The Clippers announced today that they had acquired guard Willie Green from the Atlanta Hawks for the rights to Sofoklis Schortsianitis, aka MBFGC. I guess now he's no longer MY Big Fat Greek Center -- he's somebody else's Big Fat Greek Center now.

Back in June, before free agency began, as I was perusing lists of free agents that might be reasonable targets for the Clippers shooting guard needs, Green initially caught my eye. However, for some reason I seemed to think he was bigger than he actually is -- he's listed at just 6'3", making him a bit undersized for a shooting guard, and the Clippers had plenty of those guys. However, as a less expensive alternative to Randy Foye, and with Mo Williams and Foye off to Utah, Green is a pretty nice pick up. This is a guy who started full time for a playoff team in Philadelphia in 2008.

You may be wondering why this transaction was a trade instead of a simple free agent signing given that Green was an unrestricted free agent. The likely explanation is that Green had other suitors who were willing to pay more than the veteran's minimum. The Clippers are over the cap and out of cap exceptions, which limited them to minimum contracts. It was therefore structured as a sign-and-trade, with the Clippers using one of their trade exceptions. It's unclear at this point which one they used, but it may not matter at this point. The roster is getting pretty crowded, the payroll is edging up to the tax threshold, and the only decent sized exception ($2.7M for the Al-Farouq Aminu trade) will expire in December, so it's unlikely that trade exceptions will have a major role for the roster at this point.

I'll be back in a bit with more analysis both on the roster as a whole and on the payroll situation.