Eric Devendorf Bay City's favorite basketball son Numerous NBA Stars in Multiple Troubles Make Devendorf Look Like Choir Boy
|
|||||||||||
| Printer Friendly Story View |
"Hey, what's Eric Devendorf up to these days? Getting cut from D-League teams, unfortunately." -- Matt Norlander, cbssports.com
Well, Devo, 24, Bay City's favorite basketball son, is still hanging around since Norlander wrote that pessimistic view earlier this month.
He recently moved from the Idaho Stampede, where he played 13 games and was waived in a reported strategic move to make room for two NBAers being bumped down. Recently he was picked up by the Reno Bighorns.
Sean Keeley, of the Syracuse Orange blog, wrote:
"All Eric Devendorf did in 11 games for the NBDL's Idaho Stampede is average 10.3 PPG and shoot 40% from three in 20 minutes of action per game. Coming off a holiday break, he was ready to lead the Stampede into the nationally-televised NBA D-League Showcase with a hot-hand, scoring in double figures in six of the past seven games, averaging 13.4 points during that stretch.
"Naturally, Devo was waived on Thursday."
About being traded back to Reno, where several former Syracuse stars have landed, he told Keeley: "It's just another opportunity to try to take advantage of. So hopefully I can do that."
Devendorf got six points Saturday in a 127-88 win by Reno over the Springfield Armor, shooting 60 percent and putting him among the top 10 scorers on the 22-man team. He got only eight minutes on the floor.
Some sports pundits have slammed Devo for his tattoos, trash talking, poor defense and legal problems while the record shows he is relatively stable compared to the NBA universe of bad boys.
Back at a guard post for the Bighorns, where he played three games in 2009 before jetting off to New Zealand, Australia, and -- alas -- a wild time in Turkey where he found coaches cutting heads off goats for luck before the games.
Devendorf is scoring just shy of 9 points per game in an average of nearly 20 minutes of playing time. He's shooting 45 percent from the field and 38 percent from 3-point range.
Eleven year NBA veteran Damon Jones, 35, recently assigned from the Cleveland Cavaliers to Reno, is scoring only 1.3 points per game.
Another rival guard, one of three currently on the Bighorns roster, is Will Blalock, out of Iowa State, who is getting a little more time but shooting only 20 percent from the field and 27 percent on three pointers. Blalock hits only half his free throws while Devo is cashing in on three of four. Blalock has a 2.0 points per game average.
Wouldn't it seem that a reasonable coach would give Devo twice as much time per game so he could use his shooting skills to help the team and qualify for an NBA spot? After all, that's the stated purpose of the D-League -- getting players ready to move up a level.
Playing time of 25-30 minutes per game would likely boost his average to the 20 point range that might pique the interest of some NBA teams who have worse shooters.
Blake Ahearn, another Bighorn guard out of Missouri State, has comparable shooting percentages to Devo and is averaging nearly 25 points per game. Ahearn excels at the line, with nearly a 97 percent shooting average, and he is getting over 38 minutes of playing time per game. Devo's 3-point shooting is about a percentage point above that of Ahearn.
Devo has gotten a bad rap from the media and coaches, in our opinion, given the rogues gallery of several hundred NBA stars who have been in various troubles, from drugs, drinking and driving, women issues, etc.
ShamSports.com lists the players whose off court behavior makes Devo look like a kindergartener. These include former Michigan stars Jalen Rose and Chris Webber, Duke's paragon Christian Laettner, MSU's Mateen Cleaves, and on and on, a total of 75 players all under the category "arrested or suspended for possessing, supplying or using drugs."
About 80 NBAers, including LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, are listed on shamsports.com as having legal troubles for drinking and driving, driving too fast, or both.
Devo is listed under "stuff involving women" along with 75-80 others from the NBA, even though his incident occurred while he was at Syracuse University.
He also makes the "violent stuff" list along with about 90 from the NBA, perhaps because of a bar fight in New Zealand last year.
Five NBA players are listed as "alcoholics," about 20 in the category "thieves" and 40 each under "disturbing the peace" and "traffic violations," other than speeding. "Coaches gone wild" include Isiah Thomas, Scott Skiles and Eric Musselman.
It would seem that Bay City's only all-time professional basketball prospect has paid his dues overseas and is doing what is right in the D-League while keeping his skirts clean and awaiting a break.
Hometown fans are pulling for him and hoping he keeps on the right track. Coaches might do well to give him a break so we can see him in the big time soon. He is a shooting talent waiting to emerge.
It also seems like the NBA needs to radically step up its training camp curriculum to stress more about "staying out of trouble." Any good alternative school principal would encourage that with the kind of active, aggressive young men with proclivities for trouble that end up in the NBA. ###
| Printer Friendly Story View |
"The BUZZ" - Read Feedback From Readers! |
|
|
Dave Rogers |
|
|
|
Printer-Friendly Story View
0200 Nd: 04-22-2024 d 4 cpr 0
12/31/2020 P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm
SPONSORED LINKS
12/31/2020 drop ads P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm