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.

Get Your Drew Neitzel News Here

It might seem as if nothing ever happens on this website. At the very least, there's not ever any need to check in every day, since this isn't one of them daily sort of blogs, and there's no Wiretap-type function or anything. But this assumption really isn't true. Just because you can't necessarily see it, work still gets done. I still devote every waking hour to this bastard venture, and if you include time spent watching basketball into that "time spent" quota, then.......Jesus, I don't even want to think about it. It's too much frigging time, believe that. It's also kind of worrying how I still manage to be wrong so often, considering all that time that gets pissed up against the wall. Sheesh.

Anyway, the reason for that self-congratulatory wankfest above is that I wish to announce a new feature to this website. There's been an increased focus in this blog in recent months on the whereabouts of fringe NBA players, tracking their progress across the world, predominantly in European leagues. With that in mind, rather than just covering the NBA, this website is now going to cover a wider scope of world basketball, specifically the D-League and the significant bits of Europe.

This won't be especially reflected in the blog, but it will be in the players database. Go to the top right of the screen, to that sexy new rosters drop down menu that you've never used in your life and could easily live without. This is the best way to demonstrate what I'm rambling about - that menu reflects all the varying areas of basketball that this site will feature, to varying degrees. If players in those leagues/countries ever have a chance of making the NBA one day, I'll be ready to slander them before they get here.

The purpose of this ambitious move is to prove both my ability and desire to try to know everything about everyone even vaguely significant in the NBA's horizons to any potential employers, rather than just telling bad cock jokes about current players. I make no apologies for this, and you may now woo me with job offers. Start now. Whenever you're ready. Remember that I come from a land with a free national health service, so we need to talk medical insurance.

Essentially, though, all this supposed announcement means to you the viewer is that there's even more player profiles that I haven't written. Because the 700 or so that already existed just wasn't enough. But I'll get through them. I swears it. Sod it, I have nothing else that I want to do.

You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Mine

In some shameless self publicity, I'd like to announce how brilliant I am.

In addition to this very blue blog (in the non-pornographic, more literal sense of the word blue), I also have a white one, based at a website that you may have heard of. (And you can probably go ahead and drop the word "may" from that sentence.) The site is DraftExpress.com, the blog is called BasketBollocks, and the URL is here:

http://www.draftexpress.com/blog/BasketBollocks/

I will write for DraftExpress roughly a couple of times a month, as and when inspiration hits me. The mandate is much the same as it is here - tell bad jokes, talk about whatever, and try not to get sued. However, the contents of this blog will not be repeated on that one, and vice versa. Thus, check them both over 100 times a day to make sure that you don't miss anything.

Gratitude goes to whoever volunteered the suggestion of "BasketBollocks" for this website's name. I'd thank you personally, but you didn't leave your name. So you don't win a prize.

Summer League Time, When The Weather Is Fine.

Yeehaw!



I looooove summer league. Looooooooove it. (Note: the extra O's mean that I really looooooooooove it.) It's great. It's like training camp, only better. There's more players that you've never heard of, and more players that yu have heard of but had completely forgotten about. The best type of player, that one. Good times.

This year's summer league roster are lovingly listed on this website, and, if you're anything like me (and hopefully you aren't), you'll read them every morning. Some rosters are yet to be announced, which means there's even more hardcore excitement to come. Hooray!


Highlights this year include:

- Romeo Travis playing on Cleveland's summer league team for the second straight year, still longing to hook up with former Akron high school teammate LeBron James, but this year joined by another Akron starlet, their mutual friend Dru Joyce, as Cleveland continues to surround LeBron with the talent needed to get them over the top.

- Josh Davis adding two new teams to the ever-glorious "NBA Teams That Josh Davis Has Spent Time With In A Non Sexual Way" list, by playing for both Portland and Indiana's summer league teams.

- The surprise return of the utterly skint Robert Traylor, and the slightly less auspicious but far more welcome return of journeyman centre John Thomas, whose name still gets to me.

- The discovery that there's a player called Longar Longar.

- ShamSports.com favourite Olumide Oyedeji playing on the Milwaukee Bucks team, alongside Roderick Riley, an awesome blast from the past who is also the heaviest player in any summer league by about 45 pounds, and who also is playing alongside someone else called Roderick for probably the first time in his life.

- Yuta Tabuse's comeback trail beginning anew.

- Koko Archibong. Koko Archibong!

