An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The NBA Prospects Of The Unsigned NBA Draft Picks
April 2nd, 2011

If your team drafts a player, and yet never signs him, the chances are that they’ll still own his draft rights.

The presence of those draft rights means that that player can sign only with the right-holding NBA team, and not with any others. Such draft rights can also be traded, either to a recipient team who values the player and thus gives something of value for them, or as arbitrary filler obliging the NBA’s rule that all partners in …

Posted by at 9:45 PM

15 More Ten Day Contract Candidates (Because Apparently 101 Wasn't Enough After All)
January 10th, 2011

Newest Phoenix Sun, Zabian Dowdell.

A mere 48 hours after the Top 101 Ten Day Contract Candidates list was completed, the Phoenix Suns went and signed somebody that wasn’t on it. Clearly, 20 would not have been enough.

With the second signed ten day contract of the season – the Clippers used the first to re-sign Jarron Collins – Phoenix called up guard Zabian Dowdell from the Tulsa 66ers of the D-League, re-signing a player they had only recently cut …

Posted by at 9:27 AM

Top 101 NBA Ten-Day Contract Candidates (When 20 Would Probably Have Been Enough)
January 5th, 2011

As of today, January 5th, NBA teams are able to start signing players to 10 day contracts. Up until now, players signed mid-season had to be signed to contracts lasting at least until the end of the season; as of Wednesday, however, you need sign them for no longer than 10 days, either as emergency cover or an extended tryout. This system is widely used every year, and sometimes leads to beautiful stories, such as the successes enjoyed by players …

Posted by at 9:40 PM

Chinese Basketball Association Imports, 2010/11
December 15th, 2010

The first two rounds of games in the 2010/11 Chinese Basketball Association were played this week, giving us an opportunity to confirm once and for all who is actually playing there. With no major English language version of a Chinese Basketball Association website available – other than perhaps here – accurate information as to signings is hard to find. We are reliant upon snippets, leaks, the occasional accurate translation, and often the players themselves.

This is a pity because of …

Posted by at 9:17 PM

…..Third Prize Is You're Fired
October 6th, 2010

Continuing the lengthy look at training camp invitees league wide, here’s part three. Part one can be found here, and part two is here.


Oklahoma City

View Thunder roster
View Thunder salary information

With a full roster, Oklahoma City saw fit to bring in four more. They signed undrafted point/combo guards Jerome Dyson of UConn and Tweety (Demond) Carter of Baylor, as well as fellow undrafted swingman Elijah Millsap of UAB. They later brought in former …

Posted by at 10:46 AM

Anybody Wanna See Second Prize? Second Prize Is A Set Of Steak Knives…..
September 30th, 2010

Continuing the lengthy look at training camp invitees league wide, here’s part two. Part one can be found here.


Indiana

View Pacers roster
View Pacers salary information

Indiana already has 15 guaranteed contracts, so they didn’t bring in many for camp. The only two players they signed were D-League veteran centre Lance Allred, and their second second-round draft pick from this summer, Magnum Rolle. Additionally, the contracts of both A.J. Price ($175,000 of $762,195 guaranteed) …

Posted by at 11:44 PM

We're Adding A Little Something To This Month's Sales Contest. As You All Know, First Prize Is A Cadillac El Dorado.
September 28th, 2010

No matter how much you may think you know, NBA training camp always offers an opportunity to learn more.

In that respect, it rivals summer league and draft night; all three present chances to learn more about players about whom you previously did not know about, and you get to try to understand what the NBA sees in them. If a player makes it as far as training camp, after all, then they must be doing something right, because all …

Posted by at 2:33 PM

Training camp signings thus far
September 23rd, 2010

There follows a compendium of all players who have signed, or agreed to sign, for 2010 training camp. I could not find such a compendium elsewhere and thus decided to make one. This list also includes earlier signings of players with unguaranteed or partially guaranteed deals. In some cases, such as with Cucumber, certain players will obviously make it, yet they are included for the sake of uniformity. There exists the possibility that any of these signings could yet change …

Posted by at 1:24 PM

Where Are They Now, 2010 Summer League
September 17th, 2010

The transfer markets are pretty much closed. In many places, pre-season has already begun. EuroLeague qualifiers begin next week, as does the mighty British Basketball League regular season, and while signings continue to go down, most are done by now. By this time, if you’re still a free agent without a training camp invite, you’re struggling. Unless you’re going to the D-League, of course.

There follows a list of the whereabouts of all the players featured on NBA summer league …

Posted by at 1:10 PM

The best of what's left after what was the best of what's left has gone and is no longer left
August 21st, 2010

It’s weird that Ben Wallace is the only one of these four with a contract.

