Gary Neal

As good as Kirk Penney is, Gary Neal has a guaranteed contract, and is too similar for the Spurs to need both.

Gary Neal

Former La Salle and Towson guard Gary Neal is a surprising inclusion on this list, mainly because it's his first time on such a thing. The 26 year old guard has long had NBA talent, yet this is his first attempt at the NBA in any form. Neal has been playing at the upper echelons of European basketball, spending a year and a half at Benetton Treviso and moving to Euroleague team Unicaja Malaga for the stretch run. (There was a reason for his departure from Benetton, however, one which involves former Pistons guard Alex Acker.) The 6'4 guard is a scoring machine, and led SerieA in points per game last season (19.4) whilst also ranking second in the Eurocup (19.3). He can shoot, drive and create off the bounce, and also chips in with some athleticism and rebounding. But he won't defend.

Gary Neal fact: Gary Neal was kicked out of La Salle for violating the school's "morality rules". Neal and a team mate were alleged to have had with a girl who was puking in the sink at a party; the woman later accused them of rape. The two were acquitted, but were kicked out of school; the school believed that what was heard in the court testimony was against their every principle. On the plus side, this gave Neal the opportunity to become only the third player in NCAA history to score at least 1000 points at two different schools. The others were Kenny Battle and Jon Manning.

- Gary Neal

Gary Neal was spending his second season with Benetton Treviso, and was leading Serie A in scoring with a 19.4 points per game average. I say "was" for a reason; Benetton released Neal last week. They did this because two weeks ago, Neal went out and got absolutely smashed with Armani Jeans Milano guard Alex Acker, and was subsequently too ill to play in Benetton's next game. Benetton did not take too kindly to a player missing a game for this reason, and they took action. Swift and decisive action. (Neal landed on his feet, signing with Unicaja Malaga in Spain's ACB a matter of days later. But Acker was waived by Milano later the same week. Was this partly the reason why? Could not say.)

In Neal's half-arsed defense, the game in question was against Martos Napoli. Napoli's "struggles" this season - if you can call a catastrophic implosion of a sports franchise that - have been well documented on this site before, and if you're not familiar with them then I implore you to read up on them. Benetton didn't need Gary Neal to beat Napoli; they didn't need anybody to beat Napoli. Even without Neal, Benetton won 169 to 29, Napoli's worst defeat thus far in a season full of history-makingly-awful losses. But that's hardly the point. Neal was unprofessional and not able to play, which is not what they were paying him for. The team could have downplayed it so as to not lose arguably their best player. But they didn't. They took a stand for their virtues. So they cut him.

Hedo Turkoglu, Bryan Colangelo and MLSE, take note. This is how it's done.