Where Are They Now, 2010; Part 37
April 1st, 2010
– Petteri Koponen Blazers draft pick Koponen is still only 21 years old, but is already playing his second season with Canadian Solar Bologna in Italy’s Serie A (known as La Fortezza Bologna until about two months ago). Last year he was something of a bit-part player in Serie A play, but this year he’s one of their best, ranking second on the team in minutes per game (26.8) and points (11.7). Koponen is shooting 44% from three-point range and is also third on the team in assists with 1.7 apg, a team where the team leader (Andre Collins) has only 2.6 in over 29 minutes per game. Good old Italy. – Yaroslav Korolev After two years of not playing in the NBA, Korolev went back to his native Russia, where he spent two years not playing in the Superleague. This year, to mix it up, he decided to get some playing time. Korolev entered the D-League draft pool and was picked with the last selection in the fourth round by the Albuquerque Thunderbirds. He played 20 games for the Thunderbirds and averaged 11.3 points and 5.8 rebounds, but was traded in January to the Reno Bighorns for Marcus Hubbard. And in 23 games for the Bighorns, Korolev’s numbers have declined down to 9.6 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. Better than Danny Granger yet? Not quite. No matter how much hindsight you give it, the selections of players such as Korolev, Skita and Darko look no less ridiculous. In fact, they’re more ridiculous than ever – athletic young big guys with amazingly little to show on their CV and no defined skillsets picked in the NBA draft lottery, far above multiple established, more talented and simply better players. It was a very strange period for the game, that […]
Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 29
February 5th, 2009
– Coby Karl began the season with the Idaho Stampede before going to Spain and DKV Joventut Badalona to replace Bracey Wright. He averaged 18.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 5.5 assists for Idaho, and has appeared in all of one game for Badalona, scoring two points in two minutes on 0-2 shooting. – Former Magic centre Mario Kasun – who I like to consider the forerunner to Marcin Gortat, albeit not as good, because nobody is as good as Marcin Gortat – is signed with Efes Pilsen in Turkey, but has missed most of the season through injury. Returning about three weeks ago, Kasun has so far totalled 25 points and 15 rebounds in two Turkish league games, and a 10-minute 8-point performance in his sole EuroLeague game versus Real Madrid. – Sasha Kaun is with CSKA Moscow, craftily located in Moscow. As is the case with young players in Moscow, Kaun kaun’t much get off the bench, averaging 2.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in nine Russian league games, and totalling 2 points and 6 rebounds in four EuroLeague games. Kaun was also drafted in the fifth round of the CBA Draft, but that’s not much of a boast, because the CBA Draft is the most pointless thing in the world. “Quick, let’s draft these players so that we’ll hold their rights if they decide to join the CBA!…..Oh no, wait, they got NBA contracts instead. Damn. If only they knew of all the needlessly misspelt fun that we have here at the Pittsburgh Xplosion.” – Tre Kelley is with Eldan Ashkelon in Israel, forming a lethal tiny backcourt with Steve Burtt Jr. Kelley averages 11.3 points and 2.9 assists, as part of a three-guard rotation with Burtt and some Israeli guy called Avi Ben Chimol. […]
The NBA bench player handbook
August 19th, 2007
For those amongst you who, like me, have a strange fascination with transactions, both those finalized and those possible, this is a bad time of year for you. This is late August, the draft is long since gone, and most of the juicy bits of free agency have passed us by. Of the remaining free agents, only a select few are good enough to be starters in this league – Ruben Patterson to name……one – and merely the journeymen remain. This is the NBA’s equivalent of what it’s like to try and completely scrape clean an almost-empty pot of jam – you can try and try and try to clean every last morsel out of the jar, and occasionally strike it lucky with a decent-sized chunk. But most of the residual jam offers up stubborn resistance, and is not even worth your time – even if there was a practical way of getting it off there, you wouldn’t garner anything useful from it anyway. Additionally, when writing these new player profiles for the site, I have had a very tough time trying to keep them interesting. How, for example, do you make the profile of JamesOn Curry read wildly different to that of Jannero Pargo or Salim Stoudamire, when they are similar players? It’s a quandary that has cropped up all too often. Too many players are too alike too many other players, and too many players conform to stereotypes. So, let’s look at those stereotypes and give them broad definitions based around the pioneer – the trendsetter, if you will – of that particular stereotype. Every team needs their role players, after all. 1 – The Jerome Williams: The athletic forward whose main skill is the fact that they are an athletic forward. They’re too small to play […]
