Sham’s 2010 NBA Draft Night Recap, Part 2
June 27th, 2010
Part One
(that’s a link)
Due to the length of this post, I have included links so that you can skip to specific picks, if you want. Of course, you may want to read all of it. Or….none of it.
31 – 32 – 33 – 34 – 35 – 36 – 37 – 38 – 39 – 40 – 41 – 42 – 43 – 44 – 45 – 46 – 47 – 48 – 49 – 50 – …
Sham’s 2010 NBA Draft Night Recap, Part 1
June 27th, 2010
Over the course of the last nine months, I have watched somewhere in the region of 700 NCAA games. I have done this partly because of a deep-rooted affinity for Jay Bilas, but also in anticipation of the NBA Draft. Draft Night ranks somewhere near Christmas Day and Metanoia Day1 as the best day of the year, and the only thing that can rival Draft Night for excitement is Draft Day. If you’re a basketball nerd, you will know …
2010 Summer Signings, Part 5
June 19th, 2010

– Not everyone changes teams in the summer. It seems like they do, but some stay on where they are. Those who have signed extensions with their current clubs include Slovakian scoring machine Radoslav Rancik, who has signed a two-year deal with Galatasaray, and ex-San Diego State forward Mohamed Abukar, who signed a two-year deal of his own with the Swiss champion Lugano Tigers. Dimitris Diamantidis snuffed out the <1% possibility of him ever joining the NBA as …
Former NBA guard just joined the Montenegrin national team
June 19th, 2010
They’re coming thick and fast; yet another American in Europe has picked up a passport of a minor European team in order to further their career ambitions. But unlike some of those that have gone before him, this one has multiple years of NBA experience. And that’s because he was a first-rounder.
The country is Montengro, and here’s a clue as to who the player is. Answer after the jump.

Per Eurobasket.com, Montenegro have announced their latest national team …
2010 Summer Signings, Part 4
June 19th, 2010
– In Italy, Bucks draft pick Szymon Szewczyk signed a two-year extension with Air Avellino. He ranked second the team in rebounds last year behind Chevon Troutman, was second in points behind Dee Brown, and also managed not to get arrested in a drunken car wreck unlike the other two. Another NBA draft pick signed in Italy, Petteri Koponen, is to remain in Bologna for at least one more season. And ex-NBA player Jumaine Jones is staying with …
The amount of cap room teams will actually have, updated
June 19th, 2010
This is an update of the earlier post that detailed the amount of cap room teams will have. It is updated to reflect the Kings/Sixers trade that was just completed (Andres Nocioni and Spencer Hawes for Sam Dalembert), to reflect some exercised options, and to edit the fact that I typoed a bit in the Timberwolves entry.
It’s a carbon copy of the initial post, save for those tweaks.
Atlanta Hawks
Committed salary for 2010/11: $47,630,214 …
2010 KBL Pre-Draft Pool
June 17th, 2010
The South Korean basketball league [KBL] is a relatively new league, only thirteen years in existence, that unashamedly focuses on Korean national players. Part of that means heavily restricting the amount of imports that so heavily permeate all the other leagues around the world. Teams are allowed only two imports, and unlike in some other countries, dual citizenship is very hard to come by.
It also has some quirky rules. Each team is allowed two foreign players, but in the …
2010 Summer Signings, Part 3
June 16th, 2010
– David Noel, who was mentioned in the previous post as leaving French team Roanne, has landed another gig in the same country. He has signed with Paris-Levallois.
– In other French league news, Le Mans have released Marc Salyers, who had an uncharacteristically average season. Salyers averaged only 11.7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in the French league – good numbers, but not the star they assumed they were getting. The team also released Zack Wright…
Spencer Nelson: Azerbaijan’s Latest Nationalised Mormon
June 16th, 2010
One of the things we like to do here is monitor the ever-changing nationalities of players. Acquiring various passports can be highly useful for a professional basketball player, as they can be used to bypass various regulations regarding numbers of imports that most leagues enforce upon their teams. This often leads to the always-amusing sight of various players (often American) scoring passports from nations they have no connection with, purely because they can buy them. Only a fortnight ago, Taurean …
Europe for Americans
June 15th, 2010
More than one person has asked me in the past for a definition of how basketball works in Europe. Those persons are always American. They see words like “domestic competition,” “EuroLeague” and “Cup,” and they panic. All of those are concepts alien to the NBA, an incestuous league that only plays with itself, and they are not understood by the majority of American NBA fans. (Or, if not the majority, at least some.)
So I’ll try to explain.
All countries …
Chicago’s Last Resort Offseason Plan That Still Manages To Avoid Signing Joe Johnson
June 14th, 2010
Almost to a man, Bulls fans are shockingly reticent about the great opportunities that might befall them this offseason. They have maximum cap room, they have the man widely regarded as the league’s hottest head coaching prospect, they have the league’s best young point guard, and the league’s second-best young centre.1 They have a sold-out arena, the league’s best profit margins, and a young and athletic defensive-minded rebound-heavy team with scores of potential and a modicum of …
The amount of cap room teams will actually have
June 12th, 2010
Lots of people and lots of places are claiming knowledge of the cap space of various NBA team in anticipation of this summer’s free agency bonanza. Most, if not all, have done so misleadingly inaccurately.
Without wanting to sound too douchebaggy (sorry), let’s try to get this right. 100% accuracy is not guaranteed, but 99.7% accuracy is. All salary information is taken from this website’s own salary pages.
NOTE: All cap space amounts are calculated to an estimated salary …
Current Trade Kickers
June 11th, 2010
Trade kickers are a salary mechanism that increase a player’s salary when they are traded. They are both important and difficult to accommodate when formulating trade scenarios, and thus it’s useful for them to be known. Kickers – technically known as trade bonuses, but colloquially as kickers, which we’ll stick with here – can only be bothersome to teams and emphatically benefit a player. As such, they’re far from commonplace. But there’s enough of them out there, and it helps …
2010 Summer Signings, Part 2
June 11th, 2010
– Maccabi Tel-Aviv declined their contract option on former Warriors draft pick Stephane Lasme. The Raptors are said to have been scouting him, alongside his Maccabi frontcourt teammate D’Or Fischer. Granted, the Israeli press are notorious for making things up, and the now-27-year- old Lasme is coming off a bad year and has hardly added the missing dimensions to his somewhat one-dimensional game. But then again, Amir Johnson becomes an unrestricted free agent in three weeks time. …
2010 Summer Signings, Part 1
June 10th, 2010
Summer is here, and players are a-moving. The NBA free agency period has not yet begun – and should be pretty epic once it does – but this hasn’t stopped players moving the world over. Here are some of the transactions that may interest you.
– Teams in Australia’s NBL tend to sort out their rosters nice and early, and so even though we’re several months away from the 2010-11 season tipping off, many rosters are all but complete already. …
The 2010 Puerto Rican BSN Season
June 7th, 2010
The Chinese Basketball Association is an area of particular focus on this website, because it’s fun. Every season, the CBA plays host to many former NBA players, and plays them for the vast majority of their 48-minute games, resulting in huge statistics and thereby being more fun over leagues such as Italy’s Serie A, where teams employ 11-man rotations, nobody plays more than 25mpg, and everyone averages about 9/4. They are better standards of league for this reason, but they’re …
Taurean Green and Quinton Hosley are both now Georgian citizens, apparently
June 3rd, 2010

