Mike Sweetney

Mike Sweetney - Sweetney's never-ending weight problems, covered here before, are no better. He was listed on the Wizards summer league roster earlier this month, yet he never played for the team. The Wizards wouldn't let him because he turned up too fat. This is the story of Sweetney's career, an oft-chronicled one around these parts. It doesn't look like it'll change any time soon.

Mike Sweetney

This is actually a pretty great place for Sweetney to be. The Wizards rotation of big men for next season currently reads Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee, Yi Jianlian, Trevor Booker and Hilton Armstrong; by my troth, that's not a very good list. And even if Kevin Seraphin is added to it, that won't change much. Sweetney should have a good chance here to win a roster spot, because even though he's not exactly part of a youth movement, the Wizards know they're going to have to get by on some retreads. That's why they traded for Yi. That's why they signed Armstrong. That's why they traded for Al Thornton. They're going to (or should do) things on the cheap, build through the draft, and hope to catch lightning in a bottle. Michael Sweetney might just be that. Although lightning moves quite quickly, so it might be more like Marmite in a bottle.

Mike Sweetney - 24 games, 30.5 mpg, 18.0 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 1.9 apg, 2.6 fpg, 0.5 spg, 1.3 bpg, 57% FG, 20% 3PT, 70% FT

Michael Sweetney's career since leaving the NBA - or lack of it - has been a subject long of focus on this website, covered in places such as here, here, here and here. The picture above is pretty solid evidence of that fact that his post-NBA career has been.....sporadic. That said, Sweetney's ability has never been called into question. There's tons of it, and it shouldn't be a surprise that Sweetney has been one of the BSN's best players this season. He even hit a three. But as ever, Mike needs to lose 60 lbs. In fact, he needs to lose 60lbs just to get back to his draft night size. And even at that size, critics were saying he needed to lose weight. There's still a long way to go here, and no obvious progress being made. Although at least things have stopped getting worse.

- Mike Sweetney

This time last year, there was nothing to report on Mike Sweetney. Since his rookie contract expired as a member of the Bulls in the summer of 2007, Sweetney had not been heard from at all. He literally disappeared off the map. Wasn't even on Facebook or anything. It looked bleak.

But finally, a sighting came; the Boston Globe reported that he was in the crowd for the Bulls versus Celtics first round series' game 7 last May, and that was the precursor to a summer league contract with Boston. Sweetney was back on the court in a sanctioned game for the first time in two years, which was nice to see. But whatever he'd been doing in his time away, it hadn't led to weight loss. Sweetney played only one game for the Celtics summer league team, totalling 3 points, 5 rebounds and 2 assists, before not playing again due to a pulled hamstring.

Sweetney claimed to have lost 40lbs in his two years away from the game, but if he did, it's only because he put 60 more on in his time off, because he was as big as ever. And he seemed to have gotten even bigger between the end of summer league and the starting training camp, which he also spent with the Celtics, and which resulted in this media day picture. After being waived by the Celtics - who wanted to open up a roster spot for him, but who couldn't justify his presence enough to waive J.R. Giddens for him - Sweetney turned down a workout from the Memphis Grizzlies to sign in China. But he never played a game there, and returned to America, where he took the unexpected step of joining the D-League.

In the last 9 games of the D-League season for the Erie BayHawks, Sweetney averaged 13.2 points and 6.9 rebounds in 25.7 minutes per game, shooting 64% from the field and 49% from the line with a PER of 16.7. When the season concluded, Sweetney went to Puerto Rico to play for Santurce. He put up 20 points and 13 rebounds on debut, but was also responsible for this picture. In 8 D-League games overall, Sweetney has averaged 29.4 minutes, 17.6 points and 11.8 rebounds per game, shooting 60% from the field and 68% from the foul line, ranking second in the league in rebounds with only Shaun Pruitt ahead of him.

Sweetney looks destined for another training camp spot in 2010. He is plenty skilled enough to be in the NBA, and always has been. But as long as he's over 320lbs, he's not going to be in it.

[...] As you can tell from the sheer number of them, Shanxi have had a lot of trouble with their imports this year. They tried out about ten in the offseason, eventually settling upon three; Smith, Taylor and Michael Sweetney. The team had wanted to bring back Lee Benson, who was a star for them last year, but they refused to yield to his contract demands. Taylor has been with the team the whole season, but the rest has been a juggling act. Even though he played well, Smith was replaced after seven games by Adeleke, who got injured in his second game and was replaced for a short time by Benson, seemingly having yielded some on his contract demands. Benson was then replaced after five games by Marbury, which you probably already knew. (Sweetney never played a game for them, by the way.)