2009 NBA Summer League round-up: Oklahoma City Thunder
July 22nd, 2009
– DeAngelo Alexander: Last year, DeAngelo Alexander averaged 6.2 points and 2.9 rebounds in the German league, shooting 16% from three. Before that, he was in Romania. If he does something significant from an NBA stand point one day, we’ll come back to it. – Marcus Dove: Dove is a former four-year player at Oklahoma State, who went undrafted in 2008 and went off to Belgium. There, he averaged 10.8 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, shooting 7.7% from three-point range and 56% from the foul line. Dove is an unashamed defensive specialist, but you can’t be a non-factor from the perimeter and still make it as a small forward in the NBA. Not unless you’re RyBo. – Tony Durant: The “relations of stars who got summer league spots because their star cousin/brother/uncle asked the team to bring them along” list gets a new addition. It’s a great list, that over the years has featured William Pippen (Scottie’s nephew), Joel Bosh (Chris’s brother), John Millsap (Paul’s brother), Zach Marbury (Stephon’s brother), Daniel Artest (Ron’s brother), Romeo Travis (LeBron James’s high school mate) and Rodney Billups (Chauncey’s brother). The common theme with these players is that they have no NBA calibre resumé outside of that, and Tony Durant is no different. Last year for Towson, he averaged 3.4 points and 2.0 rebounds. Towson is not a big school, in a not big conference, and those are not big numbers. At all. But the bloodline is enough. Speaking of Joel Bosh, here’s Joel Bosh being awkward. – Moses Ehambe: Ehambe was in the D-League last year, functioning as a three point specialist for the Tulsa 66ers. He averaged 10.3 points and 1.7 rebounds in 18 minutes per game, shooting 41% from both the field and the three-point line. Here’s […]
Loosely-Informed Thoughts on Ohio State and Purdue Right Now
February 5th, 2009
I have watched a game and a half of Ohio State’s season in this past week, and I feel as though that makes me an expert on everything about them. – The half a game comes from the second half of the Buckeye’s game versus Indiana on Saturday. When we (and by “we”, I mean “the entire nation of England”) joined the game, Indiana was losing by one, 59-58. God knows how, because they proceeded to show nothing at all. They had no big men, no defence, no inside game, no slashing, no spacing, and their guards just took it in turns to hoist up threes. This from the worst three-point shooting team in the conference, apparently. Still, guard Matt Roth’s performance will linger with me for a while; unlike everybody else, Roth could actually hit a three, and proved this by hitting nine of them, each from further away than the last. It was an impressive shooting performance, to say the least, and it kept Indiana in a game in which they were otherwise wildly overmatched. If ever I encounter Matt Roth again in my life, this will be the first thing that I think of. (I looked up Matt Roth on ESPN after this, to see if he was any good. He wasn’t, but I did find something fun; Roth is 40/96 on the season from three-point range, 11/13 from the free throw line….and 3/10 from two-point range. Nice. Daequan Cook is jealous.) There was literally nothing else to report from Indiana’s point of view, who are as undermanned as you’d heard they are. – Ohio State’s seven-man rotation featured a starting line-up of Jeremie Simmons at point guard, William Buford at two guard, Jon Diebler as the other two guard, Evan Turner as both forwards and Dallas […]