- Knicks guard Antione Johnson single handedly raising the bar in the Antawn Jamison/Antywane Robinson "Who Can Spell Antoine In The Most Fucked-Up Way Possible" tribute game, and

- Indiana signing MC Hammer.


Good times. These are the things that I care about. Here's to training camp.

Aaron McKie Arrested In The Nick Of Time

At 7.15 this morning, I finally finished completing a project that I started many moons ago - to try and comprehensively list the criminal records of all current NBA players, as well as some from the recent past. This shit took months, deviated a little at times, and was at other times really, really boring. The occasional interesting discovery made it worthwhile - for example, did you know that Jalen Rose was once arrested in a drugs bust, that Paul Millsap was once arrested for aggravated assault, and that Anthony Peeler once went to alcohol rehab? - but for the most part, it was a grind. Thankfully, though, I got it done.

Literally minutes after I had finished, I check the day's news, and found that Aaron McKie and Rasual Butler had been arrested on weapons charges only yesterday.

- McKie
- Butler

There might be something systematically wrong with this league, you know. Things things happn pretty regularly. Already this offseason, those two, Joakim Noah, Chris Wilcox and Carlos Powell have been arrested, and I may be forgetting others. That's....quite a lot of people.

Anyway, the resource is now there, and also here, so be sure to look at it, and go "oooooh!!", and then tell your friends about it, so that they too might partake in an "oooooh!!". Or something more apathetic, like a "meh". Either way, it's a syllable. As with everything, 100% success and comprehensive is not guaranteed, but it IS pretty bitching. Submit any oversights to the usual address.

The Lookalikes Hath Returneth

As detailed on the About page that no one has ever read, this website has evolved (or, if you like, devolved) into something really quite different to what it used to be.

Now, it will evolve slightly back.

The lookalikes archive has returned, reformatted somewhat into a less ugly and more practical version of its original self. In many ways it remains the same - most of them are still crap, after all, and a lot of them are still based around obscure English pop culture icons that you've probably never heard of. Still, it may entertain some of you. Well, a few of you. Well, one of you. Maybe.

The archive can be accessed by clicking this very big word below.

Lookalikes

Contributions are extremely welcome, so e-mail in any of your own. Just remember two key points:

a) Your submissions aren't of much use to me without pictures to validate them.
b) Try not to make them crap. There's enough of those anyway.

Post trade-deadline salary numbers updated

I beat ESPN. Not bad going.

All information for other stuff such as free agents and that updated also, but no one really cares about that.

Finished!!!

The world's best NBA salary information website can once again consider itself to be the world's best NBA salary information website, for that is all now up to date. This is earth-shattering news to at least 1 other person. Perhaps.

(Sorry if that came across as a bit arrogant, by the way. I'm going for a new-wave, confident approach. All this pessimism and self-deprication leads to nothing but internal strife, I've found. So, yay, everything is superb! And that.)

(Also, if you see me end sentences in the phrase "and that", or add the word "like" for no reason, they're just Englishisms. Don't look for hidden meaning.)

In addition to this anticlimactic joy (oh wait, the pessimism has crept back in), I have also added another brilliant feature that no one will look at. The character issues page has existed for quite a long time, in various stages of disrepair. However, I have expanded upon it. Every player profile now has a "criminal issues" link on it (I couldn't think of a snappier way to phrase it), which provides a nice l'il pop up for you lazy people with that players criminal history (or lack thereof) on it.

This might not sound particularly interesting, but it has led to me creating a page for every single player in the website's database. All 958 of them. And for each page, I've done the necessary research. This is important, for it means that we now have nearly-up-to-date information on all of these players, including those that you have never heard of. And it has led to interesting finds. For example, you may not have previously known that Corie Blount was once arrested and had $19,435 of cash confisctaed from him on general principle. But by God, now that you do, you're going to tell all your friends. And previously, you harbored no ill will towards Bryant Matthews, until you realised that he was a dirty sexpest.

It's all truly interesting stuff. Hopefully.

This information brought to you by ShamSports.com, where the power of obsessive compulsive disorder is harnessed. Infrequently.

Sham's to-do list

Dated 24th December 2007.

1) Celebrate Christmas.
2) Spend two weeks hawking up spleen due to weird infection thing.
3) Find new job.
4) Get girlfriend.
5) Watch a film that involves Cate Blanchett shitting into a tin bucket.
6) Drive car around with no oil in it, making it explode and do bad stuff.
7) Update website salary information.

