Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 3
December 30th, 2009

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 ten-month wait ensued. Anderson then joined legendary Lithuanian team Zalgiris Kaunas for the rest of the season, 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 …

Posted by at 5:04 AM

Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 2
December 29th, 2009

Akin Akingbala

Akingbala came out of nowhere to be a decent rebounder and defender for Clemson in his senior season, and was a training camp invite of the Celtics in 2006 as a result. After that he went to the D-League for a bit, and has spent the last three years touring Europe. He is currently with Nancy in France (pronounced Noncy, which is even funnier), averaging 11.1 points, 7.4 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game in the French …

Posted by at 9:39 AM

Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 1
December 28th, 2009

The Where Are They Now series of posts started out by accident, yet they’ve become the most enjoyable part of the website. They seem to be fun for you to read, and they’re definitely fun for me to write, so now that Christmas time has passed and new seasons have begun around the world, we begin a list anew.

The list covers all the players in the site’s player database that aren’t currently in the NBA. This is the best …

Posted by at 9:45 AM

Thunder acquire Eric Maynor and Matt Harpring for PETER FEHSE
December 23rd, 2009

I have only 48 things to say about this deal.

1) As his profile suggests, I have long regarded Peter Fehse as a yardstick for a person’s NBA knowledge. If a fan knows who Peter Fehse is, they are hardcore and deserve your respect.

Short story short, Peter Fehse is a lanky German with lots of hair, who was drafted in the second round in 2002 as an absolute longshot based on his combination of height and athleticism. He …

Posted by at 5:54 PM

Jared Reiner, Eddie Basden, Marcus Campbell all join the D-League
December 19th, 2009

The D-League has bagged itself some more former NBA talent.

In five of the last six years, Iowa centre Jared Reiner has appeared in an NBA training camp. In 2004 it was the Bulls; in 2005 it was both the Clippers and the Suns; in 2006 it was the Spurs; in 2008 it was the Sixers; this past summer, it was the Timberwolves. In that time, Reiner has only played in 46 NBA games, 27 …

Posted by at 1:24 AM

Michael Sweetney signs in China
December 15th, 2009

As always, Chinese Basketball Association transactions are extremely hard to verify. There is no English language version of the CBA’s website, and crude Google translations aren’t really that helpful. Tryouts are often reported as signings, signings often aren’t reported at all, and lots of things go unreported. From these tatty shreds, we have to piece together the workings of an entire league. And it’s not easy.

However, one thing that’s perfectly clear is that former Bulls and Knicks big big …

Posted by at 12:35 AM

Knicks sign Jonathan Bender…..wait, what?
December 14th, 2009


I like to think that I keep my ear pretty close to the ground. If you’re going to know about such perfectly useless things as Kevin Burleson signing in Romania, then you kind of have to. Yet I had absolutely no idea that the Knicks were considering signing Jonathan Bender, nor that they were even able to. Quite literally shocked to see that headline today.

Bender retired in February 2006 after being assumed to have been retired for a …

Posted by at 6:26 AM

“That Guy We Drafted”, 1993
December 11th, 2009

Continuing the whereabouts round-ups of all recent NBA drafts, this is the fifth installment of the series. The non-canonical first four: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997.

As always, this is really long. Feel free to skip bits.

 

First round

– 1st pick: Chris Webber (Golden State)

Webber retired from basketball in March 2008 after an unsuccessful short stint with the Warriors. He now works as an analyst for NBA TV, along with the occasional …

Posted by at 11:50 PM

Trade idea of the week
December 5th, 2009

Last Christmas Eve, the Houston Rockets traded Steve Francis and a 2009 second-round pick to the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for a conditional 2011 second-round pick. I remember this trade specifically because I totally called it.

The deal was made to help Houston dodge the luxury tax. And it worked, because they did. By dumping Francis’s $2,634,480 salary onto the Grizzlies, the Rockets saved themselves that much again in luxury tax savings, as well as picking up a $2,911,756 rebate …

Posted by at 10:47 PM

Robert Swift and Luke Nevill waived
December 4th, 2009


The following real quote is a real quote:

As soon as I heard that Bakersfield had a team, I was hoping I could play for them.”