On this website is a list of player nationalities. It’s a pretty useful tool, partly for reason of trivia, but also because it lists some of the more bizarre citizenships that high-level basketball players have accrued in recent years.
Two new additions can now be made to that list. Former Florida guard Taurean Green and former Fresno State forward Quinton Hosley, according to Greek website gazzetta.gr, now have Georgian passports. Inevitable crude translation follows:
The American guard the
…
Where Are They Now, 2010; The 75th And Final Part
June 2nd, 2010
– Bracey Wright
Ex-Timberwolves guard Wright got off to a late start this year, not signing anywhere until January. He eventually hooked up with Belgian team Oostende, and averaged 12.8 points and 1.6 assists per game. However, Oostende were knocked out of the Belgian playoffs at the semi-finals stages by Courtney Sims’s Charleroi, and so Bracey’s season is over.
Wright is American, which makes his presence in Belgium seem entirely normal; for a lengthier breakdown of the demographs of Belgian …
Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 73
June 1st, 2010
– Donell Williams
Donell Williams was a training camp signing of the Clippers in 2007, who hasn’t played anywhere of note before or since.
A 6’3 guard, Williams spent his first two collegiate years at West Los Angeles Community College, before transferring to Fayetteville State for his final two years. He averaged 15.7 points and 6.0 rebounds in his senior year, 2004-05. D-Will then went back to school for the 2005-06 season to complete his degree, even though he wasn’t …
Where Are They Now, 2010: Part 74
June 1st, 2010
– Shawne Williams
As mentioned in the previous post, Williams fell out of the league in January. Dallas knew they had made a mistake in trading for him, and knew they’d compounded that by exercising his fourth-year team option without doing their homework on his play and personality; rather than compound that mistake by waiving Williams to open up a roster spot for Jake Voskuhl, they kept him on the roster (but away for the team) until they …