Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 40

- Let's start this off with a bang; I have absolutely nothing to report on Wesley Person. Nothing whatsoever.

- Continuing that sizzling opener, Brent Petway is in the D-League, averaging 10.5 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.1 blocked shots a game for the Idaho Stampede. Strangely, those numbers were somehow enough to make him a D-League All Star, and you can see the boxscore for the D-League All Star game here. (That minutes distribution is first class. I'd love to know what Richard Hendrix did to merit those extra 5 seconds.) Petway also lost his D-League Slam Dunk Champion title to James White, so it's not been a good fortnight for him.

- The last I heard about Eric Piatkowski came in the summertime, when an article talked about he was staying in shape and waiting for the phone to ring. I'm guessing it hasn't rung.

- Tim Pickett has had a busy year, starting in the Italian Serie A with Rieti, but leaving before the season began. He then moved to Bulgaria with Lukoil Akademik, and averaged 17.9 points and 3.9 rebounds in Eurocup play for them. Unfortunately, he was a victim of their sweeping cull of international players midway through the season, one which also brought about the demise of Kehnide Adeleke and Kevin Kroogs. Pickett has since signed in China, with Shanxi Zhongyu, as the replacement for Bonzi Wells. By now, you should know what it means when somebody signs in China, and by God you won't be disappointed here either - Pickett currently averages 39.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, 3.5 steals and 3.2 assists per game. OK, so the assists numbers are a tad low, but he's averaging 40ppg for Shade Sheist's sake. Who the hell should he be passing to?

- Kevinn Pinkney is with NGC Cantu in Serie A, averaging 14.4 points and 6.8 rebounds a game. Foolishly, though, he continues to insist upon his own three point shot, and is shooting only 29.8% on the year from three point range, while shooting 47 three's to 125 two's. This is a trend with Pinkney, who as far as I can tell has only shot above 30% from three point range once in his entire basketball career, that being last year when he shot 33% for Angellico Biella. (That 50% success in his NBA stint doesn't count. Two shots doth not a sample sizeth make.)

- Danilo "J.R." Pinnock is playing for a team in the Italian second division, whose name as far as I can tell is "Pallacanestro Seven 2007 Roseto 1946". Catchy. Here's Google Translate with the rest of the J.R. Pinnock news:

Last external quintet is the American Danilo Pinnock Jr. Player of talent and high technology, is not exactly a guarantee in terms of choices and application. His performance was influenced heavily discontinuous season biancoazzurri. 16.7 points and 4.5 rebounds for the media to him.

All good information.


- You've probably heard the story about Kevin "Ca$h Money" Pittsnogle that has recently done the rounds. But if you haven't, here it is. Also, if you haven't seen what he wore to his wedding, here's that too.

- Trent Plaisted, second round draft pick owned by the Pistons, is signed with Angellico Biella in Italy. He has not played since October, though, due to back troubles. Plaisted totalled 10 points, 4 rebounds and 8 fouls in the two games that he managed to play in.

- Zoran Planinic never fitted in the NBA, but is now a fine backup point guard for CSKA Moscow, averaging 8.9 points, 2.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists in Russian league play, alongside 8.2 points, 1.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists in the Euroleague.

- Question: is Pavel Podkolzin good yet? Answer: nope. Pavel is playing for Sibirtelekom-Lokomotiv Novosybirsk, a team in the Russian second division, and if you can make sense of this jizz then you can see what he averages. He's number 23, and as far as I can tell, he averages 7.2 points and 4 rebounds. In the Russian second division. Hmmm. Lots of people do that, and none of them get drafted in the first round of the NBA draft. That turn-of-the-century European influx got a bit overzealous, didn't it?

- Finally, Scot Pollard is sitting around looking at the phone with Eric Piatkowski.

