FanHouse JoshChildress

Josh Childress started for an NBA team. Von Wafer played significant minutes on an NBA playoff team. Linas Kleiza once scored 41 points in an NBA regular season game (this ain't no summer league, man!) And they're all members of Olympiakos B.C.

Now since Childress decided to taste the awesome flavor of Dolmades, there has been no great exodus. However, that's now three NBA-quality players that aren't even the huge stars on OBC. Which begs a question. We know the NBA elite boast teams that could defeat them pretty handily, but how would Olympiakos do against the low of the NBA?

Despite an awful riot during the Greek championship and a brief flirtation with Milwaukee, Josh Childress apparently liked playing for Olympiakos enough to do it again. According to Sekou Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Childress will not opt out of his Olympiakos contract this summer.

Smith reports Chill's reps have been attempting to get the forward moved in a sign-and-trade deal for a few weeks, but Atlanta -- who holds the rights to Childress as a restricted free agent -- has not been cooperative. The complex rules of restricted free agency surely complicate matters, as well as the general NBA cash crunch. One of the reasons Childress made his way to Greece is because he's better than mid-level but not a star -- the death zone under current salary rules.

There were various reasons to believe Josh Childress might be spending only one season in Greece. The forward, who signed with Olympiakos last summer after reaching an impasse with the rights-holding Hawks, is a quality player who belongs in the best league in the world, the NBA. He reportedly got the yips when the Greek league championship game fell victim to an assault of explosives thrown by fans. And all told, he didn't really set Europe on fire as hoped.

So that Childress is back in America talking turkey is not a big surprise. But the particular team he will first visit with -- the Milwaukee Bucks -- registers as a stunner.

So the two preeminent Greek basketball clubs, Olympiakos and Panathinaikos, got together for the opener of the best-of-five league finals in Athens. Visiting Panathinaikos took a 60-58 lead with two minutes left. The Olympiakos fans reacted, um, poorly. Here's video of the incident from Ball in Europe. (And yes, that's a lit flare thrown at the Panathinkaikos bench.)

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It doesn't seem that long ago that the Southeast was an afterthought. I'm aware that sounds stupid as this division attempts to rise to serious L-bound prominence, but it's true -- before Dwight Howard and before Dwyane Wade and before Josh Smith and before Jeff McInnis ... what was there?

It doesn't particularly matter now; the division is still only an erstwhile powerhouse; you would never see a prediction coming that any one of these teams can contend for the NBA title right now, and that's what matters in these sort of things.

Of course, Orlando is a different story of sorts. Maybe. At least we have to wonder: Does Hedo Turkoglu Still Have the Special Sauce?

It was just this weekend that Panayiotis Angelopoulos, the Greek billionaire and co-owner of the Euroleague powerhouse Olympiacos, declared in an interview with the New York Times that he would continue to aggressively court NBA free agents. He signed Josh Childress this summer, and he let it be known he had his sights on bigger fish, as well:

"I think we'll see a day when a superstar player comes to Europe, but to Olympiacos, not to another team," he said. "That is my answer. Maybe it will be very soon. Maybe then you realize what I'm telling you is serious."

Lo and behold, it took all of three days for the rumor mill to start churning. So what did it spit out? The SPORTSbyBROOKS headline says it all: Greek team to offer Kobe three year $83 million deal.

Before we get too excited, let's trace our sources: SbB references The Hoop, which references the Italian site BasketballCentral.it, which references TalkBasket.net. And now you're reading about it here, which means this has already gone through four filters, including one trip through Google Translate. What did the original rumor actually say?

Josh Childress is gone but not forgotten -- in case the trademark 'fro and the Greek uniform didn't tip you off, that's him in the video above (via Skeets) putting two on the board for Olympiacos. Childress was also the subject of a wide-ranging interview with Pete Thamel of the New York Times in which he discussed, among other things, why he made the jump overseas:

I did it because it was a better situation for me. Regardless of what people say. A lot of people said "he's not a competitor" or "he's going to the J.V. league." I read it all over the place. I think it was a lot of chat room stuff and in a few papers.

To those guys I would say, "I'm in situation where I get paid double, my role increases, I have no expenses and I move to a nice city." How many guys wouldn't do that, regardless if you're a lawyer or a doctor? In a business sense, if I were to tell people that I passed on that deal, I would be stupid.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. ESPN The Magazine The Blog, via BDL. Investigating the birth of Nightmare Ant.

2. Third Quarter Collapse. Everyone thinks Hedo Turkoglu could be a great fit on the Lakers. Here's an exhaustive look at possibilities.

3. Chicago Tribune, via Blog-a-Bull. "[Derrick] Rose is having the best training camp of anybody on the team."

4. 48 Minutes of Hell. Joel Kimmel, the guy that does those awesome NBA portraits, has an art book coming out in a few weeks.

5. Ball Don't Lie. One-time European player Dominique Wilkins thinks Josh Childress made a bad move this summer. Of course, 'Nique works for the Hawks ...

6. The Blowtorch. More life lessons with Brad Miller.

Al Horford didn't win rookie of the year. He didn't lead rookies in scoring. And he wasn't the media darling that some other rookies were. But while most of his rookie classmates were at home sipping piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, he was battling the eventual champion Celtics to seven games with the Atlanta Hawks.

Going into his second year, there are even more expectations on the 6-foot-10, 245-pound forward-center from the Dominican Republic. But after seeing how he embraced a leadership role as well as plugged in 10 points and nearly 10 rebounds per game (making him the only rookie to average a double-double), it's hard to bet against the former 3rd overall pick from the University of Florida.

We caught up with Al the other day just as training camp had started to ask him about last season's playoff run, the loss of Josh Childress, and his goals for his sophomore season.

NBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day.

1. TrueHoop. Spending a day with NBA referees. Tons of great notes in here.

2. Palm Beach Post. Michael Beasley comes ... err, clean: "And when asked if he was hiding in the hotel room when security first entered Beasley answered, 'Honestly, I don't know.' I'm not sure our young protagonist understands what that word means.

3. Ball in Europe. Highlights from Josh Childress' first preseason game in Greece.

4. OregonLive. Nate McMillan wants to dampen the high expectations facing the Blazers. Good luck.

5. Washington Post, via Bullets Forever. The Brendan Haywood-Etan Thomas war is over!

6. Sactown Royalty. (Self-link alert!) Investigating the causes of Sacramento's bloated salary.