DeSagana Flop

While watching the Dallas Mavericks vs. San Antonio Spurs game last night, I couldn't help but notice one of the Mavericks players. He was a lean, mean rebounding machine, grabbing boards as if they were winning lottery tickets. He was also extremely active on the defensive end, something Mavericks fans aren't used to seeing from their players.

So who was this up-and-comer? It was none other than Cavalier castoff DeSagana Diop (pronounced "jop" for those who failed to pick up on the genius of this post title).

You may remember Diop as the high schooler the Cavs drafted in 2001 who spent most of his three seasons in Cleveland looking more lost than a Republican at an ACLU headquarters. He was fat, slow, uncoordinated and patented several unflattering moves such as the "line drive jump shot that smacks the front of the rim so hard the referee has to stop play to make sure he didn't inadvertantly knock it off-center" and the "attempt to set a pick but accidentally tripping your teammate causing him to fall and get whistled for traveling."

Now the TNT broadcasters were raving about Diop's presence and how he dropped 60 pounds during the offseason. A quick check of the stats shows the Lasagna man (I call him that because his first name looks like Lasagna) actually posted a 16 rebound, six block game against the Nuggets two weeks ago! I'm not sure he had 16 rebounds total in his years in Cleveland, now he's the next Dennis Rodman?

I guess we can cut Diop some slack, afterall weren't we all 19 once and did we all not potentially blow multimillion dollar opportunities because we were fat, lazy and unmotivated to improve at our jobs? I thought so.

Oh the joy of being a Cleveland fan, it just gets better and better.