Starcraft. Communism. Gavin Edwards?
Despite a pretty awful showing at the NBA's Las Vegas Summer League -- in which his Charmin-soft game produced oodles of fouls, missed shots and turnovers -- Edwards' apparent hope to continue his basketball career was thrown a life raft from across the Pacific.
Days after finishing his run in Vegas with about as many turnovers as rebounds, the UConn product became Thursday one of 20 U.S. players to be selected in the Korean Basketball League import players draft. Edwards, fresh off a moderately dissappointing senior season in which he finished with averages of 10.7 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.2 blocks, was taken with the seventh pick in the second round (No. 17 overall), according to SB Nation's Ridiculous Upside. No team was given for the 10-team league, which also appears to feature some type of reserve-league system. (Selfishly, I hope he lands with my Incheon ET Land Elephants.)
The exposure won't be great, considering real-time strategy gamers are the country's biggest export. And the KBL also limits the impact of "foreign" players through a fairly odd and strict set of rules. Per RU:
The KBL has a few peculiar rules (players have to be three years removed from any NBA experience and at least two years removed from European experience unless that experience came in Spain, Turkey, Italy, Israel, Russia, Greece or China) and, beginning this year, teams are only allowed one import for the entire game - a change from last season when teams could play both of their imports during the first and fourth quarter of each game.
But the financial benefits seem quite good. As RU notes, all players from the import draft will sign for $400,000 (dollars, presumably), only about $73,000 less than what they'd likely make playing on minimum contracts in the NBA.
Not to mention all the noodles they could ever want at the post-game spread.