Clippers at New Jersey - Game Preview and Open Thread

I read somewhere that Z BO will make his debut tonight. That would be cool.

Nets coming off a nice 2OT win at TOR. Maybe they are tired. Maybe the Clips are, too.

VC went for 39 against his former team last night. I know a team that could use 39 points from the 2 guard spot.

My first though was simply, "yuck!".

After the shock and sadness to see a good vet like Cat go, I began to think "this is our future for through 2011. B Davis, Gordon, Thornton, Z-bo, Kaman and maybe Djordan depending on how he develops" That doesn’t leave us much room to surround these guys with some quality pieces. Also, these guys are entering their prime NOW, so we need to put together a team that can win NOW!

That isn’t easy though and, I think we need to make another trade. Kaman is a top 5 center and nobody trades top 5 centers! (got that mdsr?) Unfortunately, the only name that makes sense now is camby. I know some of you think his trade value is zero because that’s what we traded for him, but it was the nuggets that wanted to dump salary, not any fault of camby or a judgment on him as a player. Also, if MdSr decides to have camby come off the bench, does that make him more effective than skinner who pretty much does the same thing at a much cheaper price? I say no. There’s no doubt that camby is a better player than skinner, but how much better in limited minutes. His value is still pretty high and he has a nice contract.

I say MP’s post above about getting carter. I don’t think that would be a bad idea, and a starting lineup of Baron, Vince, al, z-bo and Kaman is a statistical nightmare for other teams. But his contract is so large we would have to include camby and hart (again not a bad idea) My only concern is that he’s 31 with a lot of time left on his contract.

Other discussions I’ve seen involve the bobcats. I wouldn’t mind getting Jason Richardson, but I don’t think we need Wallace since we have thornton. Another advantage to Jrich would be he’s played with baron before and since there’s so little chemistry on this team, that would immediately help. Also, he’s only 27 but he has recently had exploratory knee surgery.

There’s also a third option. Let it be. Let camby play out his contract in LA and wait for 2010. Although we may not be able to lure a bosh or amare, we should have enough space to attract a 7-10 million per guy, and they’re not even being mentioned. However, this does not address the first point I mentioned that this team needs to compete now while our core guys are in their prime.

…he averages 6 a game.

it looks like bdavis, camby, kaman, thornton and gordon all did well…

Ricky davis played almost 30 min and went 1-9 for 2points and 2 assists. ouch.

We shot 47% wow! But we were 5-21 from 3. we need to take it in way more! But we were outrebounded (how did that happen???) and outscored slightly in every quarter.

If we’re going to be outrebounded when we get z-bo in the lineup we have a real problem. we have now 2 of the top 10 rebounders in the league and we’re still getting killed in that stat.