As I mentioned earlier Eddie House and Tony Allen appear to be back in the fold for two more seasons. With their imminent signings I thought it would be interesting to dive into the archives and look at some posts I wrote about them in the past year. There was a profile of House. Other than that he was mentioned in parts of numerous other posts. He's a role player in that regard. And yet Allen received way more attention. And he was somewhere between the 10th and 12th man. Still that attention was not without reason. At the start of the 2007 season I was incredibly focused on 7 young players - Tony Allen, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Al Jefferson, Kendrick Perkins, Rajon Rondo, and Delonte West. They developed as follows:

Gomes - solid role player, traded
Green - talented enigma who will probably never get it, traded
Jefferson - double-double guy, traded
Perk - defensive beast
Rondo - defensive stalwart, rapidly improving, potential star
West - solid third guard, starting point guard with LeBron, traded

That leaves Allen who unlike the other six did not either get traded or develop significantly. In fact outside of possibly Green, Allen easily regressed the most, due in large part to that epic knee injury.  And yet I continue to pull for him. Check out the following posts:

Player Profile
2007 Season Recap
The Road Back
A Random Post detailing his possessions against the hated Bulls.

If you're too lazy to read those posts, and quite frankly I don't blame you, you can still enjoy two of my favorite exchanges from the 2007 season:

Tommy Heinsohn and Mike Gorman reacting to Allen's season ending knee injury:

"Dire straits. Dire straits. You know where dire straits is?" - Heinsohn

"Africa?" - Gorman when he finally got a word in.

"Just south of frustration." - Heinsohn

I still have no idea what that means.

And...

Allen's response to his mother when she complained about Brian Scalabrine driving them to the hospital. "This this is better than an ambulance. This is Scal!" - Tony Allen