In lieu of having any NBA transactions to talk about, we’ll look at the world at large instead.
Of all the players to have finished last season on an NBA roster, six have already signed abroad. One of the first to go was Mustaka Shakur, who started the year with the New Orleans Hornets and ended it with the Washington Wizards. For whatever reason, the Wizards did not offer him a qualifying offer, seemingly moving on from Shakur’s …
What Happened Prior to July 1st Other Than A Bunch Of Ultimately Unproductive CBA Negotiations
July 2nd, 2011
Even though a lockout is upon us, one which might last us through until the very end of existence in late 2012, there’s still some bookkeeping to be done. July 1st is (or should be) the date on which one season ends and the next one begins, and thus June 30th is an important cut-off date for certain transactions.
Players with player or early termination options had to decide if they were coming back; the few players with team options …
David Stern and Billy Hunter drive towards a cliff. Hand down, man down.
After one of the best seasons ever comes one of the worst drafts ever. With the NBA riding a wave of talent, a draft comes along that sees not a lot more talent being added. There’s no getting around the fact that, relative to years past, the talent level of this draft is not very good.
There’s also no getting around the fact that this is the …
Sham’s unnecessarily great big draft board: Power forwards
June 23rd, 2011
(Listed in no order other than the order they were thought of.)
Enes Kanter – There is very little to know about Enes Kanter, for the man has played very little.
In the 2008-09 season, aged only 16, Kanter made some infrequent appearances in the Fenerbahce first team, appearing in spot minutes of 9 games. That summer, he appeared at the under-18 European Championships, and absolutely tore them up, averaging 18.6 points and 16.4 rebounds in only 28.4 minutes per …
Sham’s unnecessarily great big draft board: Small forwards
June 23rd, 2011
(Listed in no order other than the order they were thought of.)
Derrick Williams’s underarm hair.
Derrick Williams – From a barely recruited forgettable college prospect to one of of the best current NBA prospects in only two short years, Williams has had quite the stretch, And he has the potential for more.
Williams is a combo and/or positionless forward with good small forward size (6’8), a tweener’s game, yet terrific athleticism. He is strong, big enough, runs the court, …
Sham's unnecessarily great big draft board: Shooting Guards
June 23rd, 2011
(Listed in no order other than the order they were thought of.)
I want to see this afro grown out, Marshon. It has as much upside as you do.
Marshon Brooks – Brooks was the second highest scorer in the nation, although this was largely ignored until a 52 point outburst against Notre Dame (in a game that his Providence team still lost). That, the subsequent scrutiny, and the final workout cycle, has seem his stock continue to grow.
Sham’s unnecessarily great big draft board: Point guards
June 22nd, 2011
(Listed in no order other than the order they were thought of.)
You’d look happy if you were about to go first overall, too.
Kyrie Irving – Irving is this draft’s most complete player, which is why he will inevitably be the first overall pick. His Duke career didn’t last very long – Irving played the first eight games of the campaign, before suffering a broken foot that would normally have led to a medical redshirt. However, be it due …
Sham’s unnecessarily great big draft board: Centres
June 21st, 2011
(Listed in no order other than the order they were thought of.)
Any time you watch a game with Jonas Valanciunas in, randomly pause
the live action, and I guarantee he will be making this face.
Jonas Valanciunas – Valanciunas was a big minute player in the EuroLeague aged only 18. You just don’t do that in the EuroLeague, unless you’re Ricky Rubio.
Right now, he compares somewhat to Joel Przybilla if Joel Przybilla had any offensive finesse. Valanciunas …
Chicago's Meticulously Crafted 2011 Offseason Plan That Relies An Awful Lot Upon Guesswork
June 9th, 2011
Nothing cheers me up more than heavily contrived and extremely implausible hypothetical transactions for the Chicago Bulls.1 Taking a team’s cap situation, and attempting to maximize the basketball assets that they can get from using it, is what I wish to spend my life doing. It is this love of salary cap manipulation and amateurish talent evaluation that has in the past produced seminal works such as the four team 16 player trade that intended to bring Carmelo Anthony …
For a variety of reasons, basketball and music seem to have always had crossover appeal. [Pun acknowledged, but not condoned.] Be it due to the intrinsically linked cultures of the music of the streets and the game on the playgrounds – a partnership which, if I was 10 years older, I would probably find it funny to call “hip hoops” – basketball players moving into musical side projects has become so prevalent that it’s now a cliché. Just as Common …
LeBron Using The Word "Retarded" Was A Subnormally Birdbrained Thing To Do
May 9th, 2011
At a training seminar that I once attended, a portion of the afternoon was devoted to a discussion of bad words. In one of the hottest days on record, a dozen of us gathered in a cramped five foot tall training room, sat around an overhead projector and a laptop whose audio output was speculative at best, and then, via the medium of Powerpoint, ran through a list of words that were unacceptable to use in our workplace. None of …
Where Are They Now, 2011: Bookkeeping The Retired Guys
April 19th, 2011
A lot of “where are they now” posts on other websites tend to deal mainly in answering a different question altogether; namely, “what did these players used to do?” Since it is assumed that that is known by anyone seeking to ask the original question – else it wouldn’t have been asked – such matters are not dealt with on this website. Instead, we deal with the question that was actually asked; where are these players now?
