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. It was only Gaines’s fifth game, ninth day and sixteenth shot with the team, yet it gained him a legacy. Gaines later signed a second ten-day contract with the team, and then signed for the remainder of the season and through 2010/11 when that expired. The 2010/11 contract was fully unguaranteed, becoming $25,000 if not waived on or before July 1st (which he wasn’t); it’ll become $50,000 guaranteed if he makes the team’s roster for their first regular season game. He probably will do that. Despite his legacy, Gaines is not really a shooter, but he fills up the stats. He’s an athlete who thrives in the open court and scores heavily, who can score in isolation and in the half court, and who doesn’t turn it over too much. He’s not better than Ronnie Price, and Utah still needs an upgrade at their backup guard spots, yet they could also use some cheap depth. Gaines is that, and he should make the team. Dominic Waters Dominic Waters has been playing in the NABL with a team called the Portland Showtime. The NABL (stands for National Athletic Basketball League) is a new minor league in the northwestern United States that plays from March until May, that uses NBA rules and NBA franchise principles (ambitiously), and that has six teams; the […]
– Dion Dowell Dowell is signed in Israel, putting up numbers quite impressively similar to those of his senior season in college. He’s playing for Altshuler Saham Galil Gilboa – a team that really needs to settle upon one name only – and is averaging 9.6 points, 4.8 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 1.4 blocks and 1.5 steals per game. There are two types of players in Israel; Israelis and Americans. That’s basically it. Despite Israel being kind of in Europe, there are only a handful of non-Israeli European players in the league. And by “a handful,” I mean “two.” The breakdown of the nationalities of players on Israeli league rosters, according to Eurobasket.com, goes like this; – 60 Israelis – 50 Americans – 7 Americans with dual Israeli citizenship (Chris Watson, Jason Thomas, Jeron Roberts, Shawn Weinstein, David Bluthenthal, Derrick Sharp, and ex-NBA player Cory Carr) – 1 Australian (Julian Khazzouh) – 1 player born in Belarus, but who has lived in Israel since childhood, goes by an Israeli name, and who holds a dual Israeli passport (Vladimir Yiermish/Vladi Ermichin) – 1 Welshman who has played in Israeli since he was a teenager and who holds an Israeli passport (Tal Michael Dunne) – 1 Englishman/Nigerian (Ugonna Onyekwe) – 1 dual American/Panamanian citizen (Danilo Pinnock) – 1 dual American/Puerto Rican citizen (Jesse Pellot-Rosa) – 1 Israeli with a Polish passport (Yaniv Green; plays for the Israeli national team) – 1 Gabonian (Stephane Lasme) – 1 hybrid who was born in Sarajevo to Serbian and Bosnian parents, whose family fled to Israel during the war, and who then moved to America, but who considers himself Israeli (Robert Rothbart; read his quite amazing story here) – ……and 1 Serbian (Sasa Bratic) I don’t know if it’s all just a big coincidence, politically motivated, or […]
– Vlade Divac is currently trying to become President of the Serbian Olympic Committee. Never thought I’d say that about anybody, but there it is. – Nigel Dixon was in China to start the season, but left in the new year. Dixon averaged 26.3 points and 9.8 rebounds for the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions, with 69% FG and 44% FT percentages, before being replaced by Jelani McCoy. By the way, speaking of Nigel, the eagle eyed and really regular viewers of this site may have noticed a few weeks ago that every player’s name had been changed to “Nigel” when viewing either the rosters or player index pages. This wasn’t a childish joke, but merely an error that I forgot to fix. I’ll explain; hile trying to make some changes to the dull technical bits (specifically, we were creating the ability for players to appear on two rosters at once), we noticed that the changes that we had made didn’t take. Unsure of why this was, we reasoned that maybe the host company had a setup, whereby any user’s changes to certain Javascript files were not parsed until the following day. So, to test this, we changed the setup again, making it so that all player’s first names would be changed to Nigel if it worked instantly. If it didn’t work instantly , then we’d know that our original theory (about changes not taking until the next daily server rest) was correct. It didn’t work instantly, and so our theory was correct. But then my stupid arse forgot to delete the Nigel version, and so everyone was Nigel for a day. So there you go. ShamSports.com – run by an amateur, and assisted by a friend of a similar mental age. – Michael Doleac was not re-signed by the Minnesota Timberwolves […]
Part 1!!!!!!!! Now part 2!!!!!!!! Minimum salary deals: Atlanta signed Randolph Morris for two seasons, giving themselves both the opportunity to develop a talented young centre and the opportunity to lose him to restricted free agency. They also signed Othello Hunter and Thomas Gardner for training camp. My lame ill-informed prediction: Hunter makes it if Solomon Jones gets traded. (Readers note: they haven’t signed Dalibor Bagaric, despite it reputedly being a done deal almost a month ago.) Boston signed Darius Miles and Patrick O’Bryant to young’en up an old old bench. Miles could be something between inconsequential and surprising, depending on how much cartilage is in his knee. And all O’Bryant has to do to replace the production of Scot Pollard is to stay alive. Whether he becomes anything of any reliable use is another matter, but he’s not talentless. Ryan Hollins re-signed with Charlotte for the qualifying offer, after the team had already taken out the team option on Jermareo Davidson. So apparently Charlotte likes these two nigh-on identical players in equal measure. The Bobcats also signed non-shooting guard Shannon Brown, trading away their draft pick Kyle Weaver immediately afterwards. They must think little of Weaver, because Brown is not proven either. The Bulls re-signed Demetris Nichols on the basis that he’s young, cheap, partially guaranteed and can hit a jump shot. But mainly the second one. Cleveland made two minimum salary-signings of a different standard. The signing of Tarence Kinsey gives the Cavaliers a young player on the cheap, one who should never have been out of the league in the first place, but in contrast, the signing of Lorenzen Wright gives a new home to someone who, based on last year, shouldn’t be in it. Wright used to be good, but those days are gone – […]
