Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 71
May 30th, 2010
– Darius Washington Macedonian sensation Darius Washington stayed close to his homeland this season when he signed with Turkish team Galatasaray. He averaged 21.6 points (third-best in the league) and 4.5 assists (eighth-best) per game in the EuroCup, alongside 15.4 points and 3.0 assists per game in the Turkish league. Last month, with Galatasaray out of the running in the Turkish league, Washington moved to Italy to join Lottomatica Roma for the last few games of the Serie A regular season, but didn’t play as much, and averaged only 5.0 ppg as Roma were swept 3-0 by Caserta. – Deron Washington Washington was drafted by the Pistons with the penultimate pick in the 2008 draft, and signed in 2009. Detroit then waived him before the season started in a move that made absolutely no sense on the surface. Washington subsequently went to the D-League – you can afford to do that when an NBA team is cutting you a $250,000 check – and was drafted third overall in the D-League draft by the L.A. D-Fenders. Only eight games later, though, Washington was traded to the Tulsa 66ers for backup big man Keith Clark; in 49 combined games between the two teams, Washington averaged 11.1 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 26 minutes per game. He also shot only 30% from three point range, and also committed 1.9 turnovers per game, a high amount of turnovers for a man who doesn’t really dribble. – Darryl Watkins This was basically a gap year for Darryl Watkins. He started it in camp with the Cavaliers, and was one of their last cuts before moving to the D-League and being assigned to the Iowa Energy; however, he started to suffer from plantar fasciitis before the season began and never played a […]
Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 55
March 14th, 2009
– Charlie Ward retired in 2004, and briefly became an assistant coach with the Rockets. However, he left that gig, and has instead found a place and a job that caters to his three biggest passions in life; basketball, American football, and Christianity. Ward is now the head football coach at Westbury Christian School in Houston, Texas, as well as an assistant coach on the basketball team. He also recently quarterbacked again, albeit only for a fun day. Question: if you were to ask Charlie Ward whether he regrets turning down an NFL career for his decent if underwhelming NBA career, what would he say? Genuinely intrigued by that. – Darius Washington signed with the Bulls for preseason, and played very well in one of the preseason games. He didn’t make the cut, though, and nor was he ever going to. Washington then signed with Ural Great Perm in Russia, where he is averaging 13.0 points and 3.6 assists per game in the EuroChallenge, along with 14.6 points, 3.1 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game in the Russian league. Did you know that Darius Washington is now a Macedonian citizen? Fun fact. – Pistons draft pick Deron Washington is averaging 15.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, 2.0 steals and 1.2 blocks per game for Hapoel Holon in Israel. He recently helped the team to win the Israeli Cup, but is only shooting 23% on the year from three-point range. So he still can’t shoot. But he’s also still an athlete who covers ground on both ends. – Darryl Watkins did not make the cut from the Spurs training camp, and then went to Tianjin in China. Everyone loves Chinese numbers, and a post on this subject may well be soon appearing, so until then wrap your lips around this […]
Let Me Drago Pasalic You Up And Down
February 4th, 2009
In keeping with my new policy of talking about every game that I watch that isn’t an NBA game, here’s what I observed from last night’s EuroCup game between Iurbentia Bilbao and the home Lithuanian team with a Yorkshire inflection, Lietuvos Rytas. Go. – Bilbao’s line-up features only three Spanish nationals; point guard Javier Salgado, backup guard Paco Vazquez, and a really slow inside player with a massive head and greasy mullet called Salvador Guardia. The rest of the team was made up of foreign players, and it was pretty stacked; former, future and potentially future NBA talent on show included former Bucks forward and avid partygoer Damir Markota, former Jazz and Timberwolves swingman Quincy Lewis, former Heat tryer-outer Luke Recker, former Chicago Bulls summer league participant Drago Pasalic, Mavericks second-rounder Renaldas Seibutis, former Nuggets guard Predrag Savovic, the man the legend known as Frederic Weis (who did not play), Latvian international guard Janis Blums, and Croatian international big man Marko Banic. – Lietuvos, meanwhile, had only two players that weren’t Lithuanian – former South Carolina point forward Chuck Eidson, and Serbian big man Milko Bjelica, whose name sounds more like a lovely pudding. The rest of the team was made out of old clunky Lithuanians. (Eidson was awesome, by the way, and easily the best player in the game, despite all the talent and internationals on the court. But we’ll come to this later.) – For Bucks fans who fancy a cheap laugh at the expense of Damir Markota, I’ve got good news – he was pretty awful. Markota came off the bench in the first half, and did nothing at all, but for some reason he started the second half in place of Pasalic. He then proceeded to get involved on every possession, and normally in a bad […]
