2009 NBA Summer League round-up: Chicago Bulls
July 4th, 2009
– James Augustine: Something weird happened to James Augustine last year, something which took me a while to figure out. He was drafted by the Magic in the 2006 Draft, and signed a two-year rookie minimum contract with the team. He stayed with the team for the whole two years, barely playing, and was then tendered a qualifying offer when the two years was up. The second year of his first contract was only 25% guaranteed until July 30th, and the rule with qualifying offers is that they have to be at least the same amount of guaranteed money, with the same guarantee dates, as the final season of the previous contract. So when Orlando tendered him a qualifying offer, Augustine accepted it immediately, and was thus under contract for the 2008/09 season for $972,581 (the amount of the QO = minimum salary + $175,000), of which $243,145 (25%) was guaranteed, with a guarantee date of July 30th 2008. Orlando waived him before that date, meaning that they essentially paid Augustine a quarter of a million dollars to have him under contract for two weeks in mid-July. Way to do that “creative financing” thing that you do. Augustine then went to Spain, where he averaged 7.7 points and 6.1 rebounds in the Spanish league for Gran Canaria. – Tyrell Biggs: I saw a lot of Biggs in Pittsburgh last year, and it’s tough to say what he was good at. He had a decent set shot, but little interior offence, no finesse, and a bad rebounding rate. He was a decent defensive player, fairly aggressive and physical, but he’s also 6’8 and not of NBA size, so his NBA chances don’t much exist beyond this level. However, I wrote all this in a piece last week, and someone responded by […]
2009 NBA Summer League round-up: Boston Celtics
July 4th, 2009
Beginning now, there will be a series of posts detailing the summer league rosters of every NBA team this year. This is because summer league is great fun, and because the lavish descriptions of fringe NBA players gets me going. But you probably knew that already. We begin this excitement with the Boston Celtics, since the alphabetically superior Atlanta Hawks don’t have a summer league team this year. – Nick Fazekas: Fazekas should be in the NBA, really. But he’s not. Even though he was paid $711,517 by the Mavericks last season, Fazekas wasn’t on their roster, as they waived him as a concurrent part of the Jason Kidd trade eighteen months ago. This decision would have been forgettable had the Mavericks not had the quad Devean George, Antoine Wright, Jerry Stackhouse and Shawne Williams on their roster last season, but anyway. Fazekas went to camp with the Nuggets last season, as did pretty much every player in the history of the game, and then spent the year with Oostende in Belgium and ASVEL Villeurbanne in France. I’d like to think that the team that has employed Brian Scalabrine for four years could find a spot for a similar but younger player like Fazekas, but it doesn’t seem likely. – J.R. Giddens: Giddens played all of eight minutes with the Celtics last year. There’s no real need for this 24-year-old non-contributor to be on the roster of a veteran team with championship aspirations, but his D-League numbers from last year (36 games, 17.2 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 3.0 apg, 1.4 bpg, 58% shooting) suggest that there might be something for someone to pursue there. There’d better be, since the Celtics used a first-rounder on him. Giddens still doesn’t have a consistent jump shot, however, which still doesn’t help him. – Lester […]
