Things returned to relative quiet this week, as NBA teams finished waiving whomever was to be waived, and those players are now deciding what to do with themselves.
October 26: Red Star (Serbia) - waived Dwayne Jones
Huh? That was quick. Jones had only been with the team about five days before getting the boot. My guess is that he might've asked out of his contract to come back to the D-League and the Toros, but perhaps there was some other issue involved (anyone know if he was injured? Sham?). According to this the team cited a "personal problem," which is pretty vague and hopefully not too serious.
October 27: Shaun Pruitt - signed with Peristeri (Greece)
Pruitt was waived by the Golden State Warriors last week, and while coach Don Nelson said that Pruitt had impressed him, who knows what that means anymore. He's relied mainly on his size (about 6'9" with a 7'1" wingspan, 240 pounds) up to this point in his career, though he has been working with Tim Grover and others on his shot, among other things. Pruitt spent last season playing in the Czech Republic, Latvia and China, so he's used to the overseas grind. He's a pretty good rebounder, although he needs to work on his foul shooting and being more efficient overall. He'll give you 15 points on six shots one night and seven points on five shots the next. So I guess that's really more of a consistency issue. He seems to be on NBA radars, and would likely do well in the D-League, but as I keep saying, this is the year of not blaming anyone for playing overseas.
October 29: Orlando Magic - waived Linton Johnson; Dontaye Draper - signed with Prima Veroli (Italy)
I didn't expect Johnson to last long on the roster, as he was mainly there because of Adonal Foyle's injury, and the rehab is apparently going well. It will be interesting to see what Johnson does from here, as he has enough NBA time under his belt where the D-League would be something of a step down, but he's never been much more than a 14th or 15th man anyway. He'll likely either head overseas or join the pool of unsigned NBA players hoping to become a midseason injury replacement. Draper played in France and Belgium last year, where he was a pretty good three-point shooter (save for his 10 games in France, where he shot less than 28 percent). Six and a half or seven assists per 36 minutes is okay for a point guard, but that was his high point. He turned his scoring up for his Belgian team in the EuroChallenge, averaging around 21 points a game. He's 25 now, and is likely a career overseas guy, but he's a pretty good one.
October 31: Will Conroy - signed with DongGuan New Century Leopards
Happy Halloween, Will Conroy. This was a little surprising to me, as the Rockets had Conroy on both their Summer League and preseason rosters and gave him a fair amount of playing time (at least in Summer League), so I thought there might've been a chance they tried to keep him around on the Vipers. I guess not, according to what we're hearing. Assuming he doesn't come back at some point mid-season, the D-League will certainly miss his sportsmanship this year. Conroy turns 27 in December, and may be reaching the point where he thinks his chances won't get much better than the one Houston gave him. Conroy should do well in China, even though three-pointers aren't a huge part of his game, but he should still score at a pretty good clip and rack up the assists kicking the ball out to shooters.
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