Apologies from breaking into our NBA Draft coverage, but yesterday's news from various places that the New Jersey Nets are considering purchasing a D-League team, namely the Springfield Armor, is fairly big.  Al Iannazzone mentioned it simply in passing at the end of this article, but it's fairly big nonetheless.

Jokes about how the 12-70 Nets and 7-43 Armor are made for each other aside, this move makes some sense.  The Armor were (was?) affiliated with the Nets last season, and while New Jersey hasn't exactly called-up D-Leaguers left and right, they have brought several players to training camp for the past few years who then went on to play in the D-League - Bennet Davis and Brian Hamilton among them.  

The Nets' new owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, also seems like a smart businessman who is open to new ideas and has indicated an interest in completely re-thinking how the Nets operate as a team.  Add those factors to the recent success that the Houston Rockets have had with their hybrid affiliation with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers as well as the ways in which the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder use their D-League teams to their advantage, and this proposal makes some sense.

It raises some questions for the Nets, the Armor and the D-League as a whole, however, which I'll address after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

I'm going to make this short, quick and sweet: the D-League season is officially over and therefore, Ridiculous Upside is about to get pretty boring. We'll still cover the D-League when it's important (coaching changes, maybe some player profiles, etc.), but things are just too slow for the D-League before Summer League stuff starts to roll in to update this site daily about the D-League.

Wait! Have no fear! It's one of the most wonderful times of the year - NBA Draft time.

If you weren't aware, the phrase "ridiculous upside" encompasses more than just the D-League.  In fact, it was probably never meant to encompass the D-League at all - but, as you may know, the times, they are a-changin'.

The biggest changes, you'll see, is that myself and Jon L are adding two new front page bros - The Artist Formerly Known As Michael Bourn (Liberty Ballers' Draft Guru) and fetch9 (who runs about 19 blogs on the interwebs, is from North Dakota and interviewed Russell Robinson for RU this season). 

I'll have both of them introduce themselves sometime soon, but to give you a quick primer, they both:

• Are really smart when it comes to college basketball,
  
• Talk to me on Twitter.
  
• Will allow me to GTL on occasion instead of having to worry about what to write about Jordan Eglseder (I trust Eglseder's on both of their draft boards).  
• Also, I hope they don't end up like Rod Belding and ditch us for a hot stewardess right before we're about to go whitewater rafting.
  

Anyway, throughout the next two months (up until Summer League, really), you can expect wall-to-wall NBA draft coverage - mock drafts, player profiles, big boards, funny stuff, daily link dumps and everything else to make RU your one-stop shop for SBNBA Draft Coverage.

This begs the question, by the way - what else would you like out of RU to make us your one-stop shop for the NBA Draft?

Continue reading this post »

I got together with the D-League blogosphere (myself, Jon L and Mike Gansey from Ridiculous Upside, Steve Weinman from D-League Digest and Matt Hubert from Blog Talk BayHawk) a while back to discuss the best in the D-League from the regular season.  What'd we talk about?  Well, all sorts of things pertaining to the D-League. 

In the end, though, we decided to give out the same awards that the D-League coaches vote on: Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Most Improved Player, Impact Player of the Year and Coach of the Year -  as well as our own All-D-League teams.

We named the Maine Red Claws Kurt Looby our defensive player of the year, though Sioux Falls Skyforce big man Greg Stiemsma was just one ranking point behind.

Today, the D-League named Stiemsma their defensive player of the year, though I assume it was a rather close battle.

How close? Probably as close as their battle for the most blocks ever in an NBA Development League season: Looby swatted 166 shots over the course of 50 games to finish with a 3.3 average.  Stiemsma, on the other hand, battled injuries in early December that limited him to just 44 starts - though he still blocked 162 shots for a 3.6 average.

Continue reading this post »

I got together with the D-League blogosphere (myself, Jon L and Mike Gansey from Ridiculous Upside, Steve Weinman from D-League Digest and Matt Hubert from Blog Talk BayHawk) a while back to discuss the best in the D-League from the regular season.  What'd we talk about?  Well, all sorts of things pertaining to the D-League. 

In the end, though, we decided to give out the same awards that the D-League coaches vote on: Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Most Improved Player, Impact Player of the Year and Coach of the Year -  as well as our own All-D-League teams.

Unfortunately, I got distracted in posting these on time because, you know, there were actual exciting things going on - and thus no need for filler posts.  This afternoon the D-League announced the All-D-League teams, though, so I guess we better get running on this once again!

Continue reading this post »

Long season done. Heading back to the west coast. I couldn't get a call-up, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I got better everyday.

I'll always get that feeling in my stomach when I think of an NBA opportunity but, for now, it seems that I'm the odd man out. Forever.

The above tweets are from Reno Bighorns big man Rod Benson, also known as "Boom Tho," following a 135-118 playoff loss to the Rio Grande Valley Vipers that ended his season.  Benson averaged an impressive astounding 24 points, 16.3 rebounds and 1.7 blocks while shooting 63% from the field and keeping his team in the three-game series, but still wasn't able to get the opportunity of an NBA call-up that so many of his D-League counterparts received.

This isn't the first time Benson said he was done with the D-League, but I have a feeling that this time he means it.

