The definition of a NBADL prospect

As you may have already seen, the Celtics just signed undrafted West Virginia big man Kevin Pittsnogle to a non-guaranteed two-year contract.

Pittsnogle is a 6'11" center who shoots college threes at a 40% clip. He was on the All-Big East first team last year and has played very well in the last two NCAA tournaments. Here's a rhetorical question: how bad does this guy have to suck to go undrafted in what is seen as the most barren NBA draft of the last decade?

I'm guessing the answer is pretty bad. Word is that Pittsnogle has what might be charitably called motivation issues. He didn't attend the Chicago pre-draft camp, in part because he apparently went into the few months of all-important pre-draft evaluations with 24% body fat. That's not a typo. 24% body fat. When M., our friend S. and myself all tested our body fat in a high school gym class years ago I was easily the flabbiest of the three of us and I only scored in the mid-teens.

The other knocks on Pittsnogle are apparently that he can't rebound, play with his back to the basket on offense, play man-on defense, dribble, or do much of anything other than set screens and hit stand-still, outside set shots. When West Virginia played LSU this last season Ty Thomas, who gives up a good four to five inches on Pittsnogle, shut him down simply by being energetic enough to prevent him from receiving easy passes. Something tells me that most NBA teams won't have much trouble finding other people who can do the same thing.

The really sad thing is that even though Kevin has got 'NBADL' stamped all over him (although it might say 'Finnish professional league', I can't quite tell from here) he might still be an upgrade from Brian Scalanbrine. Since this is a completely zero-risk move I guess it makes sense. With Raef now being overpaid by Portland the Celtics could use more players who can keep other teams' big men from collapsing on Pierce's dribble penetration. I'd be surprised if Pittsnogle ever gets good enough at everything other than shooting to play that role, but since his contract is non-guaranteed it doesn't really cost us anything to find out.