Robert Swift

Swift played high school basketball in Bakersfield, hence this desire, and he got his wish when he was allocated to the Jam last month, becoming their starting centre. (He also got a haircut.) However, in keeping with the recent theme of Swift’s career, it didn’t go too well. Swift played …

Posted by at 9:17 AM

Strasbourg releases Terrel Harris
December 3rd, 2009


As mentioned in the 1997 NBA Draft Where Are They Now Round-up Recap Thing, IG Strasbourg are a French team that’s not doing very well. They’re currently joint-15th in the 16-team French ProA league with a 2-7 record and a three-game losing streak. They’re currently in the EuroChallenge (the third-tier continent-wide club tournament), and they lead this group, but that won’t count for a whole lot unless they reverse their French league fortunes. So they’ve made some changes, signed …

Posted by at 1:17 PM

David Monds replaces John Edwards at Kolossos Rhodes
December 2nd, 2009

John Edwards spent two years in the NBA. He signed as an undrafted free agent out of Kent State with the Pacers in 2004, played spot minutes in 25 games, and the Hawks signed him to a two-year, $2.08 million contract in the summer of 2005. After one year with Atlanta – in which he totalled 70 points, 48 rebounds and 76 fouls – the Hawks traded him back to the Pacers as filler in the Al Harrington deal. The …

Posted by at 3:51 PM

Cartier Martin is the happiest man in the world
December 2nd, 2009

Last year, former Kansas State forward Cartier Martin started out in the D-League before earning an early call-up to the Charlotte Bobcats. He didn’t play a whole lot, and when he did it’s mainly because Larry Brown was using him as a defensive specialist (including occasionally guarding the point guard before Dontell Jefferson arrived), yet he spent the entire season with the team anyway.

This summer, he signed with Benetton Treviso in Italy, a team that started the year …

Posted by at 3:00 PM

Domen Lorbek returns to Slovenia…..briefly
December 2nd, 2009

Slovenian international swingman Domen Lorbek has signed back in his native country with Helios on a one-month contract.

Until last week, Lorbek was with Cajasol Sevilla in Spain’s ACB, averaging only 2.9 points in eight games. He signed there only on a two-month contract and it was not renewed when it expired, which doesn’t seem surprising with that scoring average. Last year for Benetton Treviso, Lorbek averaged 8.8 points per game in the EuroCup and 6.0 ppg in SerieA, but …

Posted by at 2:37 PM

Spencer Nelson and Gary Wilkinson sign with Peristeri, who release two others
December 2nd, 2009

Despite a solid 3-2 start to the season, Greek A1 team Peristeri Athens announced that they were releasing former Illinois big man and Golden State Warriors camp invite Shaun Pruitt, as well as Rhode Island forward Will Daniels, to be replaced by Utah natives Spencer Nelson and Gary Wilkinson.

Nelson has not signed anywhere this season after being released by the Utah Jazz in training camp. It was rumoured that he was to sign with an unnamed Belgian …

Posted by at 9:06 AM

As far as I can tell, this is China
December 2nd, 2009

Last year, we focused at length on the joy that is the Chinese Basketball Association. It’s a quirky beast; the standard of China’s own domestic players is poor in the grand scheme of things, with the exception of the occasional halfway-decent (or truly fantastic) big man. Knowing this, the CBA have decided to try and replicate a more American style of play in order to improve their national team product. They’ve changed some rules and structure to match the …

Posted by at 3:32 AM

“That Guy We Drafted,” 1997
November 30th, 2009

Re-drafting the impactful 1997 NBA Draft Lottery picks

Continuing the whereabouts round-ups of all recent NBA drafts, this is the fourth instalment of the series. The first three:

1994
1995
1996

As always, if the player in question is still in the NBA, I’ll probably write some rant that in some way relates to them in some way. Don’t think too much of that. They’re not what this post is about. This post is about Chris Crawford’s stables business and the like. Let’s get to it.