Also, if you missed it, these last ten days or so were a minefield for arrests of past and present NBA players. Firstly, Nets big man Sean Williams was arrested for trespassing, after violating a restraining order and returning to the Boston College campus, the school that he was previously kicked out of. Suns guard Jason Richardson was then arrested for doing 90mph in a 35mph zone, while also having his three year old son in the back of the car not in a proper child safety seat. Then Celtics guard Gabe Pruitt was arrested for DUI after driving around Hollywood at 3am while tanked up after a loss to the Clippers. Former Bulls and Bucks forward Tommy Smith was then arrested for kidnapping and assault after punching his girlfriend and breaking her nose after leaving a party. (Not sure where the kidnapping came into it.) And then most impressively of all, NBA journeyman Damone Brown was arrested on Thursday as a part of an FBI operation to bring down an entire drug trafficking ring. Brown was charged with money laundering, after supposedly leasing out the safety deposit box tha a local drug kingpin was using to stash his proceeds in. Unsurprisingly, Brown was then kicked off of his D-League team, the Reno Bighorns. (Giggidy.)

Good times.

Summer signings, round 2

- Former Detroit Pistons guard Alex Acker has left European powerhouse Barcelona, after a poor season last year. He's also been replaced by Juan Carlos Navarro, whom we'll probably never see in the NBA again, for an entirely different reason to that of Acker. Detroit still owns Acker's rights, but they're looking increasingly worthless. (Detroit, Acker, and his rights.)

- Atlanta Hawks draftee, Australian centre David Andersen, is also joining Barcelona on a three year deal. Andersen, whose combination of height, broken legs and athleticism was enough to rigidify Hawks fans for at least two years, will also probably never join the NBA. But that doesn't mean that he isn't any good.

- Derrick Zimmerman has signed with the ever-elusive geniuses of Budivelnik Kiev in the Ukraine, where he may soon be joined by Anthony Morrow, who has agreed to terms to join the team. However, Morrow's agreement is conditional - if he makes an NBA roster, he'll do that instead. (Morrow is on two summer league rosters this year, so he's giving it a go.) Zimmerman clearly had no such clause, so at least one of the two realises the futility of such a situation.

- Indiana Pacers draft pick Erazem Lorbek has signed with CSKA Moscow, essentially as the replacement for David Andersen above.

- James Singleton has left Tau Ceramica in Spain to try and come back to the NBA. We wait with baited breath. (EDIT: I wrote this a long time before posting it - Singleton has since signed with the Dallas Mavericks. It's a good signing. Singleton should never have left the NBA. He's good enough to be a 10th or 11th man in it. However, Dallas also signed Keith McLeod, and Keith McLeod is complete wank. So it's swings and roundabouts.)

- Milt Fellatio has signed with Khimky (not Kinky) in Russia. A report on the subject says that "Khimky wants to win ULEB Cup this year", which gives them a clear advantage over those ULEB Cup teams who don't want to win it. Good plan.

- New-found Montengran citizen Omar Cook has signed for Unicja in Spain ona two year contract. Cook played very well for Red Star Belgrade last year, and Milwaukee Bucks coach Scott Skiles likes him a lot. Yet apparently, that's not getting it done for Omar, who still doesn't get a return to the NBA. Cook also played at the Boston Celtics free agent camp this month, alongside a "who's who?" of nobodys including Randolph Morris, Eddie Basden, Alan Anderson, Bobby Brown, RYVON! Covile, David Noel, Lawrence Roberts, Mustafa Shakur and someone called Brian Butch. But seemingly this didn't result in a potential roster spot for Omar. (Cook has also started playing for the Montenegran National Team, for those who previously missed this exciting news.)

- Robert Archibald turned down a two year contract from the New Orleans Hornets to go and play alongside Cook for Unicaja Malaga, which seems rare and strange. According to this, it is because of the lure of guaranteed money, more than the lure of Omar Cook. But then again, that link describes Archibald's NBA reputation as "rock solid", so.......yeah.

- Sasha Kaun, drafted in the second round this year and sold to the Cleveland Cavaliers, has signed with CSKA Moscow, along with Erazem Lorbek mentioned above, as well as former Magic and Rockets forward Terence Morris. David Andersen is sitting somewhere in Spain, regretting leaving such a stacked team. Probably. Well, maybe.

- Will Bynum is to earn $800,000 this season playing for Virtus Bologna in Italy, assuming that he doesn't make the Detroit Pistons roster.

- Former Net Zoran Planinic, just like basically everybody else in this post, has signed for CSKA Moscow, which is in Moscow. Does David Andersen regret it now? Does he fuck.

Where Are They Now? Part 29

Gary Payton says he's done. I hope he's right.

Anthony Peeler played briefly in Spain after his NBA career ended, but that was three years ago now.

Ben Pepper is in his native Australia, playing for the Townsville Crocodiles. I am not sure that he's ever left Australia in the 9 years since he was drafted.

Wesley Person is D-U-N done.

Brent Petway is playing for the Idaho Stampede of the D-League, where he averages 7.2 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks a game.

Tim Pickett averages a whopping 21.2 points and 5.1 rebounds for a not partciularly good Italian team called Aget Imola.

Kevinn Pinkney is playing for Angelica Biella in Italy. If you've been paying really close attention and have a fantastic memory, you will remember that others plays for that team include Keith Langford, Brandon Hunter and B.J. Elder. So, something for everybody there. Pinkney averages roughly 13 points and 7 rebounds a game, while he also remains unable to spell his own name.

J.R. Pinnock averages just less than 15 points and 4 fouls a game (not a typo) for Kolossus in Greece, alongside Curtis Stinson, also known as "50 Cent".

Kevin Pittsnogle is playing for the Albuquerque Thudnerbirds of the D-League, for whom he averages 15.7 points and 6.2 rebounds. But, more importantly, this is what Kevin Pittsnogle wore to his own wedding. This is the kind of information that you need to know. It also bears mentioning that someone out there is now know as Mrs Pittsnogle.

Zoran Planinic is in his second year playing for Tau Vitoria in Spain. He averages 10.1 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.0 assists a game.

Pavel Podkolzin, who you could flatteringly describe as "a mis-step", is back in Russia playing alongside Lee Nailon for Lokomotiv Novosybirsk. I have no dull stats here, so just assume he's still crap.

Olden Polynice seems to have finally accepted that retirement is the best move for his 44 year old arse.

The bench player handbook

For those amongst you who, like me, have a strange fascination with transactions, both those finalized and those possible, this is a bad time of year for you. This is late August, the draft is long since gone, and most of the juicy bits of free agency have passed us by. Of the remaining free agents, only a select few are good enough to be starters in this league - Ruben Patterson to name......one - and merely the journeyman remain. This is the NBA's equivalent of what it's like to try and completely scrape clean an almost-empty pot of jam - you can try and try and try to clean every last morsel out of the jar, and occasionally struck it lucky with a decent sized chunk. But most of the residual jam offers up stubborn resistance, and is not even worth your time - even if there was a practical way of getting it off there, you wouldn't garner anything useful from it anyway.

Additionally, when writing these new player profiles for the site, I have had a very tough time trying to keep them interesting. How, for example, do you make the profile of JamesOn Curry read wildly different to that of Jannero Pargo or Salim Stoudamire, when they are very similar players? It's a quandry that has cropped up all too often. Too many players are too alike too many other players, and too many players conform to stereotypes.

So, let's look at those stereotypes and give them broad definitions based around the pioneer - the trendsetter, if you will - of that particular stereotype. Every team needs their role players, after all.


1 - The Jerome Williams: The athletic forward whose only real skill is the fact that they are an athletic forward. They're too small to play power forward unless against others such as themselves, yet they have not the dribbling skills, jumpshot or defensive footwork to play much small forward. They compensate by running around a lot. A classic player-without-a-position situation.

Notable examples: Darvin Ham, Linton Johnson (although he's nearly good enough to not qualify), Jerome Williams, Ryan Bowen
Pencil them in: Mike Harris


2 - The DeSagana Diop: They're tall. They're athletic. They're often foreign. This perks your interest. It's rarely worth it.

