Trevor Booker My early proclamations that Booker might be the next Paul Millsap were a bit premature, and overlooked the fact that Booker is about half the rebounder that Millsap is. Jumped the gun a bit there, I did. However, I remain confident in Booker’s abilities to contribute at the NBA level, despite his lack of size for the position. Boozer is athletic enough and has improved his face-up game, both the drive and the shot. He’ll have to be a small power forward, but he’s strong and athletic enough to do that. Eric Hayes Like his namesake Chuck, Eric Hayes is a master of the running layup. He will get free without the ball, cut to the basket and make the shot, in what commentators love to cite as a display of high IQ basketball. (They’re not wrong. It is.) Hayes is also a very good three point shooter, a decent defender, and was the solid all-around compliment to Grevis Vasquez’s wild ways. Those made him a great college player. But his significant physical disadvantages – a 6’4 shooting guard with mediocre foot speed and no leaping ability – will prevent any NBA allusions. Other than this one, of course. Lester Hudson Hudson made the Celtics roster out of training camp, but did not make it beyond the contract guarantee date with the team. However, he got his money anyway when the Grizzlies claimed him off waivers, and Hudson saw out the rest of the season there. The Grizzlies waived Hudson as well at the start of this month, and he’s now without a team. Hudson proved he could score in transition, but the rest of his game remains in question, particularly his skills in the half court. Abdulai Jalloh Jalloh is a Gambian/Ivory Coastian scoring guard, formerly of […]
The South Korean basketball league [KBL] is a relatively new league, only thirteen years in existence, that unashamedly focuses on Korean national players. Part of that means heavily restricting the amount of imports that so heavily permeate all the other leagues around the world. Teams are allowed only two imports, and unlike in some other countries, dual citizenship is very hard to come by. It also has some quirky rules. Each team is allowed two foreign players, but in the second and third quarter of all games, only one import is allowed to play at any one time. Additionally, a few years ago, the KBL had a rule that barred any players standing 6’8 and above. What the intended purpose of that was, I don’t know, but presumably they quickly figured out how damaging that rule was to their basketball product, because they have now done away with it. Now, tall foreign dudes are allowed, and they’re kind of prevalent. A combination of that, and the 54-game schedules that teams play, make the KBL highly intriguing to the hardened nerds amongst us. Every summer, the KBL holds a draft of foreign players who want to play in their league that year. The players that are drafted are mostly tall guys, as Korea doesn’t produce much talented size of their own. (Ha Seung-Jin excepted.) The criteria for entry in the draft, though, is pretty weird. Players pay a $100 fee to be entered into the pre-draft list camp, and that list of players is culled down to a manageable amount of invitees by the KBL. The surviving list then go through one more cull, and the surviving few proceed (if they still want to) to the KBL pre-draft camp, which takes place in Las Vegas. And from there, the draft choices […]