This snappily titled post is, in essence, an update to the earlier similarly titled one that detailed the best remaining free agents in the world of basketball. The list was designed to be comprehensive – which is why Greg Buckner was in it – yet it wasn’t perfect.

Some players should have been listed on it before, and are listed now. Some others who should …

Posted by at 11:27 AM

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 …

Posted by at 10:23 AM

2010 Summer League Rosters: Utah Jazz
July 2nd, 2010

Free agency is going on, and big names are moving all over the world. However, so are the little names. And since half of this website is devoted to the little names, there follows looks at the summer league roster for all NBA teams. These posts will be in no particular order.

Sundiata Gaines

Gaines made a name for himself quickly last season, when he hit a desperation game-winning three-point jump shot for the Jazz in a win over Cleveland. …

Posted by at 12:52 AM

2010 KBL Pre-Draft Pool
June 17th, 2010

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 …

Posted by at 8:18 AM

The 2010 Puerto Rican BSN Season
June 7th, 2010

The Chinese Basketball Association is an area of particular focus on this website, because it’s fun. Every season, the CBA plays host to many former NBA players, and plays them for the vast majority of their 48-minute games, resulting in huge statistics and thereby being more fun over leagues such as Italy’s Serie A, where teams employ 11-man rotations, nobody plays more than 25mpg, and everyone averages about 9/4. They are better standards of league for this reason, but they’re …

Posted by at 5:15 AM

Mengke Bateer Is A Coconut Wielding Homicidal Badass
March 10th, 2010

Everyone remembers their first Mengke Bateer experience. Mine came in the 2000 Olympics. In a game against the USA in which Yao Ming beasted from three point range (true story), and in which Wang Zhizhi picked up four first half fouls, Mengke came in and hit some mid range jump shots, in that way that he does. It was kind of fun, if ultimately kind of forgettable.

Bateer went on to enjoy a few years in the NBA. He started …

Posted by at 2:04 PM

2009 NBA Summer League rosters whereabouts updated, again, needlessly
November 19th, 2009

For no reason other than an itching craving to scratch my own Where Are They Now itch – I can’t really start the 2009 series of posts until all leagues are underway, which will be about another six weeks – I have decided to revisit the whereabouts of all players on summer league rosters this past summer.

Eagle eyed viewers will have noticed that I’ve already done this once before, in a series of three posts back in September. This …

Posted by at 12:19 AM

2009 NBA Training Camp predictions, revisited
October 29th, 2009

At the start of the month, over the course of three posts united by the overused theme of Alec Baldwin’s monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross, I attempted to analyse and predict the training camp rosters of every team in the NBA.

For the hell of it, here’s the monologue again:

Preseason is now over, and rosters have been set. Here are my predictions again, along with a depressing look at their whimpering inaccuracy and some half-baked excuses for my own …

Posted by at 9:42 PM

Second prize is a set of steak knives.
October 7th, 2009

Continuing the round-up of training camp invites.

 

Milwaukee played the training camp game in the spirit that it deserves…..briefly. They initially announced three signings; former Marquette point guard Domimic James, D-League big man Marcus Hubbard and former Temple guard Mark Tyndale, and they later added veteran big man Charles Gaines to that line-up. However, all four have already been waived, because I took too long to write this. Still, for the sake of consistency, we’ll give …

Posted by at 12:51 AM

Third prize is you’re fired.
October 7th, 2009

Continuing the round-up of training camp invites.

 

Phoenix are going to run with 13 players, because they always run with 13 players. And they already had 13 players before training camp started, so the prospects of their signings were slim to none before they even started. Regardless, the Suns brought in three more, just in case; Carlos Powell, Dan Dickau and Raymond Sykes.

Dickau joins one of the few teams that he hadn’t previously on. For …

Posted by at 12:26 AM

As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado
October 4th, 2009

Training camp. Love it.

Ever since I grew up with a mild addiction to the Championship Manager series of computer games, I have nurtured a mild fascination for transactions in sports. I know it’s not healthy, but I also know I’m not alone. It might be harsh on the players involved, but it’s always fun to us hardened losers when players change teams. It gives us something to think about, something to analyse, and something to find important. Judging …

Posted by at 8:09 PM

Dreaming about Mark Madsen
March 16th, 2008

Do you ever stop and think about that time that Mark Madsen shot seven three-pointers in an overtime game, when Minnesota and Memphis had the most blatant tank-off that history has ever seen? No, nor did I. That is, not until this morning, when I woke up thinking about it.

It’s not an entirely normal thing to wake up thinking about, even for the most hardcore Madsen fans amongst us. (For we are all Mark Madsen fans, obviously.) But some …

Posted by at 3:43 PM

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. …

Posted by at 4:13 PM