The reasons Benson hasn't been able to get a call-up have been speculated on ever since he began his D-League career way back in 2006-07.  Upon graduating from Cal and entering into professional basketball, scouts said that Benson was too skinny.  He eventually put some weight on, but was then chastised for blogging.  He eventually quit blogging in January, seemingly taking care of every excuse that NBA executives were able to come up with, but to no avail. This season, I've heard everything from "he's too smart for his own good" to "he doesn't have the passion for basketball to play in the NBA" to "I don't know how much better he can get. He's reached his potential."

Ironically, the one excuse for Benson not getting a call-up that you're not going to read in the preceding paragraph is anything relating to Benson not being skilled enough to play in the NBA - even though that's the only thing that an NBA player should really need to possess: NBA talent.

That's because the NBA talent is there - and is quite visible not only in the numbers you can see in the box score (look at the playoff averages above), but also when looking at the Synergy Sports Technology numbers to get a better idea of his impact on the defensive end.  According to SST, Benson had 337 defensive possessions this season while holding his opponents to a meager 35.7% field goal shooting percentage.  He ranked as "excellent" both as a post defender, a situation he was in 35.6% of the time, and as a spot-up defender, a situation he encountered 32.3% of the time.

So to recap thus far: he's good on offense, he's good on defense, he's smart, he's well-rounded and he's fixed every problem NBA teams have been said to have with the 6-foot-10 big man.  What am I missing?

Continue reading this post »

According to a story from the Arizona Republic's Paul Coro, the Phoenix Suns are exploring the opportunity of running the basketball operations of an expansion D-League team in Prescott Valley, Arizona.

The Suns wouldn't outright buy an entire D-League team, however, but rather go the way of the innovative Rio Grande Valley Vipers-Houston Rockets hybrid affiliation.  With this sort of affiliation, the Suns would run the basketball side of the operations - hiring the coaches along with the rest of the basketball operations staff and drafting the team's players - while a local ownership group would operate the business side of the franchise - ticket sales, marketing and the like.

The biggest positive, as Coro notes, is location:

The upside for Phoenix would be to have a closer relationship, in proximity and control, than it has had in its affiliations with Albuquerque and Iowa.  The Suns sent rookies Taylor Griffin and Earl Clark to Des Moines this season but likely would have had Clark play D-League games more if the affiliate had been closer.

While I feel that the "we don't use the D-League because the team is too far away" explanation some teams us is more an excuse than anything else, the hybrid affiliation does have quite a few things going for it that can be exploited to the NBA teams advantage.

With only 90 miles between Prescott Valley and Phoenix, the Suns would see a benefit not only on the basketball side, but it would also make sense for the proposed local ownership if they were able to build on having the NBA franchise so near.

I'll use the Rockets-Vipers relationship as an example after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

The new Frisco, Texas franchise announced Saturday night that they'll be called the Texas Legends when they begin play in the D-League next season.  This beat out the Texas Shooters and the Texas Stars, which is understandable, but I still have to assume there was a better option available.

The Two Man Game's Rob Mahoney isn't exactly excited either:

Still, Legends they will be, even if that name is more than a bit presumptuous. Doesn't having a name like ‘Legends' put a bit of pressure on a D-League team that still lacks an actual roster? If they're anything less than legendary will the arena explode like the head of a contradiction-pondering robot? Or at the very least, aren't they just asking for a scoff and snide remark from fans every time they drop a game?

ESPN's Marc Stein earlier suggested the Prospectors - which really would have invoked the opposite of what Mahoney suggests the Legends does (and I don't think that would be such a bad thing):

Calling this team the Prospectors would not only be a nod to the state's rich oil-industry tradition but also invoke the very nature of the D-League, where NBA prospects try to make it to the big time.

With the front office and coaching staff they've already assembled (Nancy Lieberman, Del Harris, Spud Webb and the Dallas Mavericks' GM, Donnie Nelson, among them), I don't think there will be any issues on the court and in the end, that's all that matters.

Utah Jazz beat writer Ross Siler has long been one of my favoritess and not just because he's one of the few that has taken at least a passing interest in his team's D-League affiliate.  Yesterday, Siler suggested it might be time for the Jazz to look at buying the basketball operations of the Utah Flash:

Which raises the question of whether the Jazz will or should take the next step with the Flash. The Jazz have been an affiliate throughout the Flash's three-year existence, with the Flash running the Jazz's system and hiring former Jazz scout Brad Jones as coach. Morris Almond, Kyrylo Fesenko and Kosta Koufos all have played in Orem.

I think, right there, is why it doesn't really make sense for the Jazz to buy the Flash: The Flash already run the Jazz system, have a Jazz coach installed and the NBA club feels comfortable in assigning players to the D-League at will.

The biggest problem, as Siler points out, is that a single-affiliation can't get much better if those things are already in place:

Even though the Houston Rockets are running Rio Grande Valley, they can't keep other NBA teams from signing players off the Vipers' roster. But with the NBA obviously out to encourage as much investment and interest in the D-League as possible, there has been talk of change, though possibly not until the next collective bargaining agreement.

In my opinion, until those changes are made, the hybrid affilation simply isn't as beneficial as it sounds.  As luck would have it though, Siler has numerous suggestions/rumors that would improve the system (this means go read his column).  My favorite is after the jump.

Continue reading this post »