Montegranaro waived Kemp and announced Hunter

The suspicions about the imminent release of Shawn Kemp were realised yesterday. Premiata Montegranaro announced the release of Shawn Kemp and the signing of Brandon Hunter. The former NBA superstar said that he feels sorry that the deal didn't go through and Montegranaro signed Brandon Hunter to take his place. Hunter was also mentioned in greek articles to interest the team of Trikala.

Brandon Hunter(2.01-PF) graduated from the college of Ohio in 2003 and he was selected at number 56, in the 2nd round of the 2003 draft by Boston. His rights were traded to Charlotte next year and after that he was loaned to Orlando.In 2006 he went to Greece to play for Panathinaikos where he only played a few games. During that summer the took part in the summer camp of Cleveland trynig to secure a contract in the NBA. Later on he went to Italy to play for Napoli, Livorno and finally last season he played for Biella. He averaged 12.9 points and 9.1 rebounds in 31 games in the LegaA1.

The Shawn Kemp deal is off??

Shawn Kemp is said to make frequent journeys back to the States according to italian media and the administration of Montegranaro are not very happy with his performance and the current situation. Kemp has been visiting the States, in some cases with the pretext that he needs to make sure his home is ok and it hasn't been trashed by Hurricane Ike among other things.

In effect he has lost a big part of the team's preparation and his physical condition is not up to scratch for professional level. Rumors have been flying around regarding his imminent replacement. One of the names that was implicated by the italian press was that of Eddy Fobbs (2.13-C) who played last season in Turkey for Mersin (averaged 12.2 points and 8 rebounds in 30 games) but he is said to have already agreed with israeli team Ashkelon. This story isn't finished yet.

Shawn Kemp started training with Montegranaro

NBA legend Shawn Kemp started training with his new team, Premiata Montegranaro and he says that so far the practice has been going great and that he is impressed by the professionalism of the italian team and their staff.

Everyone in the technical staff were skeptical to see how will Shawn Kemp do in the training session but to their surprise he seemed to be in great shape regardless the fact that he hasn't played professional basketball in 5 years.

Everyone is excited to see now how he will do in the friendly games.

Shawn Kemp is back!

The rumored transfer of Shawn Kemp to an italian team is now a reality. Premiata Montegranaro decided to sign the "Reignman" at the age of 39 and announced the transfer via their official site. Obviously this is not the type of news you'd expect to hear in 2008 but Shawn Kemp is returning to action by the sound of it after 5 years of absence from the courts.

Shawn Kemp needs no introduction. He is one of the most spectacular players to grace the NBA courts using his ferocious athleticism to dunk the basketball like there is no tomorrow.

He went straight from high school to playing professional and the Seattle Supersonics in 1989 chose him in number 17 of the draft. In the NBA he has played 1,051 games in 14 seasons, accumulating 15,347 points, averaging 14.6 per game, capturing 8,834 rebounds (8.4 average). He participated 6 times in the All Star Game and was an NBA finalist in 1996 with Seattle against the Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan (2-4 series).

He got the gold metal in Toronto in Canada in the World Championship of 1994 with Team USA. His top scoring performance was 42 points against the Clippers in 1994 and top rebounding performance was 22 in total against Dallas in 1995. He has played for Seattle, Cleveland, Portland, and Orlando.

In his last season in the NBA (2002/2003 to Orlando) he averaged 6.8 points and 5.7 rebounds in 79 games.