 

First

Posted by at 11:50 PM

2009 NBA Summer League rosters whereabouts updated, again, needlessly
November 19th, 2009

For no reason other than an itching craving to scratch my own Where Are They Now itch – I can’t really start the 2009 series of posts until all leagues are underway, which will be about another six weeks – I have decided to revisit the whereabouts of all players on summer league rosters this past summer.

Eagle eyed viewers will have noticed that I’ve already done this once before, in a series of three posts back in September. This …

Posted by at 12:19 AM

A Brief History Of Luxury Tax
November 2nd, 2009

The NBA’s luxury tax first came into existence in 2001, the year in which the league’s new escrow system debuted. The escrow system, in layman’s terms, is a system that withholds a certain amount of player’s salaries and puts it into a separate account until the end of the following season’s moratorium. At that point, when the league’s annual audit is done (that’s what the moratorium is for; calculating the numbers), then if the league-wide player salaries exceed a certain …

Posted by at 11:19 AM

2009 NBA Training Camp predictions, revisited
October 29th, 2009

At the start of the month, over the course of three posts united by the overused theme of Alec Baldwin’s monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross, I attempted to analyse and predict the training camp rosters of every team in the NBA.

For the hell of it, here’s the monologue again:

Preseason is now over, and rosters have been set. Here are my predictions again, along with a depressing look at their whimpering inaccuracy and some half-baked excuses for my own …

Posted by at 9:42 PM

The Purpose Of Waiving Deron Washington Was….I Don’t Know.
October 27th, 2009

Yesterday, the Detroit Pistons waived 2008 second-round draft pick and flopper extraordinaire, Deron Washington. They had initially signed him back in August to be their 14th and last man, giving him a two-year minimum salary deal with $250,000 guaranteed in the first season. Yet after bringing in Chucky Atkins on an unguaranteed one-year deal for training camp (a move that they won’t have foreseen prior to the Washington signing), the Pistons began to feel that Atkins was more deserving …

Posted by at 9:14 AM

Sam Presti’s Survival Strategy In A Post-Apocalpytic Dystopian Nightmare
October 26th, 2009

Simple question: Did the tough economic climate affect NBA team’s spending plans as much as MSM scaremongers would have you believe?

Not-so-simple answer: Kind of.

This summer saw a team that could have had nearly eight figures of cap room opt not to use any of it. The Oklahoma City Thunder did pretty much nothing with their offseason once draft day was completed, and having won a total of 23 games last year, it’s justifiable to ask why that was. …

Posted by at 12:35 AM

Second prize is a set of steak knives.
October 7th, 2009

Continuing the round-up of training camp invites.

 

Milwaukee played the training camp game in the spirit that it deserves…..briefly. They initially announced three signings; former Marquette point guard Domimic James, D-League big man Marcus Hubbard and former Temple guard Mark Tyndale, and they later added veteran big man Charles Gaines to that line-up. However, all four have already been waived, because I took too long to write this. Still, for the sake of consistency, we’ll give …

Posted by at 12:51 AM

Third prize is you’re fired.
October 7th, 2009

Continuing the round-up of training camp invites.

 

Phoenix are going to run with 13 players, because they always run with 13 players. And they already had 13 players before training camp started, so the prospects of their signings were slim to none before they even started. Regardless, the Suns brought in three more, just in case; Carlos Powell, Dan Dickau and Raymond Sykes.

Dickau joins one of the few teams that he hadn’t previously on. For …

Posted by at 12:26 AM

As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado
October 4th, 2009

Training camp. Love it.

Ever since I grew up with a mild addiction to the Championship Manager series of computer games, I have nurtured a mild fascination for transactions in sports. I know it’s not healthy, but I also know I’m not alone. It might be harsh on the players involved, but it’s always fun to us hardened losers when players change teams. It gives us something to think about, something to analyse, and something to find important. Judging …

Posted by at 8:09 PM