Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 69
May 28th, 2010
– Novica Velickovic Novica Velickovic did what all good Partian youngsters do eventually; he left. Partizan are forever churning out quality youth, but they haven’t the budget to keep them long term, and so Velickovic, Milenko Tepic and Uros Tripkovic all left last summer. (It didn’t hold back Partizan, who found enough good quality pick-ups to make the EuroLeague Final Four this season.) Velickovic moved to Real Madrid, and had a decent year. He averaged 7.9 points, 4.1 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game in the EuroLeague, shooting 42% from three-point range, and is averaging 9.8 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.0 assists per game in the ACB. Real Madrid beat Cajasol Sevilla 2-1 in the first round of the ACB playoffs, and now face Caja Laboral in the semi-finals. – Vladimir Veremeenko Wizards draft pick Veremeenko has spent another year with Unics Kazan, still doing his impression of an entry-level Linas Kleiza. His numbers were slightly down this year on a deeper Kazan team, averaging 8.5ppg/4.2rpg in the VTB United League, 8.5/5.3 in the EuroCup and 7.6/4.1 in the Russian Superleague. He is the only Belarusian player we will be covering. – Filip Videnov Bulgarian international Videnov – who once played for Western Kentucky, something I hadn’t initially realised – started the year with Crvena Zvezda in Serbia. He averaged 8.9 points and 2.7 rebounds per game in the EuroCup, and 13.9 points and 3.2 rebounds in the Adriatic League; however, like almost all of Crvena Zvezda’s veterans, Videnov left when the money ran out. He moved to another Serbian team, Zeleznik, for whom he has averaged 13.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game in the Serbian league. He is the only actual Bulgarian person we will be covering. Mike Batiste and Ibrahim Jaaber don’t count. […]
Where Are They Now: The Special Derrick Murray Edition
June 16th, 2009
The look back at the compelling protagonists of the 1996 NBA Draft will be coming up soon, as soon as I can find 13 available hours in which to write it. Until them, I bring you a quasi-update from the 1994 edition. In that post, I wrote this paragraph: Last month, [Lamond] Murray signed back in the IBL for the third time, signing with the seminal Los Angeles Lightning, where he is currently averaging 25/6. You weren’t expecting that, I’m guessing. But here’s the best part – the Lightning’s line-up is freaking stacked. In an otherwise poor league, the Lightning have managed to boast a line-upĀ full of ex-NBA players, featuring Murray, current Clippers assistant and minor league veteran Fred Vinson, journeyman big man Jamal Sampson, the artist formerly known as Bryon Russell, ex-Suns guard Toby Bailey and former Rockets guard Juaquin Hawkins, who is with his first team since suffering a stroke last year. Did you see all that coming? No, me neither. In fact, apart from Murray, I didn’t know about all those players being there when I started writing this. Good times, maybe. Well, I have an update on that. Sampson left the team after only four games, but the team replaced him pretty quickly, signing ex-Kings training campee (a new word), Adam Parada. Bailey has also now turned up, as he was still playing in the German playoffs at the time of the last update. (He’s currently averaging a triple-double through his first two games, too.) The team also boasts California State senator Tony Strickland on the team, who hadn’t played competitive basketball since averaging a double-double at Whittler College in NCAA’s Division III almost two decades ago. That’s a PR move and a half, that. But the big news is that the Lightning have since added […]
Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 54
March 12th, 2009
I don’t know how to tell you this; there’s also only about three of these Where Are They Now posts left before we reach the human terminus that is Eurelijius Zukauskas. And I’ve already played my joker with the (simply astonishing) Ejike Ugboaja story. And I’m not going to start again. You’re going to promise to keep reading this website once they’ve dried up, right? Don’t go elsewhere. You’ll like it here. – Former Hornets second-round draft pick Marcus Vinicus has gone back to his native Brazil, where he averages 19.5 points, 3.7 rebounds and 4.0 assists – Minor league veteran Fred Vinson retired this summer aged 37 after a season in the IBL, and became an assistant coach/director of player programs for the Los Angeles Clippers, the team that gave him his final shot at the NBA. Presumably, this new role means that he rebounds a lot of Zach Randolph three-pointers. – Former Wake Forest centre Kyle Visser is into his second season with the New Yorker Phantoms in Germany. Last season, Visser averaged 9.8 points and 4.3 rebounds per game on 58% shooting, and this season he’s up to 10.6 points and 6.0 rebounds per game on 62% shooting. Visser’s team features nine American players on its roster, which seems like at least five too many, regardless of the team’s name. – 7’5 former Knicks and Blazers centre Slavko Vranes is averaging 3.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game in the EuroLeague, alongside 5.3 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game in the Adriatic League, for Partizan Belgrade in his sort-of native Serbia. – Former Hornet, Sun, Bull etc Jackson Vroman is playing for Saba Mehr for Iran. Iranian numbers are, it seems, unlookupable. – The future of the […]