- Chris Alexander re-emerged as a vaguely interesting prospect last season, despite being 28 years old, after a campaign that saw him average 11.6 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.0 blocks a game in the D-League for the Sioux Falls Skyforce. He turned that into first a contract in the Phillipines, and then a training camp contract with Oklahoma City. As Alexander is a centre, he must have fancied his chances on the length-crazy Thunder, but he didn't make the cut. After the Phillipines thing ended (where he won the title of "Best Import" in the championship series), Alexander went back to the Skyforce this season, and averaged 6.9 points and 8.5 rebounds before leaving the team on Christmas Eve, for reasons which either weren't announced or which I can't find. More importantly, here's an update on the length of his neck.



- Shagari Alleyne is now a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. He goes by the name "Skyscraper". I think this means his NBA dream is over.

- Lance Allred was waived by the Cavaliers, and has gone back to the D-League with the Idaho Stampede. He averages 14.7 points and 9.2 rebounds, and would be the most NBA-desired big man on his team were it not for the presence of Jermareo Davidson, who averages slightly better (17/11) and who is nearly four years younger. Tough break for Lance.

- Hawks draftee David Andersen has left Russia and forgotten how to rebound. For Barcelona, Andersen is averaging 10.5 points and 3.7 rebounds in nearly 22 minutes a game. The second tallest guy on the team (behind Daniel Santiago, who plays less than him), Andersen is a mere third in rebounds, comfortably behind Ersan Ilyasova (7.9 rebounds a game) and Fran Vazquez (6.5). That's not the best effort, really, and yes I know that he's playing increasingly further away from the hoop these days. Perhaps he shouldn't.

- Just this very day, it was announced that former Bobcat guard Alan Anderson has followed Nenad Krstic out of Triumph Lyubertsy of Russia, and instead signed with Cibona Zagreb. Anderson averaged 10.6 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.8 steals for Triumph, and presumably left because they stopped paying him. I can retract this presumption if need be.

- Derek Anderson and Shandon Anderson remain unsigned. It's basically impossible to know when players are officially retired, but I'm willing to bet that Shandon is, and that Derek is still loosely working out and waiting for the phone to ring. Meanwhile, Kenny Anderson gave it up, and is now the head coach of a Slamball team. True story.

- Rashad Anderson has broken away from his above namesakes and is playing professional basketball for Udine in Italy. Anderson leads all of Serie A with a 20.3 points per game average, but he only averages 2.5 rebounds and 1.2 assists to go along with that, which is something that we should use to make sweeping unfounded judgements about his selfishness. Or we could not, it's up to you.

- Én finalement, Martynas Andriuskevicius is signed with Alicante in Spain, where he averages 9.4 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.2 fouls a game. You know why running this website has been worthwhile? I can type Martynas Andriuskevicius without having to stop and look it up. And Wally Szczerbiak as well. Good times. I shall now experiment with lethal overdoses of needle drugs.

It's nearly the new year, so that makes it time to do something that's nearly interesting. The "Where Are They Now?" series of posts - which last year landed me at least two job offers - are hereby making a spectacular return right here, in exactly the place that I said they wouldn't be. Good times.

As ever, these posts will feature players on this website's horizon, but not in the NBA. Anyone not listed is either not interesting enough, or has less than the 0.00001% chance of rejoining the NBA than Ruben Boumtje Boumtje currenltly enjoys.

Bring the noise.

1) As you may know, Houston traded Steve Francis, a 2009 second round draft pick and cash to Memphis for a conditional 2011 second round pick. Memphis's end of this is simple. They got their pick back for free. Houston gave them Francis, enough money to pay him for the rest of the year (or most of it, at least), and Memphis's own 2nd rounder next year, which they'd previously given to Houston while moving up in the draft this summer. In return, Memphis only gave them a conditional second in 2011, which will be like top 55 protected or something, so they won't even lose it anyway. They can now either waive Francis without fear of reprisal, get a free look at him as a player (bloody unlikely), or keep him as an expiring. But more importantly, they're getting their high second rounder back. for no cost. It's a good move. As for Houston, they give up a second that they don't need in order to get under the luxury tax. It's a good move for them, too.