Notable examples: Boniface N'Dong, DeSagana Diop (the poster child), Peter John Ramos, Mile Ilic, Didier Ilunga-Mbenga
Pencil them in: Cheikh Samb, Marcin Gortat


3 - The Esteban Batista: They're tall. They're strong. They're far from athletic. They're often foreign. They're often white. They don't do much else. This also perks your interest. It's also rarely worth it.

Notable examples: Esteban Batista, Dalibor Bagaric, Mengke Bateer, Jake Voskuhl, Jared Reiner
Pencil them in: Aaron Gray, Marc Gasol, Kyrylo Fesenko


4 - The Zoran Planinic: Dedicated to those taller guards - often European - who are touted as being tall point guards, yet who are basically shooting guards (or, occasionally, small forwards) with slightly above average dribbling skills. These players are generally exposed during any subsequent attempts to play point guard due to their lack of foot speed, and also aren't exactly primed for the two guard position due to their decidedly temperamental jumpshots. The old saying goes that your position in the NBA is defined by the position that you are best at defending, yet it wouldn't go amiss for these players to get themselves a defined position on offense. For the "bit of one, bit of another" thing isn't really working.

Notable examples: Zoran Planinic, Marquis Daniels, Thabo Sefolosha, John Salmons, Jiri Welsch, Sasha Vujacic
Pencil them in: Cedric Bozeman (in anticipation of a fairytale comeback), D.J Strawberry (sorta)


5 - The Eddie House: Small guards who come into a game solely for the purposes of putting up lots of long jumpshots and running around enthusiastically. The genre is named after Eddie House himself, a man so perfectly awesome at this role that it defies any attempt of mine to explain it. If you're short (or tall by normal human standards) and want to make it in the world of basketball, this is probably your best bet.

Notable examples: Eddie House (obviously), Jannero Pargo, Salim Stoudamire, Quincy Douby, Damon Jones
Pencil them in: JamesOn Curry, Guillermo Diaz, Robert Hite


6 - The Eric Piatkowski: A logical extension of the Jannero Pargo type. Decent sized perimeter players whose offense is limited to an extremely good outside jumpshot, and whose defense is just plain limited. Something of a retro position that I cannot ever say enough good things about.

Notable examples: Eric Piatkowski, Casey Jacobsen, Voshon Lenard, Fred Hoiberg, Matt Carroll
Pencil them in: Brad Newley


7 - The Pat Garrity: A further extension of the Jannero Pargo genre, this role has similarities to the Jerome Wiliams genre above, in that the player concerned has no defined defensive position. They're power forwards with no power to their game, forced to play the position due to their lack of speed. The other slightly massive difference between this group and group one is that this group of extremely unathletic players also happen to have fantastic outside strokes. These players tend to share other common traits - they are usually absolutely abhorrent defensive players, and piss weak rebounders. They also seem to nearly always be white. This group compromises the most one trick ponyness of all the groups listed here. And yet, every year, one or two fresh faces pop up, despite the continued failure of all those to have previously trodden this path. It's dumbfounding, but it's faaaan-tastic.

Notable examples: Pat Garrity, Steve Novak, Scott Padgett, Matt Bonner
Pencil them in: Nick Fazekas (not quite yet, but just you wait.......)


8 - The Malik Allen: One final twist to the one dimension shooter saga. These guys are tall, with centers size. And they can shoot. Yet they also all suck at every other facer of the game. But, then again, it landed Troy Murphy a $58 million contract.

Notable examples: Troy Murphy, Malik Allen, Martynas Andriuskevicius, Kevin Pittsnogle, Damir Markota, Pat Burke, millions of others
Pencil them in: Kosta Perovic, Oleksiy Pecherov


9 - The Chuck Hayes: They may be undersized, but by God, that doesn't mean that their rebound is not theirs. Not tall enough for traditional power forward/center size in this league, and without the eye popping vertical to overcome this, these players choose to go the other way - they beef up, and work harder than the other guy for the rebound. Try and take it off them, and they'll kill you, no questions asked. This is especially true for Lonny Baxter, who has a thing for guns and shooting - if the White House doesn't scare him, then neither will you.

