I just looked at his stats for comparison. The fact that he lost his starting job to an athlete like Moon doesn’t mean that much. Kapono was still a rotation player and played 1533 minutes. He was 57-118 (48%) on threes, but for all those minutes, that’s not a whole lot of attempts. He did score a good number of points in those minutes, and was 186-380 on 2s. Kapono is mobile and can get up shots. One thing about his numbers is that other teams were presumably taking away his 3pt looks, and the Raptors have Bosh but not much else down in the post, so they probably weren’t facing a ton of double teams. And with Kapono’s success (with Shaq) in Miami and his big contract, it’s the type of situation where teams weren’t going to leave him open, ever. That opens up opportunities for a guy like Calderon.

The Clips have already added Gordon and Ricky Davis, players who should be better 3 pt shooters than anybody on last year’s roster. And then there’s Baron, who chucks up a few, but he also makes his share and hits a lot of daggers and big shots. So let’s say that all three of those guys are as good or significantly better (Gordon) shooters than the team from last year. So now they add a player who is a full cut above, one of the elite shooters in the league.

I think one of the big issues will be what other teams do with Kaman. Baron Davis will make everybody else better, including Kaman. Kaman will be the team’s focal point in the half-court. It seems clear, and Dunleavy has mentioned this, that Camby should be complementary because he’s a perimeter guy who doesn’t play in the post so much. This solves the question of how the offensive distribution was going to work between Kaman and FElton if they were to play together (which would have been a high class problem). The upcoming season is going to be about Baron Davis first, but Kaman is going to be a huge factor, and stocking the roster with guys who can make shots (Gordon, Novak) and score points (Davis, Thornton) is the next important step, especially with defense/rebounding covered by Camby and Skinner.

I mean he wasn’t even a rotation player on a team with below average forwards – Battier, Scola, Landry and Chuck Hayes. Of those guys, only Battier has any perimeter shooting ability. Our forward rotation is much stronger, and TT and Ricky Davis are pretty good at shooting the 3. Unless TT or Ricky gets hurt or traded, I don’t see Novak getting off the bench much. Depending on who else we sign, he might not make the active roster.

I agree Jordan is a worthwhile project, but I’m skeptical the Clips will keep him around long enough to find out how good he can be. In the last 15 years, Marko Jaric is the only Clipper 2nd round pick that survived three seasons with the Clips. Davis and Ewing are the only two that made it two seasons. That reflects awful drafting but also poor player development.

Good point about Kaman’s post game, and I agree that perimeter shooting will be much more important to our offense than at any time in recent memory. I can’t wait to see our starting 5 in action this year. Their health and play is of course much more important than who fills out the bottom of our roster. But the West is going to be very competitive, and injuries are just about inevitable. We need to develop young players to provide quality depth.

I hope Novak turns out to be just the kind of under-appreciated but highly skilled prospect that I think Fazekas, Williams and P. Davis are. Maybe I’ll even end up watching Fazeke play here in Charlotte. He has to be better than Jermareo Davidson and Ryan Hollins.