Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 9
January 8th, 2010
– Michael Bramos After going undrafted out of Miami Ohio, Bramos played for the Pistons in summer league, and played pretty well. He then used his Greek heritage and Greek passport to go to Greece, where he is signed with Peristeri. Unfortunately, his first professional season is not going too well; Bramos averages only 5.1 points, 1.7 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 2.7 fouls in 21 minutes per game, shooting 34% from the field. Peristeri have had some turnover with their imports this year, and it doesn’t help that those documented here haven’t played well either. But more on that later. – J.R. Bremer Earl is in Russia this year, played for Samara. He’s averaging 11.8 points, 5.8 assists and 3.1 rebounds per game in the Russian league, alongside 4.8 points, 6.3 assists and 3.3 rebounds per game in the EuroChallenge. However, he hasn’t brought his jump shot with him to Russia; Bremer is shooting only 30% from three in the Russian league, and only 12% in the EuroChallenge, which explains his low scoring output there. Did you realise it was seven years ago that he was a starter for the Celtics? Me neither. Makes a man feel old. J.R. Bremer fact: J.R. Bremer has a Bosnian passport. Is he actually Bosnian? No. Does he have any Bosnian heritage? Not that I know of. Has he ever been there before? Actually, yes; Bremer played in Sarajevo for three months in early 2007, and won the Bosnian regular season title. Apparently that was enough. – Jamison Brewer After two years out of the game, Brewer has returned to play professionally in Brazil. As far as I can tell, Brewer has played one game for his team Pinheiros, totalling 30 minutes, 17 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 0 tocos, 0 enterradas […]
Basketball in South Korea has some interesting rules
August 12th, 2009
The South Korean basketball league [KBL] has some quirky rules. It’s a relatively new league, only ten years in existence, that unashamedly focuses on Korean national players. Part of that means heavily restricting the amount of Big Foreign Americans™ that so heavily permeate all the other leagues around the world. A few years ago, the KBL had a rule that barred any players standing 6’8 and above. What the intended purpose of that was, I don’t know, but presumably they quickly figured out how damaging that rule was to their basketball product, because they have now done away with it. Now, tall foreign dudes are allowed. And they’re prevalent. Every summer, the KBL holds a draft of foreign players who want to play in their league that year. The players that are drafted are mostly tall guys, as apparently Korea doesn’t produce much talented size of their own. (Ha Seung-Jin excepted, of course.) The criteria for entry in the draft, though, is pretty weird. The following is looted without permission from the Korean Basketball League website: [The] Korean Basketball League (KBL) Pre-Draft Tryout Camp for Foreign Players will be held from July 22nd (Wed) to 24th (Fri), 2009 at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, NV, U.S.A. The players who are interested in playing in Korea for the 2009~2010 season, which will start from the middle of October 2009 to the end of April 2010, and meet the qualifications below are asked to fill out the application form and send via a fax or by e-mail the required documents to KBL office by May 22nd, 2009. A: Qualifications: 1. Must have at least a high school diploma 2. Must be at least 18 years of age 3. Have not had a contract with teams in Europe Division I (Spain, […]
Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 7
January 8th, 2009
– Cedric Bozeman is playing for the Anaheim Arsenal in the D-League, where he averages 17.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists, where he plays the off-guard to Tierre Brown’s point. (Brown averages 14.4 points and 4.6 assists.) But the best Cedric Bozeman news of all is that he is 22-51 from behind the three-point line, for a 43% average. This isn’t exactly a massive sample size to be working off, and it does come from the man who shot 21% on three-pointers in Poland last season, but it may be a sign that Bozeman’s jump shot might not be too big of a weakness any more. With a decent jump shot, Bozeman has a chance to be vaguely interesting to NBA teams. His first go-around with the Atlanta Hawks wasn’t pretty, as he shot 28% in 23 games and had a 1:1 assist/turnover ratio. But teams love their tall point guards, and even though Bozeman isn’t playing full-time point guard right now, he could. Any evidence of his development as a scorer can only help his case. – Michael Bradley opted not to play this season. And maybe never again. Here’s why. – Shawn Bradley retired ages ago and, at last count, now works in a school. – Torraye Braggs has played basically everywhere, and, until last week, was playing in Mexico with Pioneros de Quintana Roo-Cancun. Apparently he only plays on teams with awesome names, because before Pioneros de Quintana Roo-Cancun, Braggs was playing for a team in Jordan called, simply, “Orthodox”. Before that, he played in Iran for Petrochimi Imam Harbour. Before that, it was ASK Riga in Latvia (less awesome, but a suitably random country), and before that came Maccabi Ironi Ramat Gan in Israel and the Qingdao Double Stars in China. If […]