Notable examples: Chuck Hayes, Craig Smith, Lonny Baxter, Brandon Hunter
Pencil them in: Chris Richard, Carl Landry


10 - The Bruce Bowen: Decent sized reasonably athletic small forwards who play good defense on the perimeter, but who are contractually mandated on offense to stand in the corner and wait for an open three point attempt. To attempt to do anything else would result in asyphixiation, death, or worse.

Notable examples: Bruce Bowen(the master), Ime Udoka, Jumaine Jones
Pencil them in: Thabo Sefolosha


11 - The Ibrahim Kutluay: Disenfranchised European player who was pretty good back on home soil but who is not good enough in the NBA to crack a rotation. Rather than accept this, though, they opt to play off of their misguided sense of entitlement, sulk, and invariably wind up being bought out for a minimal amount so that they can return to Europe and vent. A relatively modern genre that I'm truly enjoying.

Notable examples: Ibrahim Kutluay, Arvydas Macijauskas, Sergei Monia, Vassilis Spanoulis
Pencil them in: Viktor Khryapa, Sarunas Jasikevicius


12 - The Mateen Cleaves: If you're not good enough to get into the game, you may as well act like you're happy to have been given such good tickets to see it. This genre is for those players who like nothing more than to come flying enthusiastically off of the bench after a good play, smacking arse and waving towels, and acting like nothing could be more right with their life. And why shouldn't they be happy? They get paid to sit down. I wish I did.

Notable examples: Mateen Cleaves, Ronny Turiaf, Eric Piatkowski, countless more
Pencil them in: Um, don't know. Hopefully, everyone.


13 - The Kelvin Cato: "Why does no one want me? I'm tall, I used to be good, what gives? Come on, just give me a minimum salary, I'll make it worth your while".

Notable examples: Kelvin Cato, Bo Outlaw, Michael Olowokandi, Alan Henderson
Pencil them in: Michael Sweetney, Vitaly Potapenko, Danny Fortson


14 - The Gary Payton: The former star who still wants the ring really, really badly. They'll forego their pride, their legacy and their reputation to sign for pittance just to try and get it. Named after Gary Payton, a man who has done this twice - once with the Los Angeles Lakers and once with the Miami Heat. Strangely, having won the ring, Payton still did not then retire, and eked out one more season of poor player for the minimum salary in a bid to win a second. He did not do so. Now, hopefully, that will be it.

Notable examples: Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning, Kevin Willis, Chris Webber
Pencil them in: Reggie Miller (oh God I hope not), P.J. Brown, Jalen Rose


15 - The Jacque Vaughn: The "heady veteran" point guard who doesn't run nearly as well as he used to, yet who continues to look for (and sometimes get) NBA work as an old timer whose "experience" will help the team's younger point guards, and also provide a calming influence on the court. But basically they just aren't very good any more and are out for what they can get.

Notable examples: Jacque Vaughn, Randy Livingston, Howard Eisley, Anthony Carter, Darrick Martin
Pencil them in: Jeff McInnis, Brevin Knight


16 - The Michael Curry: You have absolutely no idea what this guy is supposed to do.

Notable examples: Michael Curry, Michael Ruffin, Scot Pollard, Adrian Griffin
Pencil them in: Hopefully, no one. Ever.



These people are not to be overlooked, though. Not in any way. The defending champion San Antonio Spurs, for example, have two number 10's including the poster child himself, a number 4, a number 6, a number 7, recently traded away a number 2, recently traded for a number 11 to go along with the one they already had, have THE number 15, and have themselves an extremely successful number 14 in Robert Horry.

Of course, they also have Tim Duncan, which counts for a lot. But do they really win their three recent titles without checking off a good half of the criteria thrown up by this list?


(Yes, probably)