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The EuroCup Final Four
April 15th, 2011
The NBA playoffs are basically upon us, and if you don’t pick a Bulls/Spurs finals, you’re a brave man.
However, the onset of these playoffs is far from the only thing happening in basketball right now. After all, this is the crescendo of many league’s seasons, not just the NBA’s. This is particularly true in the cases of the intercontinental European leagues; the EuroLeague, which has already been covered, and the EuroCup, which is about to be.
Rockets sign Marqus Blakely to a multi-year contract
April 12th, 2011
The Houston Rockets exited the trade deadline with a full roster, but the subsequent buyout of Jared Jeffries opened up the 15th spot. Houston initially used this flexibility to sign multi-time Rocket Mike Harris to a 10 day contract, and later opted to offer him a second one when the first one expired last week. However, they will not sign him for the remainder of the season.
Instead, with the spot opening up upon the expiration of Harris’s contract yesterday, …
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The NBA Prospects Of The Unsigned NBA Draft Picks
April 2nd, 2011
If your team drafts a player, and yet never signs him, the chances are that they’ll still own his draft rights.
The presence of those draft rights means that that player can sign only with the right-holding NBA team, and not with any others. Such draft rights can also be traded, either to a recipient team who values the player and thus gives something of value for them, or as arbitrary filler obliging the NBA’s rule that all partners in …
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The EuroLeague Final Eight
March 24th, 2011
In terms of the calibre of non-international competitive basketball, the EuroLeague is second in the world only to the NBA. That is to say, of all the leagues in the world not to excessively overuse snippets of Busta Rhymes songs, or turn nightly to the tortured genius of Kiss Cam, the EuroLeague is the best. If you love basketball, you’ll love watching the EuroLeague. If you love basketball and yet have never watched the EuroLeague, you haven’t tried hard enough.…
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 3: Southeastern Region
March 17th, 2011
There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close.
All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, …
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 2: Eastern Region
March 16th, 2011
There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close.
All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, …
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 1: Southwestern Region
March 15th, 2011
There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close.
All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, …
Chinese Basketball Association Imports, 2010/11, Again
March 13th, 2011
Yi Jianlian, Yao Ming, Wang Zhizhi. Not in picture: Sun Yue. Also not in picture: Benjamin Disraeli.
The Chinese Basketball Association and its compelling protagonists have a particular level of focus on this website, for reasons which, if you don’t already know them, are about to become extremely obvious.
Fringe NBA players like playing in China; the exposure isn’t huge and the standard isn’t great, but the CBA pays very well, and it is unashamed in copying the NBA model …
With apologies to their combined 34-87 record, the Toronto Raptors and the New Jersey Nets had not played an interesting game all season heading into last weekend. It was known in advance that the two teams would struggle this season, and any optimism to the contrary has been roundly denounced. Both teams are building for the future, and rightly so. But it comes at the expense of the present.
Jordan Crawford had to deal with being traded in his rookie year, part of Washington’s bountiful haul for an aging Kirk Hinrich, who then got injured anyway. Once he got to Washington, Crawford found the freedom amongst the rubble to play a lot of minutes and, essentially, to freelance on offence. And Crawford is good at freelancing on offence, so this suited him, as demonstrated in his 16.3 points per game. This would have second only to team mate …
Tax Payers, Trade Kickers, And Other Deadline Day Bookkeeping
February 26th, 2011
He looks happy. And why shouldn’t he.
That was one of the most interesting trade deadline weeks you’ll ever see.
Fourteen trades, one kind of funny near trade, 50 players traded, 3 players signed, 4 players waived, 16 draft picks traded, 1 rights to swap traded, and two absolute Stone Cold Stunners of trades that no one expected. And these weren’t trades like Sam Cassell and cash for a 2016 top 55 protected second rounder, either. These were trades …
Mike Hall Wants You To Know That Things Are Different In Europe
February 3rd, 2011
Do a Google image search for “mike hall.” The third and fourteenth results are hilarious.
Former George Washington forward Mike Hall has played the majority of his professional career in Italy. After going undrafted in 2006, Hall caught on with the Washington Wizards for training camp, and joined the D-League upon being released, angling for a midseason call-up. The strategy worked; the Wizards called up Hall to a ten day contract in late February 2007, retained him for a second …
Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo is the current league leader in assists, with a whopping 13.4 per game. He is likely to remain the league’s assist leader for the indefinite future. Two time MVP Steve Nash is second on this season’s list, yet he is a considerable distance behind Rondo, averaging 10.8 assists per game. This gap will not be overcome.
To put it into some context, assume for a moment that Nash and Rondo both play every game remaining …
