It just so happens that two teams dumped our precious 20/10 player. Btw Gordon is not a of

This notion of too many bigs is ridiculous. When has a team ever had too many bigs? Ask Houston if they wished they went into the Lakers series with too many bigs, or with 6’6" Chuck Hayes playing center.

The Clippers do need another solid wing, so trading one of the bigs to meet that need would make sense. But if the team stands pat and goes into the season as ts, it won’t be a catastrophe. Kaman and/or Camby are bound to miss games at some point. Plus, platooning them 24 minutes each is probably the best way to go with them if they do both stick around. There will be plenty of minutes to go around.

I do think it is important to get BG into the flow quickly, though. I’m for starting Griffin and bringing in Zach off the pine.

And yes, I think EJ at the point is workable in some sets. Believe it or not, AT did pretty well at the 2 in the VERY limited time he put in there.

There is no such thing as too many bigs.

If Kaman is as injured as he’s been over the last two years, and if we can manage to get some other minor injuries to Camby and the rest, we’ll be okay, right? Except, that’s kind of a morbid way to look at it. In fact, with guys playing less minutes, they’ll be less likely to be injured. Who would be most likely to sulk? The main guy who will have to take a pay cut in minutes, ZBO. If we’re winning, this situation will be a lot easier to manage.

Another possible reason for uproar will be if Griffin doesn’t get enough minutes, as EJ didn’t early in the season last year.

We could easily survive at the 4 & 5 if either Kaman or Camby are traded, it’s just that when you put all of your talent in 2 positions, you ultimately have too much talent sitting on the bench, you don’t give your team it’s best chance to win. If we do nothing however, which we may be forced to do, we will definitely be able to withstand injuries. We will be a less likely to make a bad trade, and maybe chemistry will be hurt some, though Kaman leaving may have the least impact in that regard, the only guy left from previous Clipper playoff glory.

The main thing is, if we keep them all we just have to run more, that’s the only way to use these guys, even if it does expose our backup options at the 1,2,&3 a bit.

Summer league is going to be fun.

i think we can afford to lose either kaman or camby.

we are going to trade one of them. zach comes off in 2 years anyway, so i really dont think its that big of a deal. zach played center for the knicks too… at least sort of seeing as david lee sort of plays center also.

so if we say got rid of kaman or camby, and we had blake and randolph in the game at the same time, its pretty easy to see them doing the same thing as david lee and randolph did in ny.

I think all of us would be pretty happy with 45 win season for a while until camby and randolph come off the cap. in 2-3 years we’ll have a more mature core of blake, deandre, al and eric, and i think that that is a pretty strong core just as a lot of the western conference “powers” get old (i.e. kobe will bel ike 33 by then with a roster full of bloated salaries like a 32 year old lamar)

If potential injuries are a concern and we don’t want to become too thin up-front, then we really should be concerned about how thin we are at the wings. Baron, Gordon, and AT all have had some significant injuries the past 18 months and without any remarkable back-up players to replace them.

Camby, Kaman and DJordon one of them will and should go. I would keep Kaman, I still believe that he can be an elite center, and DJordon for his youth, length and rebounds.

Camby is a great citizen and player but he will head back to the east coast when his contract expires and I don’t want to be left with only one good center.

Looking back over Clipper history, I am nearly always excited when we have a player tied up for more than a couple of years.

If we can get a talented, long SF to mix in with Thorton we have a deep team all around.
Skinner, Randolph and Griffin can all back up at center
.

Last year it was Nick Fazekas. Then when the bad men sent Nick away, he pouted for awhile until he found Steve Novak, only Steve had some bad holes in his game and Zhiv fell out of love. Zhiv was angry and crying all the time but then he found DeAndre. DeAndre Jordan? DeAndre might also have a few flaws but he’s really really tall… and has all that extra-ordinary upside. This time, Zhiv’s pretty sure it’s forever.

