Philadelphia 76ers President and General Manager Ed Stefanski announced today that the team has waived Andre Emmett, Maureece Rice and Cory Underwood. The roster now stands at 16 players heading into the preseason opener on Wednesday, Oct. 8 against the Boston Celtics at the Mullins Center on the campus of the University of Massachusetts.
Emmett (6-4, 216) was originally selected with the 35th overall pick in the 2004 NBA Draft by Seattle. He appeared in eight games for the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2004-05 season. Last season, Emmett averaged a league-high 23.9 points per game for Belgacom Liege Basket of the Belgian League. He played four seasons for Texas Tech, and finished career as the Red Raiders all-time leader in scoring with 2,256 points.
Rice (6-1, 224) is best known for his career at Strawberry Mansion High School, during which he tallied 2,681 points, surpassing Wilt Chamberlain’s Philadelphia school record of 2,206 points. Rice went on to attend The George Washington University, where he was named Atlantic 10 Sixth Man of the Year as a sophomore and A-10 All-Conference Third Team as a junior. He was not selected in the NBA Draft this past June.
Underwood (6-10, 240) played for the Albuquerque Thunderbirds of the NBA Development League last season. Since finishing his career at Southern University of New Orleans in 2003, he has also played in the ABA (American Basketball Association), the USBL (United States Basketball League), WBA (World Basketball Association), CBA (Continental Basketball Association) as well as leagues in both Brazil and Poland.
The New Jersey Nets have requested waivers on guard/forward Awvee Storey, Nets President Rod Thorn announced today.
The Orange County Register (Kevin Ding) reports via blog on key quotes from a Luke Walton interview where the Lakers player talks about being stalked: “A couple of days later, I was signing stuff, and she came up. And I just rolled up my window and drove off. And as I was driving off, she threw her basketball at my car. It didn’t hit the car, but I saw it was bouncing down Nash Street. And I was kind of laughing like, ‘She’s kind of lost it.’ But at the same time, it was like, she’s really starting to pick up what she’s doing.” … “Once I moved out of the gated community, that’s when I started noticing. I’d come home, and the same car with tinted windows would be parked across the street all the time. One time, I was like, ‘I swear I see someone there.’ So I walked up and saw her, and she had a hat on, and I said, ‘I can’t believe this is the same chick from the practice site.’ And then for a while, everywhere I went, I’d see her park like a street down. As soon as I took off, she’s start following me.”
The Sacramento Bee (Scott Howard-Cooper) reports on now retired point guard Jason Williams: “He really has a little bit of a unique place in the history of the NBA, I think,” Kings basketball president Geoff Petrie said, “in the sense that his rookie year and into his second year, he kind of came out of nowhere at a time when the league was coming out of the lockout and sort of struggling with its style of play and just trying to regain some of the footing it had lost at that time. And here was this kid that had these incredible dribbling and passing skills and sort of pedal-to-the-metal attitude about the game. He just caught the imagination of the entire country, along with the rest of our team. “It really helped the NBA. It really helped this franchise, along with a lot of other terrific players, too. He became the darling of ESPN highlights just about every night. I’ve told this to other people: There was a time there, probably for about a year or so, other than Michael Jordan, he was the most popular basketball player in America because of this flamboyant style he had.”
The Miami HEAT announced today that they have requested waivers on Matt Walsh.
The Miami HEAT announced today that they have signed free agent guard Shaun Livingston and requested waivers on guard Tre Kelley. Per team policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed.