Global Basketball Odds and Ends

Smokey Joe

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Apr 9, 2001
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Actually, a brick. He hit the front rim so hard with a shot that it broke the rim off the backboard.
 

InstaFace

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The tussle between James Dolan / MSG and Steve Ballmer / Clippers continues. Except Dolan may be starting to realize that he picked a fight with the wrong billionaire, because Ballmer is #9 on the Forbes 400, ahead of the Walton children and just behind Bloomberg. So he's entertaining the idea of selling the Forum to Ballmer just to cut his losses.
 

DourDoerr

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Since it's the Globetrotters, thought this might fit here. Fred "Curly" Neal passed away at age 77. Saw him play with the Globetrotters a couple of times with the Goose/Meadowlark era Trotters. It's hard to imagine the impact Neal's shaved head had back then. Outside of Yul Brunner and Telly Savalas, it was a really unusual look at the time and Neal stuck out. Great showman.

Curly Highlights

If you look at the highlights within the storylink, boy those Generals played horrendous D. For starters, they don't stay between the ball and the basket and the help D is also non-existent. To give credit where credit is due though, it's clear where Neal liked to launch long 3’s and, since the 3 didn't exist then, the Generals were at least smart enough to back off and let Neal take them. :)
 
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TripleOT

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Jul 4, 2007
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First NBA player to shatter a backboard? Chuck Conners.
Apropos of nothing but a crazy coincidence, I clicked on this thread and saw this Chuck Conners comment. Last night, I had a dream where I was at a community meeting and an old guy showed up and was sitting there listening. I get up and say "That's Chuck Conners. He was involved in two things I really liked growing up - The Rifleman, and the Boston Celtics."

Then I call him "Paw" a bunch of times and tell him that I recently discovered that quasi-legendary film director Sam Peckinpah directed a bunch of Rifleman episodes. I ask him what he was doing at a community meeting in Providence. He says "I'm speaking at an event at the bowling alley next door later tonight and had some time to kill" and then introduced us to his twin children, a 50+ year old son and daughter who looked like mutants.

Strange times.
 

Smokey Joe

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Apropos of nothing but a crazy coincidence, I clicked on this thread and saw this Chuck Conners comment. Last night, I had a dream where I was at a community meeting and an old guy showed up and was sitting there listening. I get up and say "That's Chuck Conners. He was involved in two things I really liked growing up - The Rifleman, and the Boston Celtics."

Then I call him "Paw" a bunch of times and tell him that I recently discovered that quasi-legendary film director Sam Peckinpah directed a bunch of Rifleman episodes. I ask him what he was doing at a community meeting in Providence. He says "I'm speaking at an event at the bowling alley next door later tonight and had some time to kill" and then introduced us to his twin children, a 50+ year old son and daughter who looked like mutants.

Strange times.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkGcTs9iQDY
 

InstaFace

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InstaFace

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NBA Hall-of-Famers drafted in the 2nd (or later) round:

1999 Manu Ginobili, R2 / #57
1996 Ben Wallace, undrafted
1990 Toni Kukoc, R2 / #29
1989 Dino Rada, R2 / #40
1987 Sarunas Marciulionis, R6 / #127
1986 Dennis Rodman, R2 / #27
1986 Drazen Petrovic, R3 / #60
1984 Oscar Schmidt, R6 / #131
1979 Nikos Galis, R4 / #69 (never played in the NBA)
1978 Maurice Cheeks, R2 / #36
1976 Alex English, R2 / #23
1976 Dennis Johnson, R2 / #29
1974 George Gervin, R3 / #40
1973 George McGinnis, R2 / #22
1971 Spencer Haywood, R2 / #30
1971 Artis Gilmore, R7 / #117
(gonna stop there)

Who are the likeliest non-first-round picks to join that list? Some candidates:

- Danny Ainge (1981 / R2 / 31), either when there's a slow year in the balloting or specifically for his executive achievements
- Mehmet Okur (2001 / R2 / 38), as much for popularizing the game in Turkey as for his NBA exploits; he could well end up the first Turkish head coach in the NBA
- Marc Gasol (2007 / R2 / 48), 2019 NBA champion, 3x all-star, 2x all-NBA, 2x Olympic silver medallist, 2x FIBA World Cup gold medallist
- DeAndre Jordan (2008 / R2 / 35), All-NBA First (1x), Third (2x) and Defensive (2x) Team, 2016 Olympic champion
- Isaiah Thomas (2011 / R2 / 60), 2x all-star, 1x All-NBA, Finished 5th in MVP voting, and an inspiration to short guys everywhere
- Khris Middleton (2012 / R2 / 39), 2021 NBA champion, 3x all-star, could ride the coattails of Giannis for a while
- Draymond Green (2012 / R2 / 35), 4x NBA champion, 4x all-star, 2x all-NBA, 2017 DPOY, 7x all-defense. I think he's a lock.
- Nikola Jokic (2014 / R2 / 41), 2x NBA MVP, 4x all-star, 3x all-NBA first team (1x second team), 2016
 

HomeRunBaker

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I was about to go on a rant about Draymond not being on your list……then I saw his name and deleted it lol. Yes, he’s a lock.

One guy who came to mind is Goran Dragic with how heavily European accomplishments can sometimes be weighed….I mean Radja is in the HOF. Dragging Slovenia to a EuroBasket Championship, yes I did that, while winning MVP along the way is one of Europe’s greatest and most improbable wins ever. I’m pretty sure he’s the first European PG to play in an NBA All-Star Game as well.

I have no idea if that’s enough but I’ve always had him on my personal “Andre Miller List” of highest IQ players to ever play the game.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Isiah Thomas' 1984 ASG MVP trophy was stolen, among other memorabilia, from his high school where he'd lent it to be displayed. The thief put it up on an auction site, and Thomas found out about it.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29647896/isiah-thomas-stolen-all-star-game-mvp-trophy-returned
I hope it ends up like the Brady SB51 Helmet story, with the perp publicly humiliated.
I missed this post the first time---believe that the private school the trophy was being displayed it is the same one that William Gates attended for part of Hoop Dreams, for fans of that movie.
 

InstaFace

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Dragic is definitely a possibility. I saw him and considered it but then realized that Doncic was actually the best player on that team and I'm not sure you could say he dragged Slovenia to the title (the way Galis dragged Greece to the 1987 EuroBasket title and revolutionized the popularity of the game there - like, we can watch Giannis today because of the place basketball now occupies in Greece's sporting firmament). His personal accolades in the NBA and in Europe aren't that much, besides him being the captain of a Slovenia team that won the 2017 title.

Yeah just didn't think he quite merited being on the same list. But maybe he's in line ahead of the likes of DeAndre Jordan or IT4.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Dragic is definitely a possibility. I saw him and considered it but then realized that Doncic was actually the best player on that team and I'm not sure you could say he dragged Slovenia to the title (the way Galis dragged Greece to the 1987 EuroBasket title and revolutionized the popularity of the game there - like, we can watch Giannis today because of the place basketball now occupies in Greece's sporting firmament). His personal accolades in the NBA and in Europe aren't that much, besides him being the captain of a Slovenia team that won the 2017 title.

Yeah just didn't think he quite merited being on the same list. But maybe he's in line ahead of the likes of DeAndre Jordan or IT4.
Dragic was the MVP of EuroBasket in 2017 and had a 20-point quarter in the Championship Game and 35 in the game after Doncic went down with an ankle. He domination during those two weeks have been well noted by FIBA.
 

Kliq

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I saw that last night and couldn't believe it. I've never seen that before--I've seen the play where someone is inbounding the ball and throws it off a defender, but to be mid-air, chuck it off an elite defender, catch it and then drain a corner three is insane.
 

HomeRunBaker

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What were you doing at midnight as the ball dropped?

Me? I lost track of time and spent it reading about 6-9 Erick Dampier Jr, the #1 ranked 8th grader in the country. Apparently he is one of the best players on the court even when playing pick-up with adults. Happy New Year! One day I'll get a life.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Spending the night in Jacksonville FL on my drive home. At local poker room when I notice an enormous shadow walking past me as I was playing a pot. My initial thought was that they were moving this gigantic cutout or something but nope……

It was Artis Gilmore.
 

slamminsammya

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Putting this in here just so that you all are likelier to see it:

View: https://twitter.com/MACSports/status/1764039170308108481

It's plays like this that make me wish Brad was still coaching. It's kinda brilliant design, just get everyone to cut and cut and then go toward the ball so that someone gets dropped all the way back there, then throw it in the general direction of the other free throw line.
Is it brilliant design? The defender was right where the ball went and should have just caught the pass.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Not the 2024 Draft so I couldn't put it there but great article on Khaman Maluach, "a 7-foot-2 center who shoots 3s, dribbles between his legs, is unstoppable at the rim and a prolific shot blocker at age 17": https://theathletic.com/5308052/2024/03/05/khaman-maluach-nba-draft-academy-africa-wembanyama/.

Of note, Maluach lives in Senegal but was 3 years ago he moved from where he was living - Uganda, after fleeing war-torn South Sudan - and went to the NBA's year-round academy in Saly, Senegal. One snip from the article:
Maluach said he was too young to remember South Sudan before he left, and he never experienced war personally. He said his father stayed behind to work, while he, his mother and brothers lived with family members in a neighborhood of Uganda’s capital city, Kampala. He grew up there playing soccer and looking down on the tops of most people’s heads. He was already about 6-7 by the time he was invited to watch a basketball camp hosted by NBA veteran Luol Deng, who, like Maluach, was born in Sudan.
“Where I am from, not everybody’s tall as me,” Maluach said. “Suddenly, I just see people taller than me, and I was like, ‘Wow, there actually are people taller than me on this planet.’ I feel like I just belong there because nobody was surprised about my height.”
Maluach said he returned to the camp the following day and felt the sensation of pounding a basketball against the road and having it pop back against his palm. He watched the run unfolding out on the hot court in front of him, dribbling idly with his right hand, then his left. He remembers going home that same day and pulling up videos of Giannis Antetokounmpo on his cousin’s cell phone, watching him switch his dribble from one hand to the other — a crossover in basketball parlance — before sprinting to the hoop for a dunk.
“He inspired me,” Maluach said of Giannis and those YouTube videos. “That’s when I thought about it and really loved the game.”
The lone basketball court where Maluach lived wasn’t close, a walk of 45 minutes to an hour. But after watching those Giannis videos and dribbling at home, Maluach began making that walk every day, he said, and friends and local coaches taught him the rules of the game.
The three things threatening Maluach’s daily games were the weather (if it rained or was too hot), the scarcity of basketballs and a lack of shoes. Already a size 14 by age 13, Maluach said, he played his first game in a pair of Crocs.
“Size 14 in Uganda? You can’t find it anywhere,” he said. “We have (friends) who are in America, and they would come home during December and bring me either their shoes or somebody else’s shoes, and then I used them for a whole year.”
Self taught from watching YouTube clips of not just Giannis but other NBA stars like Joel Embiid and Kevin Durant, and with that tantalizing size, Maluach’s play on the local court earned him a scholarship offer to a Ugandan private high school. He enrolled in January 2020 and got to stay for about two months before COVID-19 struck.
“We couldn’t play basketball; actually in Uganda, everything was closed,” Maluach said. “Even cars couldn’t move, maybe government cars. So, I was just back in Uganda. I really love basketball, and they just took it away from me.”
Back at home on lockdown, Maluach said he stacked together two or three large tires, reaching about 10 feet, and shot his one basketball through the top tire every day. He’d placed stones under the bottom tire so the ball rolled back to him after a make.
Maluach shot at those tires and worked on his handle at home for a year before the NBA scouts recommended him for scholarship to the academy in Saly.

Sounds like a kid to keep an eye on. He's going to be playing college in the US next year.
 

Justthetippett

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Aug 9, 2015
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Not the 2024 Draft so I couldn't put it there but great article on Khaman Maluach, "a 7-foot-2 center who shoots 3s, dribbles between his legs, is unstoppable at the rim and a prolific shot blocker at age 17": https://theathletic.com/5308052/2024/03/05/khaman-maluach-nba-draft-academy-africa-wembanyama/.

Of note, Maluach lives in Senegal but was 3 years ago he moved from where he was living - Uganda, after fleeing war-torn South Sudan - and went to the NBA's year-round academy in Saly, Senegal. One snip from the article:
Maluach said he was too young to remember South Sudan before he left, and he never experienced war personally. He said his father stayed behind to work, while he, his mother and brothers lived with family members in a neighborhood of Uganda’s capital city, Kampala. He grew up there playing soccer and looking down on the tops of most people’s heads. He was already about 6-7 by the time he was invited to watch a basketball camp hosted by NBA veteran Luol Deng, who, like Maluach, was born in Sudan.
“Where I am from, not everybody’s tall as me,” Maluach said. “Suddenly, I just see people taller than me, and I was like, ‘Wow, there actually are people taller than me on this planet.’ I feel like I just belong there because nobody was surprised about my height.”
Maluach said he returned to the camp the following day and felt the sensation of pounding a basketball against the road and having it pop back against his palm. He watched the run unfolding out on the hot court in front of him, dribbling idly with his right hand, then his left. He remembers going home that same day and pulling up videos of Giannis Antetokounmpo on his cousin’s cell phone, watching him switch his dribble from one hand to the other — a crossover in basketball parlance — before sprinting to the hoop for a dunk.
“He inspired me,” Maluach said of Giannis and those YouTube videos. “That’s when I thought about it and really loved the game.”
The lone basketball court where Maluach lived wasn’t close, a walk of 45 minutes to an hour. But after watching those Giannis videos and dribbling at home, Maluach began making that walk every day, he said, and friends and local coaches taught him the rules of the game.
The three things threatening Maluach’s daily games were the weather (if it rained or was too hot), the scarcity of basketballs and a lack of shoes. Already a size 14 by age 13, Maluach said, he played his first game in a pair of Crocs.
“Size 14 in Uganda? You can’t find it anywhere,” he said. “We have (friends) who are in America, and they would come home during December and bring me either their shoes or somebody else’s shoes, and then I used them for a whole year.”
Self taught from watching YouTube clips of not just Giannis but other NBA stars like Joel Embiid and Kevin Durant, and with that tantalizing size, Maluach’s play on the local court earned him a scholarship offer to a Ugandan private high school. He enrolled in January 2020 and got to stay for about two months before COVID-19 struck.
“We couldn’t play basketball; actually in Uganda, everything was closed,” Maluach said. “Even cars couldn’t move, maybe government cars. So, I was just back in Uganda. I really love basketball, and they just took it away from me.”
Back at home on lockdown, Maluach said he stacked together two or three large tires, reaching about 10 feet, and shot his one basketball through the top tire every day. He’d placed stones under the bottom tire so the ball rolled back to him after a make.
Maluach shot at those tires and worked on his handle at home for a year before the NBA scouts recommended him for scholarship to the academy in Saly.

Sounds like a kid to keep an eye on. He's going to be playing college in the US next year.
I worked in Abyei and South Sudan. Someday scouts are going to tap into the Dinka population at scale and find/develop a lot of really good prospects. They are the tallest population in the world, light and fast. (And the women are almost as tall as the men.) They could be to basketball (not to mention volleyball, handball, etc.) what the Kenyans are to long distance running. They are also coming out of decades of war and this would be a narrow but important opportunity to offer.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I worked in Abyei and South Sudan. Someday scouts are going to tap into the Dinka population at scale and find/develop a lot of really good prospects. They are the tallest population in the world, light and fast. (And the women are almost as tall as the men.) They could be to basketball (not to mention volleyball, handball, etc.) what the Kenyans are to long distance running. They are also coming out of decades of war and this would be a narrow but important opportunity to offer.
Interesting perspective. Any thoughts why no one has tried to develop them especially since Manute and Bol have gotten into the NBA? Maybe the emergence of the South Sudan national team will be a catalyst.

There's another player from Sudan with Overtime Elite - John Bol, who I understand not to have any family relation to Manute or Bol. https://overtimeelite.com/players/115a12ca-b64f-4f84-ba59-9088eb7a72c1
 

Justthetippett

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Interesting perspective. Any thoughts why no one has tried to develop them especially since Manute and Bol have gotten into the NBA? Maybe the emergence of the South Sudan national team will be a catalyst.

There's another player from Sudan with Overtime Elite - John Bol, who I understand not to have any family relation to Manute or Bol. https://overtimeelite.com/players/115a12ca-b64f-4f84-ba59-9088eb7a72c1
I think Luol Deng is trying. And the national team is gaining traction. I would imagine it's 99% due to the political instability in South Sudan since 2011 and the fear factor that goes along with it. The UN mission is likely to close before too long in Juba. That would be a great piece of land to develop (and keep away from the military). Up in the hills but close to the airport and city center. Adam Silver probably has the pull to make it happen.

Abyei also has a large Dinka population. But it's disputed between Sudan and South Sudan and effectively ungoverned. Only real way in or out is helicopter, so likely a ways off.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Interesting perspective. Any thoughts why no one has tried to develop them especially since Manute and Bol have gotten into the NBA? Maybe the emergence of the South Sudan national team will be a catalyst.

There's another player from Sudan with Overtime Elite - John Bol, who I understand not to have any family relation to Manute or Bol. https://overtimeelite.com/players/115a12ca-b64f-4f84-ba59-9088eb7a72c1
This should have happened when Johnny Most was alive if you remember him calling that game against Yugoslavia or someone when he couldn’t pronounce anyone’s name then finally gave up.

“Bol passes over to Bol. Bol flashes to the middle….wait, is that the same Bol? I don’t even know which Bol I’m watching….”
 

Kliq

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Infrastructure in general is key to developing talent, and it's hard for developing nations to do that in a way that is competitive with nations that have decades of developing elite talent, even if those nations possess a lot of players with the raw potential ability. It's notable that Malauch was developed by the NBA academy, that is the league attempting to streamline player development in a way they don't have to do in the US or Europe.

I've heard Masai Ujiri talk about this at length--Africa possesses the tallest, most athletic people (his words not mine) and anyone that has spent time going into villages will note the frequency of seeing men 6'6" and taller. It's just a matter of getting that infrastructure in place to develop talent, but the future of the game is probably going to be found in Africa.

It's probably noting the rise of French basketball, and there will probably be several French lottery picks in the upcoming draft, and how it is mainly African diaspora like Wemby. The athletes are getting to France and into a more functional youth development system, and the result is going to be a lot more NBA players.