July 26: I don’t think it’s particularly big news that an overseas team offered Mike Finley a contract. Chances are, every player in the NBA who is either an aging veteran or a young guy who isn’t a lock to stay in the league gets multiple overseas offers. It’s just that now, with Bostjan Nachbar going overseas (a slight surprise) and Josh Childress going there as well (a pretty big surprise), overseas offers are getting more publicity, and writers and columnists are asking agents more about that stuff than before.
Chances are, Finley got overseas offers in the past, too, and he’ll get them in the future.
As has been reported by lots of outlets, and confirmed by people we at InsideHoops.com talk to, there isn’t a big reason to think tons of players on the level of Childress will ever wind up going overseas, because the money isn’t there. Teams in Europe don’t have massive TV deals and marketing profits that NBA teams do. They’re much smaller operations. So don’t expect lots of good NBA sixth men or prime bench guys to leave the league.
I’d guess there could be another couple of good NBA bench guys (probably not as good as Childress) that go overseas this or next year, but not much more than that. Nothing that would shake the league up in any real way.