Post by BTriggs on Aug 20, 2003 7:41:36 GMT -5
Clippers pondering passing on Odom
By Chad Ford
NBA Insider
Send an Email to Chad Ford Wednesday, August 20
Updated: August 20
8:09 AM ET
Clippers owner Donald Sterling found his wallet this summer when he (finally) agreed to pay Elton Brand and Corey Maggette a combined $124 million over the next six years.
Did he find a coherent basketball strategy too?
After privately claiming for the past week that the Clips intend to match the Heat's six-year, $65 million offer to Lamar Odom, a source inside the Clippers, for the first time this summer, started dropping hints that the team is considering letting Odom walk.
Before you begin your "the Clippers are cheap" diatribe, hear him out.
"Why use up all of our cap room on Lamar when we could do better next summer?" the Clips' front office source told Insider. "There are a lot of attractive free agents out there next summer and I think we're beginning to prove to folks that we'll spend whatever it takes for the right guys. Elton and Corey were the right guys."
Lamar Odom has been open about his desire to leave Los Angeles.
Maybe. Reputations aren't broken that easy and NBA free agents are likely to remain wary of the Clips. However, there are signs of life in L.A. In addition to Brand and Maggette, the Clips also made a substantial offer to free agent Gilbert Arenas this summer.
If the Clips stand pat the rest of the season, they'll be looking at around $12-13 million in cap room next summer. The Jazz and Nuggets are the only other teams slated to have significant cap room at the moment.
Adding someone else's free agent won't be the only thing on the Clips mind. The team will have to decide whether to re-sign restricted free agents Quentin Richardson and Keyon Dooling, but the possibility is there, if L.A. decides to pass on those two, to land a top tier-free agent.
"We love Lamar, but it's going to be difficult to justify spending that kind of money on him," he said. "As talented as he is, his play and his attitude don't warrant that type of money. It's a pretty big leap to go from Mr. Sterling paying top dollar for a few free agents to Mr. Sterling overpaying for one. I'm not sure we're that far along."
The Clippers are also upset over Odom's recent statements claiming he no longer wants anything to do with the Clips. For years, Odom was Sterling's and the Clips' biggest cheerleader, imploring the owner to re-sign his core players. But after a disastrous season and protracted negotiations this summer, Odom became the team's biggest critic and begged for the team not to match.
So should Odom start looking for a house in Miami? Not so fast Heat fans. The Clippers source stressed that some in the organization still feel strongly that the team should re-sign Odom and see what happens this year. If things don't work out, the team could always make a trade with the Heat next summer given Pat Riley's passion for Odom.
Don't expect anything to be definitively announced before the team's Aug. 26th deadline.
Even if they do let Odom go, Clippers fans shouldn't get their hopes up too high. The Clips could just be talking about next year in an effort to justify letting Odom go. Talking and doing, as we've seen time and time again in L.A., are two very different things.
Around the League
Well we finally know who to point the finger at in Golden State. Warriors "special assistant" Chris Mullin was gushing about the Warriors trade on Tuesday.
"We've added two guards [Nick Van Exel and Speedy Claxton] who were playing in June," Mullin told the San Jose Mercury News. "We've got Mike [Dunleavy] and Jason [Richardson] in places where they can emerge and we can evaluate them. We've fixed some long-term things. . . . Beautiful, you know?"
Beautiful?!? Maybe it was a mistake to have Mullin learning at the feet of Garry St. Jean the past year.
Mullin's role in the trade has sent a strong signal to many GMs around the league that he, not St. Jean, is the man with the power in Golden State now.
According to several NBA sources, St. Jean was working on an alternative trade at the same time Mullin was trying to work out something with Dallas. Owner Chris Cohan bought into Mullin's vision (or was it the other way around?) and St. Jean was left trying to explain to several other upset GMs why he had to pull the plug on talks with them.
Mullin wouldn't go so far as to claim that he was taking over, but he dropped plenty of hints.
"Every day I'm around," Mullin said, "every meeting, I learn something and I think, 'Man, if I'm doing something and I didn't know that, that wouldn't have been too good.' There's a lot of things as a player that do transcend and help you, but not everything. I've got to make sure I've got them down. In one year . . . I don't know. I'm in a really good position to do that."
What's next for Mullin? There's still talk that the Warriors may move Erick Dampier, along with either Avery Johnson or Bob Sura.
If the Warriors really made a "beautiful" deal, why were Don Nelson and Mark Cuban grinning like a Cheshire cat on Tuesday?
"We're a nightmare to match up with now," president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "We're better in so many ways. Low-post scoring. Defense. Rebounding. And we've gotten taller and younger without disrupting our core."
After much debate about who was the key to the deal, Nelson admitted that the team wouldn't have done the deal without Jiri Welsch, the 6-foot-7 combo guard the Mavs tried to trade for on draft night last year.
"We wouldn't have done this deal without Jiri," Donnie said. "With him and Antawn and the potential of Danny to be a steal, this is a trade we couldn't not do."
Nelson also confirmed that the Mavs want to sign a veteran free-agent point guard. Among the guys they're looking at? Travis Best, Kenny Anderson and Rod Strickland. Of the three, Best is considered to be the Mavs' primary target. The Mavericks could use their $4.9 million salary-cap exception or their $1.5 million exception to get it done.
There's also still a possibility that the team will trade Chris Mills. Mills was the only one of the four Warriors traded to the Mavs who did not show up for Tuesday's press conference.
