Pops Mensah-Bonsu Signs With Houston Rockets; I rejoice.

Nana Papa Yaw Dwene Mensah-Bonsu is now (still) an NBA player.  I guess Darryl Morey knows what he's doing after all.

If you're not familiar with Nana Papa Yaw Dwene Mensah-Bonsu, he typically goes by Pops Mensah-Bonsu.  Now, if I can take just a moment of your morning, let's take a jaunt down Memory Lane, because I'd love to remind you that Pops is a bit of a D-League legend.

Mensah-Bonsu, whose name roughly translates to "King Whale Killer" and not "Ferocious BAMF who does awesome things like it's his job" (that's just what those of us in the know call him) went undrafted coming out of George Washington, but signed with the Dallas Mavericks.

With the Mavs, Pops didn't get much action, so, like all good teams should, they assigned him to the D-League - the Fort Worth Flyers, to be precise.  Of course, Pops dominated, averaging 15.8, 10.4 and 1.3 blocks per game in about 30 minutes of action on a stacked Flyers team (Luke Schenscher REPRESENT!) and was even named the D-League All-Star Game MVP.

Unfortunately, the Mavs didn't pick up their option for a second season of Pops and he went overseas.  After toiling for about a season and a half in Spain and Italy, Pops packed his bags and decided to come back to the USA, where he was picked up by the Austin Toros last February.  With the Toros, Pops played eight games and averaged 26.6 points, 13 boards and 2.5 blocks per game, shooting over 60% from the field.

After following the box scores of these eight games and watching as much Pops ball as I could, I got a great idea: Why doesn't somebody call Pops up?  Well, since people listen to me (see here and here), Pops was called up by the San Antonio Spurs two days later and Tim Varner liked it.  Unfortunately Pops was cut to make room for Drew Gooden.

However, Toronto had a spot for him and two days later, he was headed North of North Dakota (Canada). Pops finished the season with Toronto and everyone loved him: Rick Kamla mistook him for KG (WATCH IT!), then Holly MacKenzie added him to a list her guys, followed with @Nat77 going cuckoo for Pops, then Pops gushed about Toronto on Twitter, and now it's midnight and I'm writing to you about how I love Pops.

WHOA! Looking at that last paragraph, it'd seem love is all around Pops.  Nope. Not so, because Jon L's a H8R!!!