I finally got around to number 7. And even then it was ably assisted by having little to no success with number 3.

Player profiles known to be in existence

Sometimes people ask me if there's a way to find out which player profiles have been written and which have not, as about 75% of them aren't complete as we speak.

Well, there isn't. Or rather, there wasn't. For I'm now going to tell you.

The following have been done:

Josh Childress, Jason Collier, Tony Delk, Josh Childress, John Edwards, Al Harrington, Royal Ivey, Joe Johnson, Tyronn Lue, Zaza Pachulia, Donta Smith, Josh Smith, Salim Stoudamire, Marvin Williams, Tony Allen, Marcus Banks, Mark Blount, Curtis Borchardt, Will Bynum, Ricky Davis, Dan Dickau, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Orien Greene, Al Jefferson, Raef LaFrentz, Kendrick Perkins, Paul Pierce, Justin Reed, Brian Scalabrine, Delonte West, Qyntel Woods, Alan Anderson, Keith Bogans, Primoz Brezec, Kevin Burleson, Matt Carroll, Melvin Ely, Raymond Felton, Jason Kapono, Brevin Knight, Sean May, Antonio Meeking, Emeka Okafor, Bernard Robinson Jr, Cream Rush, Jake Voskuhl, Gerald Wallace, Malik Allen, Eddie Basden, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Antonio Davis, Luol Deng, Chris Duhon, Ben Gordon, Othella Harrington, Kirk Hinrich, Andres Nocioni, Jannero Pargo, Eric Piatkowski, Drew Gooden, LeBron James, Ira Newble, Erick Dampier, Jerry Stackhouse, Earl Boykins, Marcus Camby, Julius Hodge, Andre Miller, Luke Schenscher, Darko Milicic, Adonal Foyle, Jason Richardson, Chris Taft, Jon Barry, Bob Sura, Austin Croshere, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Scot Pollard, Zeljko Rebraca, Stanislav Medvedenko, Smush Parker, Eddie Jones, Jake Tsakalidis, Lorenzen Wright, Dwyane Wade, Dorell Wright, Andrew Bogut, Desmond Mason, Bobby Simmons, Joe Smith, Kevin Garnett, Troy Hudson, Michael Olowokandi, Vince Carter, Jason Collins, Zoran Planinic, P.J. Brown, Jamaal Magloire, Krik Snyder, Jamal Crawford, Penny Hardaway, Jerome James, David Lee, Michael Sweetney, Steve Francis, Pat Garrity, Raja Bell, Kurt Thomas, Dijon Thompson, Juan Dixon, Khryapa the Rapper, Darius Miles, Travis Outlaw, Ruben Patterson, Joel Przybilla, Zach Randolph, Theo Ratliff, Ha Seung-Jin, Sebastian Telfair, Kevin Martin, Ronnie Price, Brian Skinner, Bruce Bowen, Tony Parker, Rick Brunson, Vitaly Potapenko, Rafer Alston, Eric Williams, Loren Woods, Carlos Boozer, Devin Brown, Keith McLeod, Antonio Daniels, Dan Dickau, Jared Jefferies, Peter John Ramos, Gary Payton, Eddie House, Jay Williams, Rodney Buford, Adrian Griffin, Darvin Ham, Glenn Robinson, Michael Curry, Christian Laettner, James Thomas, Marcus Fizer, Paul Shirley, Matt Freedgy, Keon Clark, Ben Handlogten, Obinna Ekezie, Jared Reiner, Don Reid, Albert Miralles, Andreas Glyniadakis, Cenk Akyol, Darius Songaila, Marcus Douthit, Roger Mason Jr, Shawn Bradley, Slavko Vranes, Szyzmon Szewcyk, Tamar Slay, Ronny Turiaf, Martynas Andriuskevicius, Horace Jenkins, Vlade Divac, Jerome Williams, Andrew DeClercq, David Andersen, Esteban Batista, Dan Josip Sesar, Roberto Duenas, Frederic Weis, Luis Scola, Cezary Trybanski, Norm Richardson, Corey Williams, Kennedy Winston, Ime Udoka, Herve Lamizana, Stephen Graham, Noel Felix, whoever Omar Thomas is, Chris Alexander, Steven Barber, Adam Chubb, Anthony Grundy, Nigel Dixon, Darius Rice, Andrei Fetisov, Aurelijius Zukauskas, Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah, Brandon Roy, Sheldon Williams, Marcus Williams, Solomon Jones, Leon Powe, Cheick Samb, Damir Markota, Allan Ray, Walter Herrmann, Alain Digbeu, Ben Pepper, Ivan McFarlin, Jefferson Sobral, Joe Shipp, Tyler Smith, Aaron Gray, Wilson Chandler, Jermareo Davidson, Coby Karl, Rashid Byrd, Brent Petway, Roderick Wilmont, Jared Homan, Joseph Blair, Alvin Jones and Brad Stricker.