Huge trade simply a vision
Tim Kawakami / San Jose Mercury News
Nelsons sing praises of deal with Warriors
Richie Whitt / Fort Worth Star-Telegram
First-round pick Wade signs
Harvey Fialkov / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
By Chad Ford
NBA Insider
Send an Email to Chad Ford Wednesday, August 20
Updated: August 20
8:09 AM ET
Clippers owner Donald Sterling found his wallet this summer when he (finally) agreed to pay Elton Brand and Corey Maggette a combined $124 million over the next six years.
Did he find a coherent basketball strategy too?
After privately claiming for the past week that the Clips intend to match the Heat's six-year, $65 million offer to Lamar Odom, a source inside the Clippers, for the first time this summer, started dropping hints that the team is considering letting Odom walk.
Before you begin your "the Clippers are cheap" diatribe, hear him out.
"Why use up all of our cap room on Lamar when we could do better next summer?" the Clips' front office source told Insider. "There are a lot of attractive free agents out there next summer and I think we're beginning to prove to folks that we'll spend whatever it takes for the right guys. Elton and Corey were the right guys."
Lamar Odom has been open about his desire to leave Los Angeles.
Maybe. Reputations aren't broken that easy and NBA free agents are likely to remain wary of the Clips. However, there are signs of life in L.A. In addition to Brand and Maggette, the Clips also made a substantial offer to free agent Gilbert Arenas this summer.
If the Clips stand pat the rest of the season, they'll be looking at around $12-13 million in cap room next summer. The Jazz and Nuggets are the only other teams slated to have significant cap room at the moment.
Adding someone else's free agent won't be the only thing on the Clips mind. The team will have to decide whether to re-sign restricted free agents Quentin Richardson and Keyon Dooling, but the possibility is there, if L.A. decides to pass on those two, to land a top tier-free agent.
"We love Lamar, but it's going to be difficult to justify spending that kind of money on him," he said. "As talented as he is, his play and his attitude don't warrant that type of money. It's a pretty big leap to go from Mr. Sterling paying top dollar for a few free agents to Mr. Sterling overpaying for one. I'm not sure we're that far along."
The Clippers are also upset over Odom's recent statements claiming he no longer wants anything to do with the Clips. For years, Odom was Sterling's and the Clips' biggest cheerleader, imploring the owner to re-sign his core players. But after a disastrous season and protracted negotiations this summer, Odom became the team's biggest critic and begged for the team not to match.
So should Odom start looking for a house in Miami? Not so fast Heat fans. The Clippers source stressed that some in the organization still feel strongly that the team should re-sign Odom and see what happens this year. If things don't work out, the team could always make a trade with the Heat next summer given Pat Riley's passion for Odom.
Don't expect anything to be definitively announced before the team's Aug. 26th deadline.
Even if they do let Odom go, Clippers fans shouldn't get their hopes up too high. The Clips could just be talking about next year in an effort to justify letting Odom go. Talking and doing, as we've seen time and time again in L.A., are two very different things.
Around the League
Well we finally know who to point the finger at in Golden State. Warriors "special assistant" Chris Mullin was gushing about the Warriors trade on Tuesday.
"We've added two guards [Nick Van Exel and Speedy Claxton] who were playing in June," Mullin told the San Jose Mercury News. "We've got Mike [Dunleavy] and Jason [Richardson] in places where they can emerge and we can evaluate them. We've fixed some long-term things. . . . Beautiful, you know?"
Beautiful?!? Maybe it was a mistake to have Mullin learning at the feet of Garry St. Jean the past year.
Mullin's role in the trade has sent a strong signal to many GMs around the league that he, not St. Jean, is the man with the power in Golden State now.
According to several NBA sources, St. Jean was working on an alternative trade at the same time Mullin was trying to work out something with Dallas. Owner Chris Cohan bought into Mullin's vision (or was it the other way around?) and St. Jean was left trying to explain to several other upset GMs why he had to pull the plug on talks with them.
Mullin wouldn't go so far as to claim that he was taking over, but he dropped plenty of hints.
"Every day I'm around," Mullin said, "every meeting, I learn something and I think, 'Man, if I'm doing something and I didn't know that, that wouldn't have been too good.' There's a lot of things as a player that do transcend and help you, but not everything. I've got to make sure I've got them down. In one year . . . I don't know. I'm in a really good position to do that."
What's next for Mullin? There's still talk that the Warriors may move Erick Dampier, along with either Avery Johnson or Bob Sura.
If the Warriors really made a "beautiful" deal, why were Don Nelson and Mark Cuban grinning like a Cheshire cat on Tuesday?
"We're a nightmare to match up with now," president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "We're better in so many ways. Low-post scoring. Defense. Rebounding. And we've gotten taller and younger without disrupting our core."
After much debate about who was the key to the deal, Nelson admitted that the team wouldn't have done the deal without Jiri Welsch, the 6-foot-7 combo guard the Mavs tried to trade for on draft night last year.
"We wouldn't have done this deal without Jiri," Donnie said. "With him and Antawn and the potential of Danny to be a steal, this is a trade we couldn't not do."
Nelson also confirmed that the Mavs want to sign a veteran free-agent point guard. Among the guys they're looking at? Travis Best, Kenny Anderson and Rod Strickland. Of the three, Best is considered to be the Mavs' primary target. The Mavericks could use their $4.9 million salary-cap exception or their $1.5 million exception to get it done.
There's also still a possibility that the team will trade Chris Mills. Mills was the only one of the four Warriors traded to the Mavs who did not show up for Tuesday's press conference.
Huge trade simply a vision
Tim Kawakami / San Jose Mercury News
Nelsons sing praises of deal with Warriors
Richie Whitt / Fort Worth Star-Telegram
First-round pick Wade signs
Harvey Fialkov / South Florida Sun-Sentinel