But here's the real important thing: I TOTALLY called it. In this post, just underneath the picture of the fat lady with no bum crack, I wrote this:

(After Antonio McDyess's buyout, Denver is now no more than a small dollop over their eternal enemy, the luxury tax threshold. If they waft a pick Memphis's way, they should be able to dump Chucky Atkins, whose salary for next year is only $760,000 guaranteed, thus not affecting Memphis's 2009 cap space plan much. This move gets Denver under the tax, finally, and it need only cost them the pick that they got from Charlotte for Alexis Ajinca to do it. Also note that I'm just an ideas man, not a soothsayer. Houston would be sensible to do much the same with Steve Francis, who is entirely surplus to requirements in both Memphis and Houston, and whose salary is keeping the Rockets in the tax territory. But his expiring is tolerable for the Grizzlies with apt sweeteners. With those two deals, Memphis could gain two picks without changing their long or short term plans, while Houston and Denver save lots of money on players and picks that they don't need. To me, this makes sense. Does that mean it will happen? No. But, between now and February, I'd place a call. Boy, this bracket got a bit long.)

The San Antonio Spurs waived Blake Ahearn at the weekend.

Why?

After Ahearn was left unrestricted by the Miami Heat (why?), he signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves. (Yes!) He was then waived by the Wolves in deference to Kevin Ollie and Calvin Booth. (Why?????) The Spurs soon pounced, releasing another D-League veteran that made their team out of training camp (Desmon Farmer) in order to sign, partly because of a need for added point guard depth with the injury to Tony Parker. But now, the Spurs have waived him too.

Why?

People of various levels of importance have asked me what I'd think about an NBA franchise in the hit and miss city of good ol' London town. It's something that's been rumoured since the inception of the swanky new "O2 Arena", and it's been mentioned again as a possibility here.

I've always crapped on the idea. I don't think it's feasible. Even though thw Seattle Supersonics no longer exists, the travel is unfeasibly far to the games on the west coast, and so the only way to create a manageable schedule would be to have a heavy - if not complete - East coast bias. This is then unfair to the rest of the teams in the NBA, and the playing field is no longer fair. And as we all know, the NBA is all about the playing field being fair. Additionally, I think it's a bit pointless - the NBA is the National Basketball Association of America, and, at a reach, Canada. If you start changing continents, what precedent does that set? It would be like the Beijing Olympians joining the NBA, except this would be important. It's just not a good idea, even with all the selfish benefits I'd get from it.

But now I've have second thoughts. And here are those second thoughts.

Please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen please make it happen oh please dear Lord make it happen.

That is all. Oh man would this solve a lot of problems.

If things had worked out slightly different, Bonzi Wells would be earning about $8 million this year from the Sacramento Kings.

As it is, he'll be earning about $40,000 in China.

Bonzi, pictured here bent over waiting to be penetrated, famously turned down a 5 year, $38.5 million extension from the Kings on the advice of his agent, the irrepressible Williams Phillips. Phillips seemingly thought that Bonzi could get more money from elsewhere. He was wrong, though. He was very wrong, in fact, as Bonzi ended up getting only a 2 year, $5 millionish contract from the Houston Rockets, which expired this summer. (William Phillips was repressed and fired by Bonzi. Seems fair.)

Unable to get a contract from an NBA team this summer - which makes little sense, given that Bonzi's a talented player, and only a year and a bit removed from being a key bench player on a 50 win team), Wells has now resorted to signing in China, for the scrabbletastic Shanxi Zhongyu. Wells is expected to replace former Hawks swingman Donta Smith, as Chinese Basketball Association rules allow only two non-Asians per team. This seems a bit unfair on Smith, who is averaging 19.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 2.5 steals on the season, but the other non-Asian spot on the Shanxi roster is taken up by ShamSports.com favourite, Olumide Oyedeji. And Olumide Oyedeji is one of the best players in China, bizarrely, averaging 23.2 points, 17.9 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 2.9 steals and 1.7 blocks.

No, I can't quite believe it either.

Grizzlies sign Darius Miles

Free agent forward Darius Miles arrived in Memphis early Saturday morning and signed a nonguaranteed contract with the Grizzlies following a physical examination.

---

I'm hungry. Anybody in the position I'm in, and has been through what I've been through the past two years, if he's not hungry he shouldn't waste anybody's time," Miles said. "I'm hungry. I ain't quitting. I feel like I can still do this. I wouldn't even waste the Grizzlies' time if I felt like my career was over."

---

"We got very good reports from Boston that he was really getting close to what he used to be," Griz coach Marc Iavaroni said.

---

"We're taking a shot to see if he's a guy who can resurrect his career and help us," Griz general manager Chris Wallace said. "We need to find more veterans not just so much for leadership but for production on the court. We need guys who have been there a little bit."

There's being intense, and then there's being an idiot. We can only speculate as to which Kevin Garnett was being here. He's always been extremely intense - perhaps too intense - but lately, he's overdone it more and more and started being an idiot. Recently, Garnett has taunting people for no obvious reason, such as here with Raptors guard Jose Calderon:


And here, with Portland guard Jerry D. Bayless:



I saw him do that stupid crawling shit at some other point this year, although I've forgotten when. I seem to remember it was against the Cavaliers. In that instance, too, he taunted someone about a foot shorter than him after nothing significant had happened in the run-up to it. That's not intensity. That's being an idiot.

Still, at least he's now learned to pick on the bigger guys instead. Just a shame that they're his own big guys. And well done to you, Jerryd Bayless and Jose Calderon, for executing on the following play and making Garnett look a big goateed boob, and for neither backing down nor taking an unnecessary Anthony Peeler-esque swing at a man who's quite happy to (and quite good at) digging his own grave.

Not so well done to you, Glen Davis. But it's sweet that you care.

Former Sixers, Bulls, Suns, Raptors, Lakers, Warriors and Cavaliers big man Corie Blount was arrested and charged with felony marijuana possession.

The following quote is from WLWT.com, although pretty much everywhere is carrying the story:

The Butler County Sheriff's Office said Blount was arrested Thursday after taking possesion of a package mailed to him containing 11 pounds of marijuana.

The sheriff's office said deputies located a second package of 11 pounds of marijuana and a third package with seven pounds of marijuana at Blount's Liberty Township home.

Upset as we are about the news of Rodney Rogers's accident and paralysis, there's only one way to tribute the man, and that's with a Rodney Rogers Highlight Montage.

Unfortunately, I don't have one. But I do have this awesome clip, of Rodney Rogers scoring 9 points in 9 seconds back in his days with the Denver Nuggets. This clip has been kind of forgotten over the years, as Reggie Miller's 8 in 18 seconds and Tracy McGraknee's 13 points in 35 seconds have instead taken the plaudits as the best examples of lots of points in little time at all. However, both are inferior to Rodney Rogers's explosion, which boasts a points-per-time-allowed ratio far superior to either of theirs, or indeed to any other instance that I know of. Well, except for Trent Tucker.

I am told that the Nuggets were down 8 at the start of the clip, with 30 something seconds left in the game. Rodney Rogers's outburst put them up by 1. Rodney Rogers was indeed a game changer. (As was Robert Pack, I guess.)



God bless you, Rodney Rogers.



EDIT Apparently a Rodney Rogers mix DOES exist, upped with the last few hours. God bless both Youtube and Rodney Rogers.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3744237

Former NBA and college basketball star Rodney Rogers is paralyzed as the result of an all-terrain vehicle accident, his college coach told the News & Observer of Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

Dave Odom, who coached Rogers when he earned All-America honors at Wake Forest and was the 1993 ACC Player of the Year, said Wednesday that his former star is paralyzed from the shoulders down, according to the report.

Former Pacers, Mavericks, Warriors and Suns swingman Rawle Marshall has been suspended from the Adriatic League for three months following this elaborate beatdown of the perfectly named victim, Sinisa Stemberger:



Pretty good punch-up. Liked this one.

The Adriatic League, by the way, is a league for teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia to play against each other in, as well as in their own domestic leagues and any European competitions. Marshall is allowed to play for his team, Cibona Zagreb, in all other leagues. This allows him to punch more people around the world, draw more suspensions, and draw more blood.

Repeatedly, I have commented about the television coverage that the NBA receives in this, the most fabulous of countries, my homeland, and the place I reside in while I write this: England. For those who thankfully missed previous rants, one game a week is screened on a Tuesday night on a free-to-air channel called Five, and that's all we get. It's not presented very well, either.

I have yet to offer glimpses into what I'm talking about for those who have never seen the coverage in question, partly due to my laziness in recording a video, and partly because a typical Mark Webster question transcribes roughly as "well see, this is the thing, isn't it, because you know, he's, err, he's, he's, err, err, y'know, he is THE MAN, and y'know, he's going to make them do things his way, y'know, just going about their business, aren't they? That's right", which isn't good blog material. But I've ranted anyway because it annoys me. And now I'm going to do it again.

What bothers me the most about the coverage - moreso than Webster's stammer, moreso than Andre Alleyne's less than insightful insights into the NBA, and moreso than the forced chemistry and bad laughter that permeates everything they say - is the channel's dedication to only promoting the sport towards a black market. Be it through crappy pre-game advertisements, or by only interviewing black people, Five somehow ensure that Mark Webster is your only dose of vanilla for the night.

