Monday, November 09, 2009

Quick Juan Dixon Update

This is a tad wacky. So after Juan Dixon got cut from the Hawks, his agent found him a job in the Greek professional league with a team called Aris. From what I can tell, Aris is bad, but the key for Juan (and any American trying to make an impact overseas and make some dough) is that he'll get minutes and be expected to score. And once he does those things, he can latch on with a bigger club with more money that plays in the EuroLeague - which pulls the best teams from the country leagues to play against one another.

Anyway, in Juan's first ever professional game outside the US, his team played Panathinaikos -- the defending EuroLeauge champs -- whose starting 2 guard just happens to be .... Drew Nicholas. Sarunas Jasikevicius is also on the team.

And guess what? Both Nicholas and Dixon scored 12 points, though Nicholas' team won, 70-62.
Here's the boxscore.

That had to be a really strange feeling for Juan to face off against Nicholas - and lose - in playing his first pro game outside the NBA. Nicholas has been in Europe since 2003 and has done extremely well for himself. Here's hoping Juan finds similar success. If nothing else, he will (hopefully) finally get regular minutes and do what he does best - score.