With the NBA season a week away, NBA clubs are optimizing their rosters and many international players have been cut or signed this past month.

• The Utah Jazz cut three players, including their second round pick Goran Suton.
• The Houston Rockets let go of swingman Romel Beck of Mexico.
• Aussie Nathan Jawai was traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Minnesota Timberwolves for a conditional second-round 2012 draft pick.
• Portland signs Australian guard Patty Mills.
• The Lakers waived Chinese guard Sun Yue mid-month, then released Mickael Gelabale.

The NBA regular season begins on Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

Romel Beck, a 6’8, 195lb guard/forward who has played with the Mexican National Team the last several years, has signed on with the Houston Rockets.

The  27-year old Beck will compete with Pops Mensah-Bonsu, and summer-league guards Will Conroy and Garrett Temple for the final roster spot.

The spot opened up when the Rockets decided against waiting upon Rashad McCants, who was recovering from an abdominal injury, so Houston decided to go with Beck.

Beck, who was born in Magdalena de Kino, Mexico, has been Mexico’s leading scorer in international competitions, but had come under fire this summer for his involvement in a brawl during a  friendly game  between Mexico and Uruguay.

Later in September, Beck was criticized for his selfish play, and was ultimately dismissed from the team during the 2009 FIBA Americas Tournament. Beck has participated in NBA summer league camps with the Cleveland Cavs and San Antonio Spurs.

After a loss to Puerto Rico, 81-66 in Mexico‘s first game of the FIBA Americas Championships, there was bickering about that the teams leading scorer, Romel Beck, was being too selfish.

“There’s some unrest within the team,” Mexico’s head coach Arturo Guerrero admitted. “Beck started taking shots against five defensive players. That clearly bothered our guys.”

Hearing these complaints about his game, Romel Beck spent the next two games Kobe-Bryanting, selfishly being unselfish to prove a point.

The result of Mexico’s second game? Mexico got blown out by 55 points, losing to Canada 95-40.

The 40 points scored by Mexico in that game was the lowest scoring outcome by any team in a FIBA Americas Championship. Beck shot 1 for 9 from the field that game before Guerrero benched him after only 19 minutes on the floor.

“What can I say?” Guerrero said. “It’s an embarrassment. Tonight was the most embarrassing [moment of my career].”

In Mexico’s next game against the U.S. Virgin Islands, Beck was inserted into the game and was purposely not looking to shoot the ball during his five minutes of play. The 6-7 swingman was re-benched.

Beck’s behavior in the last two games prompted Guerrero to ask the Mexican Federation to remove Beck from the team. The Mexican Federation of Basketball agreed, sending Beck home before their game four loss against Uruguay.

“A lot of young players are seeing this as a business opportunity.” Guerrero said.

After holding a glimmer of hope that Eduardo Nájera may don the green and red for Mexico, that hope crashed when the NBA ruled that it wasn’t in their best interest.

It was announced today that the 10-year NBA veteran will not participate in this year’s FIBA Americas Championships.

Najera was unable to receive clearance from his NBA club, the New Jersey Nets, to play in the tounament. The Nets invoked their right to refuse Najera because he had not fully recovered from an injury, a hernia surgery he had back in March.

“I would like to (play), but I haven’t recovered from the operation (hernia),” Najera said.

NBA teams cannot prevent their players from playing in international competitions during the offseason as long as the player has the requisite insurance. The exception, which was used with Najera and  by the Mavs in J.J. Barea’s situation, is when a player is injured or recovering from an injury.

NBA guard Earl Watson will also miss the tournament after failing to obtain the right papers in time.

Without Najera and Watson, the Mexican National Team will reply on a frontcourt featuring veteran center Horacio Llama qne Lorenzo Mata-Real, coupled with the scoring of Romel Beck and . Well, that’s if Beck and company aren’t suspended after their fight with Uruguay on Saturday.

Najera has not played for his homeland Mexico since 2003.

Here we go again.

In another boxing match, a basketball game broke out between Mexico and Uruguay Saturday night when both teams competed in a preparation game for the 2009 FIBA Americas tournament.

(Discuss the Mexico-Uruguay fight in our forum)

Tensions came to a head when Mexico’s star player Romel Beck got into the face of Uruguayan guard Emilio Taboada after a foul call.

From there, it was mayhem as players faced off, not knowing where to turn, they punched, grabbed, and kicked at each other, throwing chairs and anything else they could get their hands on.

Eventually the Uruguayan players sought refuge in their locker room as many of the Mexican players followed looking to continue the fight.

The game was called after the tussle. Mexico was up at that point 68-60 with 46 seconds remaining in the third period.

This is the third all-out brawl in the last month. In late July Iran and Jordan went at it during the Jone Cup. The Jordanians forfeited the game that eventually cost them the tournament title.

