks have wound up with a core of players that almost every team in the NBA, bar about 6, would dearly swap with. And that counts for a lot.

It just should have been better.

Still, their expendable players can rustle up about $10 million in expiring contracts, should they choose to go that route. Let's see what becomes of that.

Probably nothing.