Thread: Mavericks Land Diop and Christie
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Pioneer10 · 08-21-2005, 04:34 PM

Well these articles about Diop pretty much sums up about what most Cavs fans think of Diop. Frankly I'm shocked u guys are giving this guy a 3 year 7 million deal:

Quote:

TALKIN' CAVS

Diop deal a stunner

• I'm still in need of smelling salts after hearing that DeSagana Diop agreed to a three-year, $6.8 million deal with the Dallas Mavericks. I was told that the third year wasn't guaranteed. Fine. I'm amazed that two months are guaranteed.

• Suppose you are Dallas. Suppose you know that Cleveland needs a backup center, which is no secret since the Cavaliers have talked to free agents such as Dale Davis and Jahidi White. You know that the Cavaliers have zero interest in the 7-foot Diop. So why give him a multi-year deal? And who else was silly enough to be bidding on a player who has done virtually nothing in his four-year career? Last season, Diop was 20-of-69 (29 percent) from the field and 0-of-5 at the foul line.

•Here's the pattern with Diop. He gets in somewhat OK shape in the summer. He works reasonably hard. He's a very nice young man. His coach thinks maybe Diop will become a viable player. By mid-season, Diop is at the end of the bench.

• While Diop had another forgettable summer-league performance, he then went to a summer-league camp run by veteran assistant Tim Grgurich, and it was there he impressed some teams. The New York Knicks and Seattle SuperSonics supposedly had an interest. Diop is more likely to look good in drills than he will in actual game conditions.

• Diop's problem is he has zero feel for the game. He barely shot above 30 percent from the field in three years of summer-league action. He's from Senegal, and played only two years of basketball at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia before the Cavaliers made him a lottery pick in 2001, No. 8 overall.

• Before the 2001 draft, I had a conversation with former Cavaliers general manager Jim Paxson about the high school players available. I mentioned that I had seen Diop score only 11 points against St. Vincent-St. Mary, and how Sian Cotton pushed him around. I said he'd be lucky to start in the Big Ten, much less play in the NBA.

• Paxson quietly said the Cavaliers were considering him because Zydrunas Ilgauskas was a real question mark as he was still out with a major foot injury. Paxson said the Cavaliers needed size. In the NBA, that kind of thinking leads to mistakes -- a panic to get a big guy, any 7-footer who is breathing.

Quote:

One man's trash...
As Terry Pluto describes today in his View from Pluto, there's a general bewilderment over the three-year, nearly $7 million contract DeSagana Diop got from the Mavericks last week.

I guess "Gana" had a good camp in Las Vegas and actually had teams bidding over his services. The whole "you can't teach size" idioms are all applicable here. Personally, I'm happy for Gana, who is continuing the long-standing tradition of redispersing Mark Cuban's wealth. Although after Cuban's heartfelt explanation of why he cut Michael Finley because his days of overspending are over on his blog, this deal still confuses me. But it's still just ridiculous.

Last season I read a book about Sebastian Telfair called "The Jump." In there was a few pages on Diop. It was about how when he was a senior at Oak Hill Academy, then UNC coach Brian Doherty was begging for him to come play with him for a year and brought him a listing of the rookie salary scale. He was trying to show him that if he played one year in college, he could double his money. Boy, did that backfire, once Diop saw that he could make $3 million even if he was the last pick in the first round, he decided there was no way he was going to school. This even though he couldn't make a left-handed layup.

When Gana was at Oak Hill I went down there for a few days to do a story because LeBron James and St. Vincent-St. Mary were playing his team at that time. I interviewed him and watched them play two games and decided he was a circus act because all he'd do was stay at the defensive end and block shots and I was no scout. I saw Shargari Alleyne play in high school and thought he was more skilled and he's now a bench warmer at UK. Still, the Cavs fell all over themselves to take him at No. 8.

I brought all this up to Diop before a game in Philadelphia last season. He smiled and admitted it was all true, he knew he was really raw but didn't care. Actually, he said he thought he should've been drafted higher. He also told me he didn't really care about the Cavs and not playing because he knew he'd be in the league somewhere next year and getting paid. He was right, after all.

http://clevelandcavs.blogspot.com/

Thread: Mavericks Land Diop and Christie View Single Post

Thread: Mavericks Land Diop and Christie
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