Pops Mensah-Bonsu, currently working to make the New Orleans Hornets, is pretty good at basketball. I know if you're reading Ridiculous Upside with your morning coffee, you probably already knew this, but the fact of the matter is that most people don't read Ridiculous Upside and thus might not have known how impessive Nana Papa Yaw Dwene Mensah-Bonsu can be when given minutes in any setting.

I first hyped Mensah-Bonsu way back in February of 2009 - basically as soon as it was relevant for me to write about him since he'd started that year in Spain with CB Granada. My man-crush (is that hyphenated? One word?) had actually begun when Mensah-Bonsu, J.R. Pinnock, Mike Hall, Carl Elliott, Maureece Rice and the rest of the 2005-2006 George Washington basketball team did work during the NCAA season before losing to Duke in the second round of the NCAA Tournament - though his time in the D-League and my time covering the D-League hadn't coincided until that point.

Anyway, back to the story at hand: Pops Mensah-Bonsu has been good at basketball for awhile and now I get to brag about thinking he's been good for a long time because he was good last night again in the preseason, guys.

"How good?" is what you're probably wondering, but I guess I'll let his statistics against the likes of the Hasheem Thabeet, Josh Davis, DeMarre Carroll and Darrell Arthur-led Memphis Grizzlies speak for themselves:

19 points, 10 total rebounds, four steals, four offensive boards, and a block while nailing eight of his 13 field goal attempts and 3-of-4 from the charity stripe.

I think this means Mensah-Bonsu has probably secured his roster spot ahead of Joe Alexander, just a couple of weeks after they were reportedly neck-and-neck because, for what it's worth, Alexander had one foul in his two minutes and 30 seconds of action compared to Pops' 32 minute-plus performance.

I love the preseason.

The New Orleans Hornets announced in an afternoon press release that they have waived guard Mustafa Shakur and center Darryl Watkins to cut their training camp roster down to 16 players.  

A decision between D.J. Strawberry, Joe Alexander, Pops Mensah-Bonsu and the newly-acquired Curtis Jerrells is likely looming since the Hornets will need to release at least one of them to reach the 15-player maximum by the time the regular seasons begins next week.

It probably won't surprise anyone that Shakur and Watkins were the first players to be released by the Hornets if only because it's sounded like Strawberry was ahead of Shakur for a couple of weeks now and Watkins, while solid, probably isn't much more than a serviceable training camp big man in the NBA at this point.  It probably didn't help that D.J. Mbenga was also recently brought in to be a backup big man.

I would expect, if Shakur isn't picked up by another NBA team, that he'll return to the Tulsa 66ers in hopes of a quick call-up as he'd likely be the top point guard in the D-League. Watkins, after sitting out all of last season dealing with a staph infection, would be property of the Iowa Energy if the 25-year-old decides to stay stateside.

In a trade that will ultimately probably only matter to myself and my fellow D-League faithful, the San Antonio Spurs have traded Curtis Jerrells to the New Orleans Hornets for a future second-round pick.

It seems a bit interesting that the Hornets would send a draft pick in return for a player that likely didn't have a spot on the Spurs roster this season. When everything is taken into consideration, though - primarily Dell Demps, the former Austin Toros general manager and current Hornets GM - it all makes sense.

Except, of course, that the New Orleans Hornets already have former D-League basically-point-guards Mustafa Shakur and D.J. Strawberry fighting for the right to backup Chris Paul for the next 82 games. With Jerrells, that makes three players on the roster with skill sets that are probably better suited for a combo-guard role all vying to play behind possibly the best pure-point guard in the NBA.

Timothy Varner from the great 48 Minutes of Hell wrote quite glowingly about Jerrells earlier this week.

I'm not sure what to make of Jerrells' preseason, other than the obvious. He's better than we expected. He played well in summer league, but not exceptionally well. But other than DeJuan Blair and Tim Duncan, Jerrells has had the best preseason of any Spur. Curtis Jerrells, the kid from Baylor. The Austin Toros project.

What's most surprising about Jerrells' transformation into an NBA-quality player is that he wasn't anything approaching a point guard in college. Last season, Toros head coach Quin Snyder "made" Jerrells into a point guard, but he mostly looked like a shooting guard barking sets. Credit Snyder and Jerrells for putting in the work, because Jerrells should be on an NBA roster.

In all reality, it will be pretty interesting to see what sort of combination of Jerrells, Shakur and Strawberry sticks in the NBA this season.

The Sacramento Kings announced today that they waived forward-center Connor Atchley, guard Joe Crawford and forward Marcus Landry from their training camp roster, effectively cutting the roster below the 15-player maximum.  I expect all three players to begin the upcoming season in the NBA Development League.

Tom Ziller of Sactown Royalty notes that the Kings' roster now stands at 14 and that the only players without guaranteed contracts left on the roster are Luther Head and Darnell Jackson. Geoff Petrie said at the start of training camp that the Kings would most likely carry just 13 players into the regular season."

I'm a bit surprised that the Kings would cut down to 14 with the intent of still releasing one more player so I'm actually going to assume that both Head and Jackson could make the opening day roster and then eventually be released once the Kings' injury woes are put behind them.

As far as the three players that definitely aren't making the Kings roster, as I said above, I expect their best options would be to begin this season in the D-League though there have already been a few players cut from NBA training camps that have went to Europe for the larger paychecks.  

