This post is a bit late, considering the Magic have played their games. However, the site’s outages just before free agency started set us back a bit, and then obviously free agency itself kind of blew the cock off the whole thing. Sorry about that. Since I’d already started it, we’ll do it anyway. Jeff Adrien It’s hard for a 6’7 power forward to make it in the NBA. You have to be pretty exceptional at something to do it. Adrien, though, is exceptional at nothing. He’s solid at most things except foul shooting; decently athletic, willing and able to rebound, capable of defending the post, prepared to run, and able to shoot right handed hook shots. But despite his height, he’s in absolutely no way a small forward. He’s a very undersized power forward who is neither really athletic nor Chuck Hayes. Adrien played in the LEB Gold last year, averaging 12.3ppg and 7.7rpg for Breocgan Lugo. It’s a league ideally suited for him. Joe Crawford Crawford is slightly undersized for a shooting guard at 6’4, could use a slightly better three point stroke (and definitely from the foul line), and is not exactly consistent; he is, however, a talented and versatile scorer, mainly through penetration. Crawford is a former draft pick of the L.A. Lakers, 58th overall back in 2008. Had he been drafted somewhere else, he might have stuck in the NBA by now. He’s good. As it is, he’s appeared in only 2 games, for the Knicks in the last week of the 2008/09 season. He scored 9 points in 23 minutes. Not bad. Joe Crawford fact: Joe Crawford is Hawks draft pick Jordan Crawford’s brother. That is all. Paul Davis Davis has spent at least part of three years in the NBA, including starting last […]
– Petteri Koponen Blazers draft pick Koponen is still only 21 years old, but is already playing his second season with Canadian Solar Bologna in Italy’s Serie A (known as La Fortezza Bologna until about two months ago). Last year he was something of a bit-part player in Serie A play, but this year he’s one of their best, ranking second on the team in minutes per game (26.8) and points (11.7). Koponen is shooting 44% from three-point range and is also third on the team in assists with 1.7 apg, a team where the team leader (Andre Collins) has only 2.6 in over 29 minutes per game. Good old Italy. – Yaroslav Korolev After two years of not playing in the NBA, Korolev went back to his native Russia, where he spent two years not playing in the Superleague. This year, to mix it up, he decided to get some playing time. Korolev entered the D-League draft pool and was picked with the last selection in the fourth round by the Albuquerque Thunderbirds. He played 20 games for the Thunderbirds and averaged 11.3 points and 5.8 rebounds, but was traded in January to the Reno Bighorns for Marcus Hubbard. And in 23 games for the Bighorns, Korolev’s numbers have declined down to 9.6 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. Better than Danny Granger yet? Not quite. No matter how much hindsight you give it, the selections of players such as Korolev, Skita and Darko look no less ridiculous. In fact, they’re more ridiculous than ever – athletic young big guys with amazingly little to show on their CV and no defined skillsets picked in the NBA draft lottery, far above multiple established, more talented and simply better players. It was a very strange period for the game, that […]
– Wink Adams: Adams just graduated from UNLV, where his senior season numbers were down across the board. He averaged 14.3 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.8 assists, shooting only 37% from the field. As a general rule, 6’0 guards that shoot 37% don’t make it in the NBA, but Wink clearly has something to show. – Alex Acker: Acker started last year with the Pistons, who salary-dumped him onto the Clippers. He scored 63 points on 65 shots in the NBA last year, which isn’t good efficiency. He also spent four games on assignment to the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, averaging 18.0 points and 5.3 rebounds, but the Clippers declined his team option and didn’t make him a restricted free agent. That’s not a glowing endorsement. – Blake Ahearn: Ahearn was covered here. If he can show some rudimentary point guard skills suited to the Knicks’ high octane offence, then he has a chance. But the Knicks are damn short of roster spots. They have 16 under contract already, and that’s before a single free agency move. This presents a problem for Ahearn. – Morris Almond: Utah are so tax concerned right now that they had to decline Almond’s third year option, even though it was very cheap and he didn’t really do anything wrong. Almond doesn’t have a complete all-around game – he’s pretty much only a scorer. But even though he barely played in the NBA, and didn’t do much in his time in it, he was drafted to be a scorer, and score he did. He averaged 25.6 points per game in the D-League in 2007/08, and last year averaged 22.4 points in 29.8 minutes. Of course, Almond didn’t pass at all to score that many, averaging 1.1 assists per game. But he scored […]
– Coby Karl began the season with the Idaho Stampede before going to Spain and DKV Joventut Badalona to replace Bracey Wright. He averaged 18.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 5.5 assists for Idaho, and has appeared in all of one game for Badalona, scoring two points in two minutes on 0-2 shooting. – Former Magic centre Mario Kasun – who I like to consider the forerunner to Marcin Gortat, albeit not as good, because nobody is as good as Marcin Gortat – is signed with Efes Pilsen in Turkey, but has missed most of the season through injury. Returning about three weeks ago, Kasun has so far totalled 25 points and 15 rebounds in two Turkish league games, and a 10-minute 8-point performance in his sole EuroLeague game versus Real Madrid. – Sasha Kaun is with CSKA Moscow, craftily located in Moscow. As is the case with young players in Moscow, Kaun kaun’t much get off the bench, averaging 2.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in nine Russian league games, and totalling 2 points and 6 rebounds in four EuroLeague games. Kaun was also drafted in the fifth round of the CBA Draft, but that’s not much of a boast, because the CBA Draft is the most pointless thing in the world. “Quick, let’s draft these players so that we’ll hold their rights if they decide to join the CBA!…..Oh no, wait, they got NBA contracts instead. Damn. If only they knew of all the needlessly misspelt fun that we have here at the Pittsburgh Xplosion.” – Tre Kelley is with Eldan Ashkelon in Israel, forming a lethal tiny backcourt with Steve Burtt Jr. Kelley averages 11.3 points and 2.9 assists, as part of a three-guard rotation with Burtt and some Israeli guy called Avi Ben Chimol. […]
This is the first of 30 instalments that will serve the dual purpose of being both offseason recaps and poorly thought-out predictions for next season, for all 30 NBA teams. These will be done in an order: that order is the order that I choose to do them in. There won’t be an alphabetical approach, nor one based on standings. They’ll be truly random. Randomness is the future. ___________________________________________ Players acquired via free agency or trade: Brevin Knight (two years, $3.3 million) Ruben Patterson (one year minimum) Josh Powell (three years, $2.6 million) Guillermo Diaz (three year minimum) Players acquired via draft: First round: Al Thornton (14th overall) Second round: Jared Jordan (45th overall, unsigned) Players retained: Quinton Ross (exercised team option) Players departed: James Singleton (declined team option, signed in Spain), Jason Hart (signed with Utah), Yaroslav Korolev (initially agreed to re-sign with the team right back at the start of free agency, but hasn’t done it yet, and now reports are flying about him signing in Europe instead), Daniel Ewing (waived, signed in Russia), Will Conroy (waived, signed in Italy) Bobbins: In amongst all the weird and strange things that have gone on throughout the league during this offseason, it seems to have escaped the attention of most people that the Los Angeles Clippers had one of the most economical and shrewd offseasons out there. After not getting ridiculously lucky and moving up in the lottery, the Clippers ended up drafting a consensus good pick, and also managed to draft a player in the second round who seemingly has trade value before he has even taken the court. Not stopping there, the Clippers waited for a while as other teams overspent for players, before making their own free agency splashes. Somehow, in Knight and […]
