NBA Players Abroad: Aaron Brooks, Patty Mills Sign In China

Odom will join the team based in Istanbul next week, according to ESPN’s Marc Stein, and would make more than $2 million in salary if he finishes the season out in Turkey. Like most NBA players taking their talents abroad, however, he will have an option in his contract to return stateside once the lockout is complete.

Besiktas has lost just one game in the regular season thus far this season, but Williams was unable to lead them to victory in their Euroleague qualifying games. The team is instead playing in the Eurochallenge where they are 3-0 after Williams scored 50 in the team’s last game.

The 6-foot-6 guard averaged 17.8 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.8 assists for the Kings in his second season, but he’s obviously decided that playing abroad offers a solid opportunity until the lockout is settled.

The point guard had appeared in nine regular season games for the Melbourne Tigers, and according to the Morning Herald has sparked unprecedented interest in the league. But his deal with Melbourne included out clauses to return to the NBA or take a more lucrative offer. The Chinese deal would seem to fall under the latter.

There is an impact on the Blazers or any NBA team hoping to sign Mills to an offer sheet should the NBA lockout end before the season is lost, though: the Chinese league doesn’t permit out clauses, which means Mills can’t return to the NBA before March at the earliest. That nearly ensures that Mills will be added to the 2012 free agent class.

No idea why President Obama is being involved in the will-he-or-won’t-he saga surrounding the Black Mamba and Virtus Bologna, but he’s involved nonetheless.

After heading to Russia to escape the NBA lockout, it appears DeJuan Blair’s experiment with European pro basketball is over just a few games after it began. The team, Krasnye Krylya Samara, announced today that it has released Blair after four games, according to a report from Sportando.net.

As the team’s GM explained, “DeJuan helped us to to get to the main draw of VTB League. It was the most important goal for us for the first part of the season. We thank him for the brilliant performances he had in these games.”

“It’s extremely difficult to predict if we’re going to get a quick solution or if it’s going to become a much more protracted battle with the owners regarding the new CBA. We waited until the last moment and then that moment passed,” Sefolosha’s agent, Guy Zucker, told the newspaper. “Now they’re beginning to cancel games, and this could last for quite sometime. So Thabo wanted to play, and this was too good of an opportunity to pass up on.”

Sefolosha will have an NBA-out clause in his contract with Fenerbahce so that he’s able to return to the Thunder whenever the lockout is complete. He’s under contract for nearly $12 million in Oklahoma City through the 2013-14 season.

He will miss the team’s first game of the season, which is this weekend, but will join them next week for their game against Paris-Levallois.

For more Spurs chatter (hint: it’s probably also about the lockout), head over to Pounding the Rock.

CSKA Moscow competes in the Euroleague in addition to the Russian domestic league.

How peculiar, you ask? I’ll let the magic that is Google Translate tell you everything you might need to know related to the reason Clark is leaving Zhejiang.

Yes, that’s right: Clark is returning to America, according to that report, because he could not get used to eating Chinese food. Forget for a moment that it is probably impossible to not be able to get used to Chinese food, or find American cuisine in China, and instead let’s ponder the more relevant facts.

Virtus was the last team that Ginobili played for before he moved to the NBA. In his time there, Ginobili won the Italian Lega Basket Serie A, the Euroleague, the Italian Cup, an two Italian League MVP awards and a Euroleague MVP award. Said Ginobili, regarding an offer from the club:

Roughly translated, Ginobili said that he has not yet rejected the proposal he received from Virtus, that he enjoyed his time there, and that his wife loves Italy. Ginobili also said in the interview that he has rejected a proposal to play for Flamengo in Brazil.

The Pistons’ forward didn’t clarify which team he’ll playing for while in Russia, but CSKA Moscow, Unics Kazan and BC Khimki seem to be the best bets since all are involved in Euroleague action.

It’s unclear whether Martin would have been back regardless: Denver has seemed to move in a more youthful direction, and the power forward will soon turn 34. The Nuggets drafted Kenneth Faried in June, and will likely spend a good chunk of change to retain free agent center Nene, the team’s most vital remaining player. Martin was a popular pick to join a championship contender in a late-career chase for a ring.

For more on the Beijing Nuggets, visit SB Nation’s Denver Stiffs.

In his first season with the Wizards, Seraphin played 58 games for Washington while averaging an underwhelming 2.7 points and 2.6 rebounds while earning one start. A native of Franch, Seraphin recently helped the French National Team to a second-place finish at the EuroBasket tournament while helping the team to a berth at the 2012 London Olympics.

Signing with Caja Laboral was probably the best move the youngster could make this offseason. Seraphin was known to be raw prior to the Draft, but his length adds to the potential impact he might someday be able to make on an NBA court and more experience will only help move him closer to his ceiling.

The Spaniard is no stranger to playing in Spain as he spent the first eight seasons of his basketball career in the Spanish ACB before taking his talents to the NBA, but this will be his first time playing for Real Madrid as the rest of his Spanish career was spent with Joventut Badalona.

Diaw is a part owner of JSA Bordeaux Basket and the team president, and his brother Martin plays for the club. It competes in France’s Pro B, so you definitely won’t be seeing Diaw’s games televised or streamed in any form. Nicolas Batum has also agreed to play in France during the lockout, but he chose the more high-profile Pro A team SLUC Nancy.

For more on Diaw and the Bobcats, visit SB Nation’s Rufus On Fire.

Three years in, it remains unclear what type of NBA role Douglas-Roberts will fill going forward. He’s not a terribly prolific scorer (13 points per 36 minutes in each of his three seasons) or potent shooter (career 28.6 percent on three-pointers). He played 1,700 minutes for the awful 2009-10 Nets, but only got off the bench for a little more than half of Milwaukee’s games last season.

For more on the Bucks and Douglas-Roberts, visit SB Nation’s Brew Hoop.

Martin is 33 years old, but when healthy is still considered a plus defender and a decent enough supplementary offensive option.

He is slated to be an unrestricted free agent. It’s unclear how wed to retaining Smith the Nuggets are; Denver also has a number of other free agents to deal with this summer and was likely going to put Smith on the backburner.

For more on Smith, visit Denver Stiffs and SB Nation Denver.

The 32-year-old Okur is coming off a season that was shortened to just 13 games because of injury. He averaged just 4.9 points, 2.3 rebounds and 12.9 minutes, all of which probably contributed to his desire to get real games under his belt while the lockout extends beyond two months. Those were Okur’s worst numbers during his nine-year NBA career, in which he’s averaged 13.7 points and 7.1 rebounds per game.

For more on Okur’s move, be sure to check out SLC Dunk. For the latest updates on NBA players moving to Europe, be sure to follow this StoryStream.