2010 Summer League Rosters: Philadelphia 76ers
July 6th, 2010
Ryan Brooks Ryan Brooks is a shooting guard whose nose is a different colour to the rest of his body. He just graduated from Temple, where he led the team in scoring in his senior season with 14.6 points per game. He also chipped in 4.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game, while turning it over only 1.2 times, an incredibly solid number. He’s a solid all-around player and a quality college guard; unfortunately, there’s nothing that stands out about his game. Brooks is slightly undersized, a mediocre athlete, a crafty scorer but not a standout shooter, an interested and pretty effective defender without the physical tools to be so at the next level, a man who doesn’t make many mistakes but who doesn’t create much either. That’s a summer league calibre player, but not an NBA calibre player. Not at 6’4, at least. But he’ll make some money in Europe. Ndudi Ebi Sandwiched amongst all their vetoed Timberwolves first rounders from the Joe Smith debacle came Ndudi Ebi, a half-British man who was a first-round draft pick of the team in 2003 out of high school. He did not justify his draft billing and failed to even get to the third season of his rookie contract, but not before a shambolic a moment that saw the Timberwolves ask the NBA if they could send Ebi down to the D-League for his third season, in circumvention of the rule that states only rookies or sophomores can be assigned by teams to the D-League. Their justification for the request? Ebi hadn’t played much, and thus didn’t really have two years experience. The NBA denied the request, and Ebi was waived to accommodate the incoming Ronald Dupree. After leaving the NBA, Ebi spent a couple of years in the D-League (fittingly), playing […]
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 His website is just a shade out of date, and if he has business interests then I don’t know what they are.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 […]
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 […]
Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 22
January 28th, 2009
Many of the following people are called Hamilton. If you don’t want to know the result, look away now. – Brian Hamilton signed with the New Jersey Nets for training camp after playing for their summer league team, which guaranteed him a free trip around Europe. Hamilton didn’t make the team, though, and is currently unsigned. By the way, speaking of the Nets summer league team, look how stacked that bad boy was. They could have put together a depth chart of this kind of calibre: PG – Jamar Butler, Will Conroy, Yuta Tabuse SG – Chris Douglas-Roberts, Jaycee Carroll, Donell Taylor, Maurice Ager SF – Julius Hodge, Marcus Slaughter, Brian Hamilton PF – Ryan Anderson, Anthony Tolliver C – Brook Lopez, Sean Williams That team is friggin’ stacked, even if it is (as are all summer league teams) a bit short. This wasn’t quite how it worked out, as Jamar Butler didn’t turn up, Sean Williams started at power forward, and a combination of Conroy and Carroll did most of the point guard work. But, still. In relative terms, that team is heaving. God I love summer league. – Venson Hamilton is into his fourth season with Real Madrid. However, his playing time has all but disappeared. In the Spanish league, Hamilton averages 1.1 points and 1.8 rebounds in 6.7 minutes a game, slightly raising his scoring average to 1.6 ppg in EuroLeague play. On the year, he has 18 points and 21 fouls. The money must be good, because the opportunity isn’t. – Vernon Hamilton was acquired yesterday by the Colorado 14ers of the D-League, where he can back up Eddie Gill at point guard, or replace him should Gill get a call-up. Fun Vernon Hamilton fact: the highest that Vernon Hamilton has ever shot […]
