Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 28
March 15th, 2010
One final Mengke Bateer note – while I called him Mongolian earlier, he’s actually from Inner Mongolia, which is considered part of China, in much the same way Vermont is considered part of the USA. I didn’t realise that there was a difference between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, but there is, and so I will bring that difference to you now. Always learning. – Penny Hardaway Hardaway last played in December 2007 with the Miami Heat. Finding anything that he’s done since then has not been easy. His website is just a shade out of date, and if he has business interests then I don’t know what they are. What we know for sure is that two years ago he gave a million dollars to the University of Memphis two years ago, because John Calipari has a way of making things like that happen. – DeVon Hardin Thunder draft pick Hardin played in Greece last year, but now he’s back where they can keep an eye on him. Hardin is with the Thunder’s D-League affiliate, the Tulsa 66ers, but he’s not doing very well there. In 27 games with 20 starts and 20.5 minutes per game, Hardin is averaging only 5.2 points and 4.7 rebounds per game, with 155 points on 122 shots and a foul every eight minutes. It should be somewhat simple for an NBA-calibre big man to put up near-double-double stats in the D-League; even Chris Richard managed to do it, when his 9/8 for the 66ers was deemed sufficient to be signed three times by the Chicago Bulls. But Hardin hasn’t done it, nor has he come close to it. His minutes have affected somewhat by the Thunder’s assortment of assigned players, including big men D.J. White and B.J. Mullens at various times, as […]
Jared Reiner, Eddie Basden, Marcus Campbell all join the D-League
December 19th, 2009
The D-League has bagged itself some more former NBA talent. In five of the last six years, Iowa centre Jared Reiner has appeared in an NBA training camp. In 2004 it was the Bulls; in 2005 it was both the Clippers and the Suns; in 2006 it was the Spurs; in 2008 it was the Sixers; this past summer, it was the Timberwolves. In that time, Reiner has only played in 46 NBA games, 27 of which came with the unlisted Bucks down the stretch of the 2006/07 season. But that’s no reason to stop trying, and, seemingly unable to get a tasty European deal, Reiner has opted for the NBA exposure offered up by the D-League. If things go well, he could make it six of seven. Eddie Basden is another ex-Bull, who was quickly snapped up by the team after going undrafted in 2005, and about whom much excitement was generated by the Bulls’ PR Machine. We didn’t have a draft pick that year, so we pretended Basden was it, and took some great solace from predicting his greatness. However, Basden appeared in only shreds of 19 games, and all he showed was a desire to gamble on defence and an inability to consistently shoot. We felt let down somehow. Apart from the Bulls, Basden has had training camp stints with the Cavaliers in 2006 (being traded for Martynas Andriuskevicius in one of the best pointless trades of all time) and the Miami Heat in 2008, but he didn’t make the team either time. He spent last season in Turkey, averaging 7.9 ppg and 4.6 rpg for Mersin, but on the unhealthy percentages of 37% FG, 23% 3PT FG% and 61% FT. This is a defensive specialist we’re talking about, by the way. Marcus Campbell has never played […]
Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 23
January 29th, 2009
– Othella Harrington‘s option was not picked up by the Bobcats this year, which was about as surprising as finding vegetables in a bowl of vegetable soup. He remains unsigned, and maybe always will. – Junior Harrington, meanwhile is not unsigned, and is playing for Olimpija Ljubljana in Slovenia. Junior has only played four games with the team, three of which were in the Adriatic League, but in that time he has totalled 53 points, 12 rebounds and 7 assists. More important, he has shot a combined 9-13 on three-pointers, which is fantastic news if you’re the kind of person that likes to use 13-game sample sizes as the sole indicator of whether a man has fixed his once-broken jump shot or not. – Adam Harrington is signed with Limoges in France, averaging 16.3 points and 2.6 rebounds. There’s nothing quite like the French second division for really bringing a man’s true talent out. – Padraig Harrington recently became the first man to par the par-three Extreme 19th Legend Golf & Safari Resort in Limpopo, South Africa. – Don’t know what Lucious Harris does now. – Mike Harris is in China, and, as is customary with the Chinese league, his statistics are amusingly warped. For the DongGuan New Century, Harris averages 41.5 minutes a game, 32.2 points, 15.1 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 2.4 steals and 1.6 blocks a game, Wilt Chamberlain-like numbers. The talent pool in the Chinese league is lacking, as they continue to adapt their league and their game to the new, correct rules, and to a more athletic style of play. All teams are allowed two import players, and almost all of these teams use them on former NBA players (for example, Harris’s teammate is centre Jamal Sampson), and all these former NBA […]
