what i think of Caron as our starting 3… how good is he defensively?

Other than that, he actually plays defense and with passion. He doesn’t demand the ball much, feeds off of fast break and cleans up the boards well. I wish he would be in a Clippers uniform next year.

Butler and Prince are pretty similar players production wise. Prince is the better 3 point shooter and defender, Butler is slightly better rebounder, much better free throw shooter, and has the better ability to create his own shot. To me it really comes down to health. Prince has been pretty healthy throughout his career and Butler is coming off major knee surgery. In the end I’m guessing the Clippers end up with Butler because he’ll be cheaper and sign a shorter contract. And given the other SF options that might not be the worst course of action

With Butler you have high risk, but high reward tough offensive guy. If he plays like he did on the Mavs before injury? Wow. But who knows, thats why he should be had for a shorter, cheaper deal.

Prince is a more dependable glue guy, better shooter/defender, but probably wont have 30 pt outbursts like Butler can if EJ is struggling. What kind of contract will he demand, compared to Caron?

CARON BUTLER, SG (FREE AGENT — UNRESTRICTED)
Projection: 18.4 pts, 5.6 reb, 2.3 ast per 40 min; 13.88 PER | Player card

• Volume scorer who likes to take line-drive, midrange jump shots.
• Good build and can score in traffic. Quick release. Doesn’t see floor.
• Good hands on defense but middling effort. Uninspired team defender.

I had felt Butler’s volume shooting style was a deterrent to Dallas offensively because it subtracted touches from more efficient players; that Dallas replaced him after his injury with three players (Peja Stojakovic, J.J. Barea and DeShawn Stevenson) who shot far less but with a greater true shooting percentage dovetailed nicely with my theory.

Nonetheless, Dallas played extremely well for the 28 full games Butler was around. He averaged a point every two minutes and showed, at the very least, that his scoring could be an effective weapon on the right team. The rest of his sheet was largely empty, however. Butler had an unusually high turnover rate for a jump shooter and rarely set up teammates (he was 60th among small forwards in assist rate). His main feat was shooting 45.3 percent on long 2s — a shot he took, on average, once every five minutes.

Butler’s defensive reputation is poor, but it appeared he tried harder in Dallas than he did in Washington. His stats in a limited sample of games last season were very strong — an opponent PER of 10.5, one of the highest ratings among small forwards by Synergy, and a 5.3 points per 100 possessions differential. Given his unimpressive results in Washington, that’s likely just a small-sample outlier, but we should keep an open mind if the same data crops up again this season. That will be more difficult, alas, as Butler tries to recover from a serious knee injury. As a jump shooter, his offense might not suffer too much, but it might be increasingly difficult for a 31-year-old with a bad wheel to defend the position.

Well, that’s not very encouraging. Besides his health, I suppose it depends on what kind of deal we can get. I like that we’re getting started early in our hunt for a starting SF, but Butler is no glue guy.

he wants to be a Bull