– Darius Rice has left the immortally named Purefoods Tender Juicy Giants from the Phillipines, and is about to sign with Montegranaro in Italy. I think that translates as “Bread Mountain”. I hope it does, anyway. – A previous blog post talked about how Ivan Radenovic had had his contract with Akasvayu Girona extended. That news is now bunkum, for Girona have gone bankrupt, and are not playing this upcoming season. This leaves Radenovic now unsigned, unattached and undervalued. – The “points per shot” fans amongst us were extremely happy to hear that the Philadelphia 76ers have signed shooting guard Kareem Rush to form an incisive and efficient off-guard partnership with the incumbent Willie Green. These two players have a role to play for the Sixers, in that they are the only two guards currently under contract who can actually hit a three-point shot. This is a positive. But the negative side-effect is that both of these players are otherwise lacking, and for score-first players, they are not efficient. The pair are both deemed “one-dimensional scorers”, but neither is doing it optimally. Green last season scored 921 points on 870 shots, for a bad 1.06 points per shot, a number that still somehow managed to raise his career average to a heady 1.02. Rush was worse, though, scoring 588 points on 569 shots last year for a 1.03 PPS average, against a far below par career average of 1.01. For the sake of a point of reference, free agent Sixers backup point guard Kevin Ollie has a career points per shot average of a modest 1.21. That from a man who has nine made career three-pointers. Technically, on paper alone, if you need someone to hit a shot, you are better served going to Kevin Ollie than Kareem […]
Players acquired via free agency or trade: Kurt Thomas (acquired from Phoenix) Wally Szczerbiak (acquired from Boston) Delonte West (acquired from Boston) Players acquired via draft: First round: Kevin Durant (2nd overall), Jeff Green (5th overall) Second round: None Players retained: None Players departed: Danny Fortson (unsigned) Mike Wilks (unsigned) Randy Livingston (unsigned) Rashard Lewis (signed and traded to Orlando for way too much) Ray Allen (traded to Boston) Andre Brown (signed with Memphis) Bobbins: It’s rarely the correct move for an NBA franchise to blow the doors of the thing, jack it all in, admit failure and begin again. It takes a special kind of situation to justify it, and the team has to be a victim of a number of extraordinary circumstances. However, Seattle did exactly that this offseason. And entirely justifiably. After their fluke season in 2004/05 (oh please, yes it was), Seattle endured two years of nothingness after that, winning 35 and 31 games respectively. In all that time, the prolonged soap opera of the team’s ownership and arena continued to play out – the team was sold to new owners in 2006, who invested in the on-court product (giving Nick Collison and Luke Ridnour extensions totalling seven years and $44.5 million, which seems a bit much), yet who have not particularly well-disguised intentions of moving the team to Oklahoma City. One of the minority owners said as much in August, drawing a big fine from the NBA, but telling us nothing that we didn’t already know. With off-court turmoil and on-court mediocrity, the Sonics weren’t going anywhere, and they weren’t getting there very fast. But then in June, they won the #2 pick in the lottery. Suddenly, things were looking up. In a two superstar draft, Seattle just lucked themselves into […]