Then in early August, Canada and Italy brawled in a preparation game during a four-nations tournament.

Mexico and Uruguay are both in Group A during the Tournament of the Americas, and are set to play again in the final game of the qualifying round Sunday, August 30th, 2009.  The tournament starts Wednesday.

USA 113: Brazil 76
What was supposed to be the United State’s toughest test turned into another blowout. Team USA continued their dominance of group B by manhandling Brazil last night 113-76.

Brazil did hang tough for about one quarter and a half, but was eventually overwhelmed by Team USA’s offensive prowess and fantastic defense. The Americans would expand their lead to as large as 49 points, while keeping tournament leading scorer Leandro Barbosa from getting any type of rhythm. Barbosa shot 1-8 from the field and scored well below his tournament average of 27. Carmelo Anthony again led the US in scoring with 21. And that was matched by LeBron James. Kobe Bryant added 20 and played a large part in suffocating Barbosa. Tiago Splitter led the Team Brazi with 13 points.  However, it wasn’t all smiles for the Americans as their leading rebounder Tayshaun Prince went down with an ankle injury in the second quarter.

Argentina 109: Panama 92 (Overtime)
It was experience vs. novice when Argentina found themselves down 7 points with just over two minutes to play and Panama primed for the upset. The Argentines made a furious comeback thanks to consecutive miscues on Panama’s end, eventually tying the game and sending the game into overtime. Panama looked deflated and the experienced Argentinians took over from there, going on a 41-15 run the last 9 minutes of the game and overtime. Paolo Quinteros led Argentina with 22 points. Luis Scola added 20, Carlos Delfino 19 and Diego Loggripo 15. Gary Forbes, who plays for Massachusetts, had 29 points for Panama

Uruguay 91: Mexico 82
Uruguay continued their great play in finishing up the first round with a 3-1 record. This time they used a tournament-record eight three-pointers (8-13) and 36 points from Nicolas Mazzarino in defeating Mexico 91-82. Odd that Esteban Batista‘s 25 points and 15 rebounds performance would have to take a backseat. It was Batista that would once again give Uruguay the lead for good when he hit a free throw with 5:31 left to give Uruguay a 72-71 lead. Mexico didn’t do itself any favors by missing six of 10 free throws over the final 3:26. Romel Beck led the Mexican National Team with 28 points. Uruguay will face Canada to start out the second round Monday.

Venezuela 100: US Virgin Islands 90
It was a contest of the two 0-3 teams. Venezuela squeezed into the second round by defeating the Virgin Islands. Hector Romero scored 29 points and Manuel Barrios added 18 for Venezuela.

USA 123: Canada 59 After demolishing the Virgin Islands 123-59 on Thursday, the United States used a balanced offensive attack and strong defense to rout Canada 113-63. Again, the Americans were led in scoring by Carmelo Anthony with 25 points and sharpshooter Michael Redd with 19 points (5 three pointers). Olu Famutimi scored 17 points for the Canadians, who played without their star Steve Nash and finished the preliminary round at 2-2. Levon Kendall, whom played for the University of Pittsburgh from 2002-2006, added 10 points and nine rebounds.

Brazil 93: US Virgin Islands 89 As expected the Brazilians also went undefeated. Though it wasn’t as easy against the U.S. Virgin Islands as would be expected, in fact, the USVI took a 45-33 lead with 2:10 left in the second quarter, and was still ahead 48-41 at halftime before Brazil rallied in the third. Leandro Barbosa continued his torrid scoring pace when as he went for 36 points against the Virgin Islands 93-89 Saturday. Marcelo Machado added 16 points. Cuthbert Victor’s 25 points led the Virgin Islands

The wins set up the showdown between the unbeaten Americans and Brazilians when they meet each other Sunday in the final game of the first round. T he winner if that game will be the top seed heading into the four-game second round. The top two finishers in the 10-team tournament earn automatic berths to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Argentina 104: Mexico 83 Not to be outdone, Argentina also remained undefeated as they hit 15 three-pointers in defeating Mexico 104-83. Carlos Delfino had 20 points and 11 rebounds and Paolo Quinteros added 18 points for the Argentines. Romel Beck had 24 points for the Mexicans. Argentina has clinched the top-spot in their group even though they have only played 3 games because Uruguay (2-1), which plays Mexico on Sunday, is the only team in the group that can reach three wins and Argentina beat them for the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Uruguay 82: Puerto Rico 79 Esteban Batista continued his stellar play as Uruguay improved their record to 2-1. The Uruguayan center poured in 36 points and had 15 rebounds leading his national team to a tight 82-79 win over Puerto Rico. Uruguay never looked back after Batista’s second straight putback off an offensive rebound gave them a 78-76 lead with 1:02 left. Jose Juan Barea had 18 points to lead Puerto Rico. Larry Ayuso had 15 points and Carlos Arroyo added 14.

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