Earl Clark Clark’s rookie year was not great, due in no small part to a lack of opportunities. He averaged only 2.7 points and 1.4 rebounds per game, shooting 37% with an 8.5 PER, and not always playing the quality defence for which he (should) be known. The departure of Amar’e Stoudemire should in theory have gotten him more playing time; however, the acquisitions of Hakim Warrick, Josh Childress and Hedo Turkoglu, plus the retention of Grant Hill and Jared Dudley, and the possible re-signing of Louis Amundson, seem to have snuffed that out again. Where Clark’s minutes will come from next year is once again unclear. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really do not like the Turkoglu acquisition. Dwayne Collins As a third stringer slightly undersized centre in an up-tempo system, Collins should do quite well. Regardless of his lack of size, Collins goes and gets rebounds; regardless of the tempo you play it, you need rebounds. Collins’s offence at this point is pretty much only the finishing of easy ones, but Steve Nash is his point guard now. Easy ones will be there. Zabian Dowdell The Suns were going to bring in Dowdell for training camp last year, were it not for an injury that Dowdell suffered before it started. The injury kept him on the shelf until mid-December, when he returned to play with the D-League’s Tulsa 66ers and averaged 12.9 points/3.7 assists. Dowdell then moved to EuroLeague calibre team Unicaja Malaga, but struggled mightily over there. In 21 ACB games, Dowdell averaged only 6.4 points and 1.7 assists per game, shooting only 36% from the field and 24% from three point range. Dowdell is best defensively and usually a better shooter than that, yet it’s worrying numbers in Dowdell’s highest standard of play […]
– Pavel Podkolzin After his NBA career set new records in failure, Podkolzin returned to his native Russia to play for Lokomotiv Novosybirsk, the team he began his career with. Podkolzin is into his fourth season with the team, and has stuck with them even after they were relegated out of the Russian Superleague down to the second division. Statistics are hard to come across, because they’re all in Russian, and Russians use the wrong alphabet. However, as far as I can tell, Pavel averages 12.9 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.9 fouls per game. On the Novosybirsk website, three players are listed as playing the position of “центровой.” Pavel is one of them, and a quick internet search reveals the obvious; that word translates as “center”. But curiously, if you run that word through Google Translate, it comes out with the result “Washington Bullets.” I’m not making that up, either. – Scot Pollard Pollard last played in the NBA with the championship-winning 2007-08 Celtics. He didn’t play in the postseason and barely played during the regular season, but he got a ring and a million for sitting around and putting up with a year of ankle pain, so it’s not all bad. He now works for NBA TV, where he’s already created one of the more awkward moments in television history. – Olden Polynice Polynice was last in the NBA in February 2004, when the Clippers waived the then-39-year-old before the playoff deadline so that he could catch on with another NBA team. He didn’t. But Polynice did squeeze out bit parts of two more years in the world of professional basketball, playing 18 games in 2004/05 with the Michigan Mayhem of the CBA, and briefly being the player/coach for the Los Angeles Aftershock of the ABA in […]
