A previous post showed a tizzy featuring Charles Gaines and Du Feng in game two of this year’s CBA Finals. What looked initially to be Gaines dropping Feng cold with a swift and well-placed right hand later emerged to be a flop of the highest order; after a lame headbutt on Gaines, Feng then went down to the ground like he’d been knocked clean out, whereas pictures of the incident showed that Gaines actually open-handed Feng in the mandible. It was a shove more than a punch, and a valid retaliation to a headbutt. So far from being an inevitable suspension, Gaines was absconded from blame. And Feng looked like a big wuss. Both played in game three. Gaines was not suspended, and Feng (amazingly!) was not dead. Guangdong won the game and took a 3-0 lead in the first to four. – Josh Shipp Even though he spent quite a lot of his UCLA career deferring offensively to NBA-calibre scorers, Josh Shipp has plenty of offence of his own. He is currently second in the Turkish TBL in scoring, averaging 19.3 ppg for Bornova (along with 5.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 2.0 steals). The Turkish league is not the best in the world, and it’s not got a lot of parity in it, but it’s not a bad one, and scoring 19.3 ppg in it is no small achievement. Shipp is second only to Quincy Douby (23.6 ppg), and ranks just ahead of Mire Chatman (Besiktas, 18.4 ppg), Kedrick Brown (also Bornova, 18.1 ppg), Quinton Hosley (Aliaga, 17.9 ppg) and Lonny Baxter (Besiktas, 17.4 ppg). That list is made up of all Americans, which alludes to the self-fulfilling prophecy that the best Turkish players don’t play in Turkey. But Josh Shipp does, and he plays well. – […]
– Renaldas Seibutis is part of a deep Iurbentia Bilbao team, averaging 10.7 points and 1.6 rebounds in the EuroCup, alongside 6.6 points and 1.7 rebounds in the Spanish league. – Now is the time to refamiliarise yourself with Warriors great, Mladen Sekularac. Mladen was drafted in the second round by the Mavericks back in 2002, coming off a season that saw him average 17.6 points in the Saporta Cup, the predecessor of sorts to the EuroCup. From there, Sekularac (whose name I’m finding really hard to abridge) went to Bologna in Italy, where he didn’t play much and was released mid-season. In 2003/04, Rac averaged a more modest 10 ppg back in the Adriatic League, and then saw his rights traded to Golden State as a minor part of the Erick Dampier trade. It was at that moment that it all started to go south. Sekularac had signed with Buducnost to start the 2004/05 season, but left after they stopped paying him; he then signed in December of ’04 with Apollon in Greece, but appeared in only two games, totalling 0 points. Since then, Kula has been in Belgium, where a series of injuries have seen him go from the fifth-leading scorer in the country in 2005/06 to a fringe starter in the present day. Sek is now 28, and has not panned out despite once being touted as his nation’s best prospect for a generation. And guess what? Right now, he’s currently injured. Larac signed a two-year contract with Charleroi this summer, and then got injured in his debut, back in October. He hasn’t played since, and has all of two points to his name on the year. Bad times. – Mouhamed Sene was waived by the Thunder on trade deadline day to accommodate Thabo Sefolosha. The team […]
