– Brad Stricker Stricker played his first two college years with Texas A&M back in 1995-97. He averaged 4.4 points and 2.5 rebounds before transferring to Arizona State, but had sat only one semester of his required three at ASU before transferring again, this time to Georgia State. There, in the 1998-99 season, Stricker averaged 3.9 points and 3.9 rebounds, before leaving with a year of eligibility left to go and join the real world. Stricker started a construction company, Stricker Construction, and made a couple of returns to basketball. Although one of them is hard to verify. His CV says that he played briefly in the SWBL in 2001, winning the championship that year with the San Antonio Bombers; however, a Google search for “SWBL basketball” reveals the only such league in existence to be the Strathcona Women’s Basketball League, and a search for “San Antonio Bombers” reveals only this. After that, Stricker played the 2001-02 season in Mexico, where he averaged 18 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocks and 3 assists per game for Correcaminos Matamoros in the LNBP. But Stricker did not play for the next three years in order to run the construction company. In 2005, having sold the business, Stricker attended offseason workouts with the Denver Nuggets and the San Antonio Spurs. Teams frequently let players work out with them during the summer, and Stricker worked out with Denver again in 2006. He signed with the Great Falls Explorers of the CBA in November 2006, but did not seem to appear in any games. (I tried to find out, but the Explorer’s website is now pornography.) And then in 2007, after a third summer of working out with the Nuggets, Stricker signed a training camp deal with the team. The chances of Stricker making the team […]
Almost all of this year’s NBA free agents crop has now been signed. Of the few that remain, most have already finalised which training camp they’re going to, and training camp contracts have already begun to be signed. However, these are far from being the only players in the world. A shedload of remaining NBA-calibre players remain unsigned, as rosters across the whole of FIBA are being trimmed and cheapened due to the current economic thing that you may have heard about. At the moment, including qualifying offers that are as-yet pending, there are 421 players in the NBA, out of a potential maximum of 450. That total does not include people who have committed to sign but that haven’t done it yet (Garrett Temple, Rodney Carney, Curtis Jerrells, Russell Robinson, etc). Assuming (wrongly) that all of those 421 are here to stay, there are a maximum of 29 places left in the NBA; however, considering that many teams will run with 13- or 14-man rosters this year, and we’re already averaging 14 players per team, the real amount is even less than that. As such, there’s nothing but a scant few places available in the world’s strongest basketball league, and several jillion candidates fighting for them. But this shouldn’t stop them from fighting, and nor will it stop me from listing. There now follows a list of the best of what’s left of this year’s free agency market. Listed in no particular order. Point Guards – Raymond Felton: The only guards who shot a worse percentage on inside shots than Raymond Felton last year were Derek Fisher, Luke Ridnour and Sebastian Telfair. The fact that Felton shot only 29% from three-point range doesn’t help, either. But despite Felton’s perpetually inefficient scoring, the market for Felton shouldn’t have been […]
If your team didn’t agree to an extension with its starlet young player this past offseason – such as is the case with the Atlanta duo of Josh Childress and Josh Smith, the Chicago duo of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon, amongst others – then you’ve probably experienced a modicum of conversation as to whether that player will take the one-year qualifying offer this offseason rather than the security of a long-term deal, leaving the distinct possibility that your team will lose a key player and important asset, for nothing in return. Talk of this possibility happening is particularly widespread in the case of Gordon, who hasn’t done much to deny it. Let me try and set your mind at rest – it’s really not that likely. Or rather, it should be really unlikely. It might happen, but history suggests that it shouldn’t. This is a list of all the rookie scale players to have accepted the fifth-year qualifying offer in recent times, and how that went for them. Melvin Ely Season before free agency: 9.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 51% shooting Season spent on Qualifying Offer: 3.0 points, 1.8 rebounds, 36% shooting Season after that: 3.9 points, 2.8 rebounds, 47% shooting Melvin Ely has had one year of average NBA production in seven attempts. That one season was, conveniently, the final one of his rookie contract. Never justifying his draft position, that one year gave Ely the chance to make a bit of money, especially given that it was probably his only other chance at a multi-year contract. (Ely was 28 at the time, after joining the league at age 24. Ely took Charlotte’s one year QO of $3,308,615 (which may or may not have been the only contract that they offered) in preference to taking Phoenix’s multi-year offer, […]
