I would rather try my luck with a player who does not make me cringe every time he attempts a basket. Camby is the new defensive specialist big, while defense should be provided by any of the top four guards. Do we really need Q to help out with defense while Thornton rests? I’ll take Williams

Marcus Williams. Watched him during summer league and he looks like a guy that can contribute on the offensive end. I think with the current make up of this team we don’t really need that perimeter defensive stopper because we got camby and kaman inside. Anothr thing that separates williams is his basketball IQ. He knows how to run the pick and roll, when to post up, when to give up the rock, he is not just a spot up shooter the way Q was. Dont get me wrong, love q, but i say give williams a chance to be another scorer off the bench who has the potential to be a good defender

I’d definitely opt for Q over Marcus. Like you said, Q is a known quantity and obviously very familiar with the defensive system. He’s not a NBA starter by any means, or even a first-off-the-bench type guy. But as a 9th-10th man and defensive specialist, he can be invaluable. Williams showed nothing all of last season. He had the Korolev “deer in headlights” look on him that never went away. If the role that’s up for grabs is “defensive specialist” I don’t see why we’d choose Williams whose ceiling is Q defensively. And I actually like Marcus Williams a lot.

My only worry about having Q on the team is Dunleavy. I’m just afraid that MDSr will play Q far too many minutes. Just like I don’t think MDSr will all of a sudden change his offensive philosophy to run and gun, nor will he drastically reduce his reliance on Blanket. So if MDSr is going to overuse Q as opposed to underuse Williams, I’d certainly have to choose the latter.

I wonder if we might re-sign Q right after the ink dries on the KaBuike offer sheet. We have his Bird rights so we can pay more than the minimum for him. Not that we should, but it does give the Clips an advantage if he’s only getting minimum offers from other teams.

I’m treading in JohnR’s territory, but I think that part of Q’s salary is picked up by the league somehow, so the dollar differential isn’t significant.
Q baffles me. Somehow he’s the all-time scoring leader at SMU, (or something like that—I’m not going to look it up.) Yet he’s not that tall, not that athletic, not much of a ball handler, and not much of a shooter. His greatest attribute in the pros is one that wasn’t even on the radar in college.
Last summer he’s supposed to have worked hard on his shot, and I think he did well in our first regular-season game. Perhaps with the offensive (in both senses) collapse he had too much pressure, and was asked to do more than hit the occasional defense-spreading 3 pointer, and wasn’t up to it. I dunno.
Howsoever, as a long-time Clippers fan, hope springs eternal here, and I hope/believe that Q can still find his offensive game, whatever’s left of it.
With Jordan and Gordon and Thornton we’ve got potential, and Williams seems hardly a lock. So I vote for Q.

I haven’t seen Williams yet.

The kid was a lock for the first round (and probably lottery) after his freshman season at Arizona. He dropped a lot in the draft b/c of his troubles his sophomore year at Arizona, but I think the instability of Lute Olson greatly contributed to his problems. I watch a ton of pac-10 ball, and this kid was absolutely legit. He’s got a decent shot, a good handle, and fantastic size.

The spurs are known to give up on their young players early. Just look at their late first/early second picks that they’ve either given away (I call that the “Camby”ed away) or just outright cut (Beno Udrih and Luis Scola amongst others).

Q was always overrated to me as a defender, and an absolute liability on offense. Those type of players need the perfect system to thrive, and he isn’t nearly as good of a shooter as “defensive specialists” like Bruce Bowen, Arron Afflalo, or Raja Bell. As alluded to above, I’m also scared that Dunleavy will play him 20-25 min per game like he has over the last few years (over Maggette!). I have no problem having him as a 10th player playing 6-8 minutes per game or in special situations, but not having him actually start or play more than one quarter.

Now that we have Camby on the inside along with Kaman 2.0, we can afford to give up a little offense. Marcus Williams could be a very productive role player in this league, and we shouldn’t give that up for a guy with absolutely no upside.

I still have nightmares about Q throwing up bricks against the Phoenix Suns back in the Clippers glory season. If this guy had any semblance of offense who knows how far we would’ve gone.

Since we’re cleaning house, I say dump him and go with the more unknown quantity in Williams, there had to be a reason San Antonio drafted him as a high 2nd rounder.

Sorry Q,

I’m done with QRoss. He did have some great defensive games on occasion, but I thought his defense was somewhat overrated, generally speaking, and not worth the offensive hole that he created. He got a ton of minutes and missed a whole lot of open shots, more than I would have expected. Seems like he was always on the verge of semi-respectable offensive productivity, even by the minimum standard, but he just never stepped up to it.

