Mavericks sign 5'7 Yuki Togashi of Japan

Today the Dallas Mavericks officially announced the signing of guard Yuki Togashi with the intention of playing him in Dallas' D-league affiliate in order to refine him for the NBA. Per team policy the terms of the deal were not disclosed. The first time I, as well as most people, learned of Togashi was during summer league this year where he impressed fans and scouters alike. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYdPAVkwqDY  While he obviously has to go through a transitional period before he can make his way into the Mavericks rotation moves like that floater around the 0:50 sec mark really shows his fearlessness to attack the bigger defender. 

21 year old Togashi played the last season for the Akita Northern Happinets in the Japan Basketball League and even earned himself all-star game MVP and was named to league's best 5 team. Also in case you didn't catch it Happinets, like happiness but like nets, like buckets, like scoring buckets, Happinets. Japan seems cool.

If Yuki gets to play some NBA ball he would become the shortest player in the league as well as the only Japanese player. These two factors could lead to Yuki being a wise investment not only for winning basketball games but for making money as well. Its widely known that many Asian cultures love basketball and love supporting Asian talent. Jeremy Lin who is on a contract worth more than his skill level would earn him isn't seen as a large financial loss since the team makes A LOT of money from jersey sales and whenever a team with Lin on it shows up you can guarantee an increase in ticket sales for that game due to the influx of Asian fans who attend it. I believe Togashi was signed primarily for his skill but Mark Cuban knows money so I can't say he was singed solely for that reason. Either way Yuki Togashi is fun to watch and I can't wait to see him suit up for Dallas. Mffl. 

NBA 2015 Dunk Contest Predictions

Last season the NBA rolled out a new format for the dunk contest that pitted the 3 Eastern Conference players against the 3 Western Conference players. These east vs west competitions started with a freestyle round where each conference had 90 seconds to throw down as many impressive dunks as possible. The winning team was then allowed to choose the dunking order for the battle round. In the battle round 1 player from each conference faced off in traditional dunk contest fashion with the loser being eliminated from the competition. Surprisingly though the east won each of their first battle round match ups leading to a situation where the dunk contest was as short as possible. Granted nobody expected the east to dominate the battle round and the thought of one player from the west having to then win two more battle rounds against the east can lead to a really exciting narrative where one player carried their entire conference proving across 3 rounds that he is better than the 3 best dunkers the other conference could throw at him. I hope they give this format one more shot because in theory this format can be really exciting, it just had it's least interesting scenario play out last year.

East:

1. John Wall (Washington Wizards)

2. Terrence Ross (Toronto Raptors)

3. Andre Drummond (Detroit Pistons)

West:

1. Andrew Wiggins (Minnesota Timberwolves)

2. Eric Griffin (Dallas Mavericks)

3. Kenneth Faried (Denver Nuggets)