I agree with a lot of what you said particularly The Young Clipper and DeAndre Jordan. We have a serious group of guys there and they have great personalities which means great spirit which is great for the Clippers (If Dunleavy who’s a stiff doesn’t snuff it out). The reason the absent chatter about all these terrific young Clippers and the great Vets they’ve stockpiled is that most of the writers and fans around the country pay absolutely no attention to the Clippers. They BS about them because they must seem to know about every team. I once told Vescey that he was full of crap with a rumor that Shaq was signing with the Clips and he accused me of being put up to it by Stephan A. Smith & Mitch Lawrence, I don’t know any of them. Around the country the Clippers are a joke, Simmons isn’t wrong. The last two years they stunk out the joint mainly because of injury but nobody ever mentions that cause to them the Clippers alway stink. One less team to do homework about. This is a really great group of young players to me the real question is Dunleavy. He picked them, I give him that, he also picked Korolev and I still can’t understand that other then Dunleavy’s huge ego. He is now a terrible coach. He doesn’t get “it”. Maybe he knows too much. He is why Elton left (not that it worked for him) because he didn’t want to play for Mike Dunleavy and Dunleavy knew it. He blew a lot of games last year. The number of times that his outmatched team had a run going, catching up or pushing ahead he’d call a Time Out, maybe needed. He’d make an adjustment and give them some “motivation” or whatever. When play started again the rally was over and the Clips were flat and it was over. It happened too many times to blame anyone but the Coach. He turned them off. Now he has the Prize in the package but he stinks with rookies and we wouldn’t have known what we do about Gordon, Taylor or Jordan or Thornton the year before if it wasn’t for injuries. Mike Dunleavy does not play Rookies (unless forced by fate). Thursday they interviewed him on ESPN after he picked the consensus #1 Draft Player in the NBA (BTW he lost reportedly at least 40% of his fan base and season ticket-holders) pathetic, no excitement, no pleasure, no pride, no promo. A fool. And this guy will coach this hot hand of young players and inspire them to do or die for good old Donald T. Sterling. Word is they were so excited to have the first pick and all the appropriate media coverage (and usually if they had their drothers the sports writers don’t or wouldn’t even mention much less say anything nice about the Clips) they serve them for the Draft Day Coverage Chicken Wing and Taco Chips. How to win friend and influence people. What schmucks. Let us pray for a healthy, fun and successful 2009-10 Season.

A little perspective is needed when evaluating our players. Let’s be thankful our last three 1st rounders weren’t Swift, Petro and Sene, or we didn’t tie up our cap space trading for Gana Diop and Nazr Mohammed.

Watching Mr. Flippy doink easy shots may be incredibly frustrating at times. No man should ever miss so much time with the flu. Some of his quotes and actions are not PC to fans who would give anything just to have his seat on the bench. He’s different so that makes him a target. But I like the fact that Kaman isn’t a clone of every other NBA player. I’ll take his eccentricities any day over the gloom of enduring an Olowokandi or a Benjamin or the frustration of watching Stanley Roberts eat himself out of a career.

To add to the myth debunking, a team’s talent does not need to be perfectly balanced in order to win. Rarely are even the best teams balanced. Is an aging Derek Fisher an acceptable starting PG for a championship team? Did Orlando really make the finals without a true power forward? Both teams made the most of the talent they had, and they did not let their weaknesses become excuses for failure.

With a bit of creativity, all the Clippers’ bigs will get their chance to shine. Maybe Dunleavy needs them all to avoid the temptation of running them into the ground as he did to Camby last December and early January when he averaged over 38 minutes a game. Replace that criminal neglect and mismanagement with fewer minutes per game and the Shaq treatment for both Camby and Kaman. Suddenly finding minutes for DJ isn’t difficult. Blake is our future star, but he hasn’t played an 82 game season yet. He and Randolph can split 48 minutes a game, and we will have one of the best frontcourts in Clipper history. Maybe they’ll even stay healthy enough so 3 or 4 of them can be counted on to play most nights.

After all the horrendous basketball the Clippers have given us the last two seasons, it seems many of us are focused only on fixing the perceived problems while discounting the strengths. Maybe we’re right not to give in to the same optimism of last year, but the pendulum has swung too far.

The Clippers have the talent to challenge anyone. They will succeed to the extent that they can coalesce into an organized unit that plays to its strengths. With last year’s debacle and our coach’s past stubborn reluctance to innovate, I have no illusion everything is about to magically fall into place. Still, all the puzzle pieces we need are in the box right now.