Williams might be okay. He got a slow start in summer league but seemed to finish strong. I’m guessing another guy or two will be at training camp and playing during the pre-season. Williams should have to make a decent showing there to make the team. With the potential arrival of Azu, do guys who are SF-PFs deserve a look, to guard the bigger SFs? Do Archibong or some of the other guys on the summer league team fit that mold? I wasn’t really asking that question before now.

Williams is probably the guy. Still hoping to find the next Bobby Simmons.

He’s a good perimeter defender and he had to cover for everyone mishaps on the defensive end years before. It’s hard to defend one guy when you have maggette leaving his man open every second of the shot clock.

But if we’re talking about money, then go w/ Williams. He’ll be cheaper but we’ll be burned by the perimeter elite guards.

Q is an above average defender, he’s smart and doesn’t make very defensive rotation mistakes, but he’s not exactly a shut down one on one defender in the mold of Bowen or Artest . Moreover, his lack of offense is glaring; allowing the defense to sag into the lane, his defender to help out on other shooters, and destroying our offensive spacing. At this point, it’s much better to let someone like Marcus Williams learn on the job, than to have another season with Q getting minutes. The guy had four years to learn how to nail a fifteen footer. If he can’t hit it by now, he never will.

I think Q is a great player if you know how to use him. With so many offensive threats in this new Clipper team, the only real concern for me is how are we going to stop the elite SG’s in the league right now. Q is a guy that can play as a starter when necessary as well as a solid player off the bench. He can make life difficult for teams like the Lakers who have so much offense from one position. In baseball there are highly paid players who play for one inning a game. They do that because they are elite at hitting or pitching but can’t handle the starter role. Finally Q Ross can now focus all of his attention as a defensive stopper. I definately don’t want any SG backup playing on Kobe to think for a second they can focus on anything but continuous defense. Q knows how to do this.

The Clippers fans (myself included) had high expectations for Q last year. When most were healthy (game 1-4) he showed improvement from the prior year. As his responcibilities increased, his offensive game disappeared. He is a defensive specialist – If he takes more than 5 shots a game, then he is overshooting. Who cares about the offense of a defensive specialist? He fits a roll that Dunleavy likes and needs, The Clippers have never had a good record once they took the lead in the first half. Third quarters last year were brutal. A more focused roll for Q Ross may actually help us control these runs or help us keep a lead. We just need to use him correctly.

I’m not sure who the 15th man will be or if there is even going to be one, but QRoss is really a top-of-the-line defender. He’s a guy who can defend virtually any PG-SF, with excellent lateral mobility. Why that doesn’t translate into more scoring is anyone’s guess. Perhaps last year he had less open opportunities or he forced up too many shots, no one really knows. It is interesting to note that his average minutes per game actually went down from 21 min in 06-07 to 19:48 min per game in 07-08, yet his FG % plummeted from 46.7% to 39.1%. There’s no real explanation from these simple stats, except that he sucked it up last year.
Nonetheless, I still believe role players have their roles in good teams. Like Clipper Steve says, he would be an important cog on a good team. Are a Clips a good team? Its hard to tell right now, but with Buke on board hopefully, it seems there’s at least an average amount of scoring. Marcus Williams is still unproven. QRoss can still be an important veteran presence on the team….now that he and Kaman are among the longest tenured Clips.
I’d argue he’s even better than an artest on defense, as he can stay with most PGs in the league, something Artest clearly cannot do. Why a guy like QRoss hasn’t been 1st team all-defensive, I don’t know.
Perhaps the better question to ask: QRoss or Livingston? Livingston is, as always: All potential, while QRoss has 0 potential, but a premier defender.

But that’s strictly a case of known knowns vs unknown unknowns.

As CS pointed out, a team with Q and Camby on the floor at the same time is playing 3 on 5. And so is a team pairing Q with Brevin Knight or even scarier – Q with Brevin and Powell and Jordan. And Q should not be taking minutes from Thornton, Buike, EG or even Cat.

I hope Q catches on somewhere else, but he isn’t a good fit on a team that already has so many non-scorers. I don’t know how good Williams can be, but he seems to be worth a shot as a development project and backup SF. There’s not much risk involved with getting him some more run in the D-League in case of an injury to Thornton, TT or Buike.

Apologize if this is easily found somewhere