2010 Summer League Rosters: Portland Trail Blazers
July 12th, 2010
These things tend to tangent. Stick with it. Luke Babbitt I’m still not sure of why Portland has been trying to acquire small forwards so proactively. The Luol Deng rumour won’t die, even if you want it to, and the team just signed Wesley Matthews to a full MLE contract. They also traded for Babbitt’s draft rights and signed him straight away, despite already having Nicolas Batum on the roster. Batum is really good and already has a capable backup in Dante Cunningham in place; now with Babbittt as well, I don’t see the need for this constant desire to get another one. Jimmy Baron Baron holds every Rhode Island shooting record going. He is an absolute 100% pure, unsullied, virginal shooter, who unfortunately doesn’t do a lot else. Baron’s first and only professional season thus far saw him play for Mersin in Turkey, where he averaged 16.5 points in 28.6 minutes with 43.4% three point shooting….and nothing else. Such is the Jimmy Baron experience. Not a bad thing, but not an NBA thing. Dante Cunningham Considering he’s always been a power forward in a small forward’s body, Cunningham made a pretty decent effort of pretending otherwise. Given plenty of opportunities due to injury, Cunningham shot his customary mid range two’s well, rebounding well enough for a man of his size, and proved he could play defence on both small forwards and power forwards. He also turned it over only 25 times all year, leading all rookies in turnover percentage at 6.0%. This is helped significantly by the fact that he doesn’t dribble, but nevertheless, it’s a hugely impressive number. (Tyler Hansbrough was next lowest at 7.1% in his part-season of work; Marcus Thornton was third at 7.3%. The worst? Jrue Holiday, 21.9%. Then James Johnson. Then Hasheem Thabeet.) In […]
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 26
March 13th, 2010
In the previous post I talked about Hawks draft pick Sergiy Gladyr, but did so while omitting a potentially interesting/amusing piece of information. Gladyr has not played since Valentine’s Day, when he left a game against Meridiano after only nine minutes with an injury and never returned. The injury is a broken hand, one which Gladyr suffered by punching an advertising hoarding. Maybe he was feeling a little unloved that day. I feel your pain, brother. Additionally, the recent surge of Chinese Basketball Association-related material has brought a variety of feedback, much of it useful, some of it banal, some of it sweet and sincere, some of it rude. With that feedback in mind, here are some points for clarity; 1) Tim Pickett has returned for Shaanxi, and played the last three games. In those three games he has posted 50 points and 8 rebounds, 30 points and 8 rebounds, and 39 points and 8 rebounds. He has continued to shoot really really really ridiculously well from the three-point line, going 14-20 over that three game span. But Shaanxi have lost all three games anyway. 2) A number of people pointed out that Bayi are the team affiliated with the Chinese army, which is why they have no import players. I didn’t mention this because I thought it was no longer the case. I knew it used to be, hence all that furore with Wang Zhizhi a few years ago, but I thought they’d moved on from that. At the very least, they had changed the name. But I guess not. 3) No, I didn’t actually think Ding Jinhui the snooker player and Ding Jinhui the Zhejiang Cyclones big man were the same person. And no, I didn’t actually think Li Xiaoxu the Liaoning centre and Ling Xiaoyu the fictional […]
2009 NBA Summer League round-up: Houston Rockets
July 9th, 2009
– Hassan Adams: Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo struck gold in 2007 when he signed Jamario Moon right at the start of free agency, after a fine performance in a Raptors mini-camp. In 2008, he went for it again with Hassan Adams…and he struck out. He signed Adams to a guaranteed contract in July, then watched on as Adams (perhaps complacent due to the guaranteed money) showed up out of shape and with as few ball skills as ever. Adams was later salary-dumped onto the Clippers, who cut him. After that, Adams went to Serbia to play for Vojvodina Srbija Gas Novi Sad, a team that badly needs its name abridging if it’s to make any catchy jingles. He totalled 11 points in two games before leaving in what I believe was acrimonious circumstances. He won’t make the Rockets roster; they didn’t sign Trevor Ariza, turn down Von Wafer’s advances and spend all that money on Jermaine Taylor just to let Hassan take their roster spot. But it’s nice to see him again anyway. Hope he can get his mojo back. – Rod Benson: Rod Benson had a great year in 2007-08, starting out in the Nets training camp, then going to the D-League and leading it in rebounds. But 2008-09 was far worse: Benson went to France and signed with Nancy, but averaged only 2.3/2.3 in eight games before being released. He returned to the D-League, and averaged 7.3 points and 6.0 rebounds for the Dakota Wizards, before being traded to the Reno Bighorns where he averaged a far better 16.6 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks. – Chase Budinger: Budinger is but one more on my list of “Players I would rather the Bulls had drafted instead of Taj Gibson at #26,” an increasingly long list that’s […]