If the players do decide to go this route, only Landry would be eligible to go directly to the Kings' D-League affiliate Reno Bighorns and play for Eric Musselman under the new D-League allocation rules because Crawford's rights were drafted by the Texas Legends and Atchley finished last season with the Iowa Energy.

The Oklahoma City Thunder announced Friday that they have waived Tweety Carter and Longar Longar, effectively reducing their roster to 17 players. Rookies Jerome Dyson and Elijah Millsap are the lone remaining players on the Thunder roster without a guaranteed contract, meaning that Oklahoma City will likely waive both players before the regular season begins to get to the 15-player limit.

Carter, a 23-year-old point guard, was Baylor's second-leading scorer at 15.0 points per game last season and led the Big 12 with 6.1 assists per game. His leadership and talent, along with Ekpe Udoh, helped the Bears advance to the NCAA Tournament in two of the past three seasons, including last season's run to the Elite Eight.

It wasn't particularly surprising to see Carter get cut, but NBA Director of Scouting Ryan Blake had positive things to say about "Tweety" before this year's draft.

"It doesn't matter if he gets drafted or not," Blake said. "He'll be a guy that will still get that opportunity. Come draft day, if his name doesn't get called, which a lot of people won't, his phone or his agent's phone number will be ringing."

[...]

"If he can do it like an Anthony Morrow (Golden State) or anybody who's on that fine line and he convinces a team to give him that chance, because again he is a competitor, he's a guy that's been through it all," Blake said. "They [teams] go by the mental part of the game and he has a lot of physical attributes, too, and he's been running the show for a while."

Okay, so that Blake quote doesn't really say anything but I'm going to leave it in there anyway.

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"Anthony Mason Jr." has been the top Google-searched term leading people to the friendly confines here at Ridiculous Upside over the past three days, believe it or not, so I was happy that I was able to find yet another reason to talk about him even though he was cut by the Miami Heat earlier in the week.

In an interview with SNY's Adam Zagoria on Thursday, Mason Jr.'s father - and former NBA player - mentioned that he'd like to get into coaching in the NBA and, more importantly to the D-League contingent, extolled some advice for his son and the next step in his professional basketball career.

Mason also hopes his son, former St. John's standout Anthony Mason Jr., gets back on the court after being released by the Miami Heat.

"He's talking about going overseas, but I think I would rather see him go to the [NBA] Developmental League because I feel like he has the talent to be in the league," he said. "He just has to work on a few things."

The elder Mason was able to put together a 13-year NBA career and shaved words into his head so I'm going to assume he knows what he's talking about.  If he's able to convince Anthony Mason Jr. to give the D-League a shot, Mason Jr. would currently be property of the Sioux Falls Skyforce.

The Washington Wizards released rookie small forward Kevin Palmer on Thursday, reducing their training camp roster to 17 players including fellow training camp invitees Cartier Martin, Adam Morrison, Lester Hudson and Sean Marks. Though the Wizards have not yet posted a press release on their website announcing Palmer's release, they did remove him from the game notes for tonight's game against the Milwaukee Bucks.

Palmer, a 6-foot-6 swingman out of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, appeared in just one preseason game for the Wizards this fall, grabbing a single rebound in four minutes of action.  Nothing impressive there, but Palmer's performance in the Wizards last Vegas Summer League game - where he made 8-of-14 field goal attempts on his way to 21 points and eight rebounds - is probably what earned him his training camp invitation.

I really have no background on Palmer, so luckily Draft Express's Kyle Nelson has a scouting report on him that was written following this year's Portsmouth Invitational.

Though he has a very skinny and undeveloped upper body, he has good size for the wing at 6'6. His style of play is heavily reliant on his athleticism, from running the floor well in transition to making an impact with his physical tools on the defensive end. While his defensive fundamentals are not great, he has some intriguing things to work with and should only get better with continued coaching and increased strength.

[...]

Palmer is very much an incomplete player at this point and, like Edwin Ubiles, has the potential to transform into a much better player down the road. He will have ample opportunities to develop as a role player the D-League or Europe as he showed some intriguing potential in college and at Portsmouth.

Seeing as Nelson suggests the D-League as a suitable option for Palmer, it will be interesting to see if he decides that developing in Dakota - the Wizards D-League affiliate - makes sense for him career-wise.

Chris Sheridan included former NBA Development League official Kane Fitzgerald in the headline of one his ESPN TrueHoop articles Wednesday, noting that his quick whistle when it came to his calling a pair of technical fouls had "a bigger impact on the outcome of a game than someone such as Kevin Garnett."

Who, you ask, is this Kane Fitzgerald?

He is an 29-year-old NBA referee beginning his second full season who pulled out his best Shag Crawford imitation and gave a quick pair of technical fouls (from 30 feet away) and a full-armed heave-ho to Kevin Garnett in the second quarter of Boston's 104-101 victory -- the latest instance of a referee following the letter of the law and showing zero tolerance as part of the NBA's leaguewide crackdown against griping about or showing physical displeasure with calls.

Once I recognized this name (hat tip to Fort Wayne Mad Ants president Jeff Potter), I immediately looked through the Ridiculous Upside archives to see if Fitzgerald had ever drawn my ire and, disappointingly enough, there were only three articles mentioning the former D-League official.

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