This list took 45 minutes to compile so you'd better use it, or else.

That's an idle threat since I have no way of punishing you if you don't do so, so just ignore it.

What I'd like to do is rig up a comments system where each profile has its own comments section like these blogs posts do. But I don't know how to do that. If you do know, and you wish to tell me, and if you wish to help me accepting that you won't get paid in any way, why not write in and tell me?

Salaries updated

The salaries information has been updated and that to reflect stuff that has happened. You can find the lists anywhere where there's the word "salaries" in bold type font, including the one below:

Salaries

As always, 100% accuracy isn't guaranteed, merely a closer degree of accuracy than the competition offers.

If you take a look at the not-necessarily perfect calculations there, you may be surprised to see who has the highest payroll these days.

Also, be sure to view the salaries notes that you can find on every team page by clicking where it says "additional info". It's been brought to my attention that no one actually does this, and as a result I get e-mailed questions that have already been answered if you know where to look. So, yeah, do that.

ALSO: Free agents

No one really views this feature, which is a shame, because I spend hours on it. So I'm just prompting you right here.

Really bloody long NBA free agents list indicating who has signed elsewhere and that.

Thought you should know.

NEWS: Character issues

One of the better ideas that I had when creating this site was to build a complete list of all NBA players arrests and off court issues. It's not something I followed through particularly well, half arsing it back to in 2005.

However, such a thing is now complete, or so I think.


Character issues list thing


This list may not be 100% accurate, but it's close, and closer than anything else out there on the web. Even closer than those who copied the original list.

Submit any entires that I may have missed. Note - this is off the court stuff only.

NEWS: Salaries

Question: Can I be arsed to go through all the salaries, add in all the unguaranteed rookie salaries of all the scrubs who just got signed to training camp and then total them up and that, just to have to delete them one by one over the next three weeks?

Answer: Nope.

SHIT! WILL! HAPPEN!

Beginning as of tomorrow, a series of offseason recaps and season predictions will begin on this here blog, in a "30 teams in 36 or so days" format. It's a format much overused around the web, and not one that I shall claim to be unique to here (by the way, the reason for the inaccurate number of days is just that I'm lazy like that), but one that I shall use nonetheless, as I feel like it.

These will by typically snarky and inaccurate, and will probably contain swear words, because I'm a disreputable and disgusting individual like that.

This is all a part of my contrived yet half-baked plan to actually do more writing. I have downed cake and other such procrastinatory devices, and will avow to try hard for at least the 36 or so days of this endeavour.

Maybe.

Stuff that changed

As you can see, this front page is now consistent of a blog. I had wondered for the longest time about what to put on the front page here, and eventually decided that the Sam-Cassell-grabbing-his-cock picture wasn't getting it done. A blog, therefore, is probably the way to go. It'll consist of updates and that, some musings, and some terrible jokes.

Speaking of the pictures, they are all gone. We're moving in a new direction, see. They may or may not come back at a later date, depending on how other things pan out. Additionally, it will be great fun to see quite how other NBA wives copycat sites are going to keep their files updated now that they don't have these available to steal without asking.

What is also gone are the player notes on the player profiles - this is because they are being re-written into a far longer, more substantial and irreverent format. There's 918 of the things at the time of writing, and only 129 have been done so far. It's very boring to do, and so is taking a while. But it'll be worth it.

2007 offseason shit

Free agents listed by name
Free agents listed by team
Free agents listed by position


Draft index - draft results, draft night trades, status of signed picks, etc.

Free agents movement - if someone signs somewhere or has an option or anything, then it's here. It's also on the Transactions page, but it's all about the differing formats and that.

Salaries updated now for the new season. Sorry that it took a while. But it was really sodding boring to do.