That is, except for last night. Last night, they finally had a white guy. Sort of.



If this face looks familiar, it may be because you saw it before, in this blog post. This is the impossibly named Darnell Swallow, an Albino black guy and former drug dealer, who found his fame and fortune as a Big Brother contestant. Not, as you might have thought, as an expert NBA analyst. But apparently that's not important to whether you get a job promoting the NBA or not. Nope. Not in Britain. Not when Five are involved.

At some point, I will turn this constant complaining into a hopefully-read letter of complaint to the TV channel in question, in doing so hopefully sparking a chain of rebellious events that sees the current regime overthrown and a new militant republic taking charge, leading the people to a promised land of analysis, insight and telestrators. But for now I'll just piss and whinge in this blog.

(Congratulations to Darnell, by the way, who has somehow turned a shady past and congenital skin defect into a television career that sees him feature in sporting broadcasts that he's dangerously underqualified for. That takes some doing. Actually, wait, what am I saying? He's not underqualified at all. He's black and has an American accent. He must LOVE basketball.)


Also, on a completely unrelated note, last night I dreamt that Allen Iverson sent me a text message containing a joke about Hitler, and that former Sacramento Kings summer league participant Patrick Sanders berated me at knifepoint about some gossip I had written in this blog that told about how he once shared a bed with Milwaukee Bucks guard, Luke Ridnour (which, I should stress for legal reasons, is something that never happened. Or if it did, it's a coincidence.) I just wanted to tell someone this. It worried me.

I think I need some therapy.

What is better than a holiday? I'll tell you what's better than a holiday: a full English breakfast is better than a holiday. It really is. Eggs, beans, a copious amount of sausages, bacon, toast, hash browns, mushies, black pudding if you've got it, OJ......yes, yes, that is definitely better than a holiday.

Another thing that is better than a holiday is two holidays, and that's what I've been having. This explains what looks to the casual observer like my continued absence. My last blog post, dated about three weeks ago, spoke of an impressive, overdue and highly important return to action, and yet this is only my second blog post of the whole season, after a month of November that saw only one feeble effort. A cynic would say that I've been away, and a particularly ruthless Mozambiquey (Mozambiquish?) Army General might have me shot for dereliction of duty.

However, that Mozambolian Army General would be wrong, and so would the cynic. I have not been neglecting this website, nor have I been neglecting you, dear viewer. Instead, I have been having a working holiday, if such a thing is possible for an unemployed man. While the blog hasn't been updated, the rest of this webshite has. In recent days, I have:

1: Provided a better vehicle for the site's increased focus on world basketball. (Look left.) While this remains an NBA focused website, a large part of that is documenting the players on the outskirts of the league with a realistic chance of being in it one day. For this reason, the rosters section has been expanded greatly, and player movement worldwide will now be documented via the worldwide transactions page, and the accompanying blog that'll probably never be used. The players database has also been expanded to contain such hugely important people as Joe Forte, Ansu Sesay, Rashad Anderson and Pablo Prigioni, so that they too may now not be written about. These developments come off of the background of the staggeringly mildly successful series of "Where are they now?" blog posts of last season, and such blog posts will now be made on that blog instead. Because I said so.

2: Begun the D-League coverage that was initially planned about two years ago. As the blurb above describes, this website is increasing its focus on the players just outside the NBA, and this is the reason for the sudden and uninspiring new D-League focus. A lot of the players in the D-League are crap and will never make the NBA, so the coverage will only focus on those with a perceived chance. For example, the insatiably named Xavier Whipple may never get a profile on here, whereas Antoine Jordan already did. This will probably be the high point of Antoine's life, and if Xavier Whipple kills himself in the coming days, then it was only a coincidence. All of this exciting new material can be found in the menu to the left, to the left. Mmmmmm. To the left, to the left. Everything I made in the box to the left.

3: Added more lookalikes, for those who like that sort of thing. I do.

4: Expanded the database, so that it now covers almost 10 million players. (Or 1,100. Whichever. Either way, it's more writing that I haven't yet done.)

5: Built three new features that you can't see yet. (Oh! The! Suspense!)

6: Written a DraftExpress post that you also can't see yet.

7: Completed the 2009 free agents lists, now available in three new and improved flavours: by name, by team, and by position.

8: Finished the overdue, slightly pointless but entirely unique 2008 Offseason Review.

9: Updated all the pre-existing information, including (but not limited to): assistant coaches lists (see team pages), depth charts, rosters, cap holds, D-League affiliates, and everything except the salaries because I can't be bothered with them yet.

10: Written the player profiles for T.J. Ford, Anthony Roberson, Chris Kaman, Jared Reiner, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Matt Barnes. (Only 800 to go!)

11: Finished the character issues section.

12: Agreed to be the host of a new, Around The Horn style podcast, featuring the four most pre-eminent Chicago Bulls podcasts on the web (Bulls Beat, Bullseye, Bullscast, and the other one). More details on this as, when, and if I can be bothered.



So you see, I do do stuff. (Note: my working holiday comes with less photos than my actual holiday. Be grateful.)

The downside of all this is that I might blog a bit less. As an aspiring NBA General Manager with no qualifications or skills to speak of, it's important that I use this website as my curriculum vitae to demonstrate my large and hopefully accurate knowledge of the NBA, and the players both in it and on its fringes. This is the reason for all the expansion. Will it work? No, but I'm doing it anyway.

But anyway, who the hell cares about all that. That's all just self congratulatory bollocks. Let's bring the noise. Here are some of my opinions on stuff.

1: The Al Harrington/Jamal Crawford trade looks like the epitomy of a win win trade. For a discontented player who had absolutely no worth on the depth chart, the Warriors managed to get a much needed short term fill-in at point guard, and a man who also isn't a bad fit alongside Monta Ellis, assuming that Monta ever plays for the Warriors again. Meanwhile, New York got a player that Mike D'Antoni can occasionally pretend is a centre (it's not that farfetched - Al Harrington played a lot of centre in his Hawks days, albeit not very well), while more importantly opening up a few more million in 2010 cap room. The Warriors have no 2010 ambitions, so they sacrificed something that they didn't want for something that they sorely needed. They will, however, suck anyway. (Incidentally, it's kind of a shame how things have worked out with Chris Mullin. He made a lot of mistakes in his early days in charge, but then put them right, and assembled a fine young roster. But then his superiors somewhat sold him out, Baron Davis let him down by opting out, and Ellis let him down by falling off a bike that he shouldn't have been on. Now he has a team with a poor record, a clusterfuck of a roster, and a contract that's about to run out with an owner that has completely different ideas to that of his own. It's a shame. For a while there, things really went his way. Oh well.)

2: Additionally, moving Zach Randolph and Mardy Collins to the Clippers for Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobley was also a coup for the Knicks. For all the bellyaching I did about Donnie Walsh's summer moves - overpaying for a backup in Chris Duhon, drafting Danilo Galinari at number 6 who allegedly has no chance of being a star and who has the depth chart stacked against him, and dealing one of the team's few reasonable players in Renaldo Balkman to save money after overpaying for Duhon and being unwilling or unable to move the crappy players in front of him - I give Walsh the plaudits for finding a plan (2010), and executing it well. The fact that we're currently having to watch David Lee as a full time center is secondary - the Knicks had the balls and the patience to trade two of their three best players for unwanted bit parts, all for a one year saving on their salaries. Rarely is the 2010 plan (or any capspace plan) worthwhile for the teams involved. But in the Knicks case, it was. And now they've facilitated it. So well done them. As for the Clippers, God knows what they expect to achieve. Getting a 20/10 (not 2010) player for spare parts should always be desirable, but in this case, it isn't. And I can't write much more about their side of the deal without borrowing too heavily from this piece what I's already wrote.

3: The seminal baseball journalism blog FireJoeMorgan.com has closed down, as its proprietors - people with jobs - have decided to do those jobs instead. This seems like a misuse of their time, but whatever. The point is that they'll be missed. (For those unaware, FireJoeMorgan.com was a baseball site that didn't cover baseball, but which covered other people's coverage of baseball. It was not merely a campaign to fire Joe Morgan, as the URL would have suggested. Acerbic to a tee and with a turn of phrase that would make Pynchon weep, the site made baseball writers and broadcasters - particularly the one whose name was in the URL - look really bloody stupid. Yet it did not entirely set out to do this - all that the team behind it had to do was to let the writers write whatever they like. The writer's stupidity was all their original work. FJM just let them hang themselves with line breaks and the occasional bit of sense. That's all that was needed for the ridiculous old boys network that governs Major League Baseball - and those who cover it - to show their true inanity, as they spewed forth their eternal semi-ons for the easily rectifiable myths that have ensured their job security up until now. Sadly, it looks like they'll now get away with it. Damn shame.)

Finally, and most importantly, number 4: It only occured to me the other day just how phallic an overhead shot of half a basketball court looks.



That is all. I am now off to watch all the games that I've missed out on.