Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 28
February 4th, 2009
– You did it! You did it! You waited for your Alexander Johnson news! Be proud of yourself, and then proceed to hate me, as I tell you that there isn’t any. Johnson started the year in Germany with Brose Baskets Bonn, averaged 11.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.4 fouls in 11 German league games, before leaving last month and being replaced (sort of) by Dan Dickau. Johnson is now unsigned, but, in better news, Dickau has scored 37 points combined in the two games that he’s been there.
– Jumaine Jones was reportedly suspended from European basketball for a year in September by FIBA, for the weird yet wonderful crime of signing contracts with two different teams at the same time; one with Alyssa Milano, and one with Ural Great Perm in Russia. However, he’s been playing for the greatly-named Great Perm anyway, averaging 6.5 points and 4.6 rebounds in Russian league play. How that is possible, I don’t know – Russia is in kind of both Europe and Asia, depending on which you want to count it as at any given moment. However, Great Perm have played in both the EuroCup and EuroChallenge this season, and, as the names would suggest, those are European competitions. Yet Jumaine has been playing in them, averaging 9.1 points and 5.8 rebounds in the EuroChallenge. Presumably some sort of settlement was worked out; any answers as to how specifically this is possible?
– Eddie Jones was bought out by the Pacers in preseason after being traded from the Mavericks, and hasn’t been heard from since.
– Dwayne Jones went to training camp with the Magic, didn’t make it, went to Turkey with Efes, played two games, scored one point, grabbed one rebound, came back to America, signed with the Bobcats, averaged 2 and 2 in 6 games, got waived, went to the D-League, was acquired by the Iowa Energy, played one game, scored one point, grabbed one rebound, got traded to the Idaho Stampede, and has since averaged 12.9 points, 10.6 rebounds and 1.9 blocks through eight games. That sentence is more fun if you take all 16 commas out.
– Amazingly, there isn’t an update on former Orlando Magic guard Mark Jones, a player so obscure in the grand scheme of things that not even some Orlando Magic fans have heard of him. Jones still hasn’t played since a stint in the Ukraine in 2006, and now that he’s about to turn 34, there probably won’t be another one.
– In a fourteen month period from September 2007 to November 2008, Bobby Jones played on twelve different teams. Having spent the whole previous season with the Philadelphia 76ers, Jones was traded to the Denver Nuggets in the offseason Reggie Evans/Steven Hunter swap. He made it through until the January contract guarantee date before being waived by Denver, at which point he started travelling again. Jones soon signed a ten-day contract with the Grizzlies, but didn’t get a second one, and went to the D-League with the Sioux Falls Skyforce. After nearly a month and five games there, Jones earned another ten-day contract with the Houston Rockets, but again a second wasn’t forthcoming. Jones then instantly signed a ten-day contract with the Heat, and this time re-signed to a second one, but unfortunately didn’t get signed for the remainder of the season. By this time, however, he was probably used to that. Another ten-day contract followed, with yet another team (the Spurs), and after that one expired, Jones wound up back where it all started, signing a contract through the end of the season with an unguaranteed 2008/09 season attached with the Nuggets again. Unfortunately, that still wasn’t it for Bobby; he was traded to the Knicks along with Taurean Green in exchange for Renaldo Balkman, and then waived almost instantly by the Knicks. BJ subsequently re-signed with the Heat after summer league, but didn’t even make it as far as training camp, being waived in August. Never fear, though, for Jones did make it to an NBA training camp, this time with another new team, Sacramento. But Jones didn’t make the cut there either, and has since gone back to the Skyforce, where he has managed to enjoy the relative job security of 25 games in a row with the same team. (Phewph. That was harder to write than to read, I promise.) For the Skyforce, Jones averages 15.1 points and 7.8 rebounds; decent numbers, but not good enough for another ten-day contract. Yet.
– Alvin Jones’s tale is far easier to tell – he’s unsigned.
– Jared Jordan went to training camp with the Hornets, failed to make the cut on a team with an open roster spot and a desperate need for a point guard, and then disappeared off the map for a bit. In December, Jordan reappeared, and was acquired by the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, yet earlier this month he was waived due to a high ankle sprain that was due to keep him out for two weeks. But he’ll be back. Jordan averaged 8.6 points and 6.2 assists in what little time he managed.
– Antoine Jordan started the season nailed to the bench for the Tulsa 66ers, then left the team in December and went to the seminal Dutch league. In two games for the mighty Matrixx Magix of Nijmegen, Jordan averages 12.0 points and 5.5 rebounds, due solely to the highly competitive and truly classy nature of the Dutch league.
– Zhang Kai, as expected, went back to China after not making the Kings roster out of training camp (surprisingly!). For the DongGuan New Century – the team that he’s been with since roughly conception age – Zhang averages 19.9 points and 9.6 rebounds, making him arguably the best Chinese player under the age of 30 other than Yao Ming.
– Finally, two players you don’t know much about. The Spurs and Blazers are often lauded for their draft choices, which often yield talent unbefitting of the draft spot from which they were picking. They get a few “steals” in this way. Unfortunately, these two weren’t two of them. Portland’s Federico Kammerichs is a soon-to-be 29-year-old extremely bearded forward, who is playing in the powerhouse known as the Argentinian league. For the irrepressible Regatas Corrientes, Otacon averages 13.4 points and 10.7 rebounds per game, numbers that sting your eyes with their briliance. Meanwhile, the Spurs’s Sergei Karaulov is comparably brilliant, as the soon-to-be 27-year-old extremely unbearded centre is playing for Nizhny Novgorod, a team in the Russian second division. If you’re really that interested, you can work out his averages for yourself from this confusing thing. Here’s a starting point; he’s number 15. Hope this helps.
