This morning I was reading hoopshype.com and there was a piece about Rick Rickert moving to the NDBL. Most of the writers on this site will remember endless discussions of Rickert on the ESPN board and it made me wonder if we should write a little tribute piece reminding ourselves how much time we wasted on a guy so unworthy of our attention. Thus was born a new feature, "Remember this guy?"
Rickert is too obscure and I'm not going to waste time with him. Also we'll hold the Jerome James piece off until further in the season and I don't think many people care much what Sherell Ford is doing overseas. We can gloat about Kevin Ollie on a really bad day. I came up with a couple of names that may trigger discussion.
First, good for Alex Scales getting picked up by the San Antonio Spurs. Scales put on a nice show in training camp and many wanted to keep him at the expense of Mateen Cleaves. Funny but I don't hear too many people regretting the decision to let this young scorer go. Does anyone want to cut Mateen today?
Second, remember Dale Davis? The Sonics main free agent target this offseason was the 14 year old Vet expected to share time with Vitaly Potapenko and hold down the center position while Johan Petro spent the season in the D-League. I personally thought the aquisition of Davis would have been a brilliant stopgap measure and followed the saga intently on David Locke's Locked on Sports Blog. I couldn't believe that Seattle was actually in the running when the competition for his services included his former team Indiana and the defending Eastern Conference Champion Detroit Pistons. The Sonics lost out when Detroit upped their offer to 3 years, $6 million for a guy who will be 40 years old in the final year of the deal.
The reason I ask if you remember Davis is that he has yet to play for Detroit. No games, no stats, no impact. Sometimes the best transactions are the ones that never happen and this is definately the case with Davis and the Sonics. Had we signed Dale Davis it is likely that he would have been our opening day starter and the team would never have given Johan Petro a chance to show what he can do.
So as we watch Petro continue to improve this season lets all say a little prayer of thanks to the Detroit Pistons for luring Davis away. I'm glad he followed the money.