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CLEVELAND A sports agency says Charlotte Bobcats unrestricted free agent Earl Boykins has signed a one-year deal worth more than $3.5million to play with Virtus Bologna of the Italian league.
Andy Bountogianis of the Cleveland-based Mark Termini Associates Inc. sports agency confirmed the Tuesday signing.
The agency says the point guard, 32, will be the highest paid player in Italy for 2008-09. He also will participate in the sponsorship and marketing of the team.
The 5-foot-5 Boykins, who played at Eastern Michigan, has been in the NBA 10 years, and averages 9.4 points per game.
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DETROIT:Kwame Brown hopes to be the latest player to resurrect his career with the Pistons. Washington drafted the 6-foot-11 center No.1 overall out of high school in 2001, but he's played for three teams in seven seasons, averaging 7.5 points and 5.7 rebounds.
“I have a chance to write a new legacy for myself,” he said.
Brown said that, despite the rough treatment he's gotten from fans and the media, the most important judge of his talent is the man who decided to sign him as a free agent – Pistons president of basketball operations Joe Dumars.
“I definitely hope he'll see in me what a lot of people don't see,” Brown said. “I think I've been one of the underrated defensive players in the league.”
Brown will make $4 million next season and has a player option for 2009-10.
L.A. LAKERS: Guard Jordan Farmar, the NBA's only Jewish player, showed his dribbling, shooting and dunking skills at a clinic in southern Israel on Tuesday for Jewish and Arab kids. Farmar, 21, is the guest of the Peres Center for Peace, founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres, now Israel's president, to encourage cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Farmar's parents divorced when he was a child. His mother is Jewish, and his stepfather is Israeli.
He said his heritage helped him relate to the Jewish and Arab basketball hopefuls he's met. His father, former baseball player Damon Farmar, is black.
“When I go to the black neighborhoods, people relate to me, and when I go the Jewish neighborhood they relate to me, too,” he said.
