Sign Now
by Stop-n-Pop on Sep 25, 2008 7:21 AM CDT
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As Wyn mentioned below, it looks like it's down to the Heat and Our Beloved Puppies.
This should be a no-brainer. Sign. Him. Now.
Guys like Blake Ahearn, Chris Richard, and Pooh Jeter are dime-a-dozen talents that can be picked up in a pinch during the season should a honest-to-god need for a 15th player arise. Hell, isn't that what the Skyforce is for?
Guarantee Mr. Livingston a 1 or 2 year deal and do it now. It's all up-side. If he can play, you just landed yourself a free lotto pick. If he can't...well, you sure as hell made a better play for success than keeping guys like Richard around. For example, what is Kris Lang doing these days?
Sign. Now.
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SnP-
Do you have any idea why Pritchard and Portland were seemingly in the driver’s seat in this situation? It seemed like Minnesota had to just sit around and wait for KP to make his decision, rather than have the ability to sign him with the right offer. I wonder if we low-balled him with our original offer, if he’d rather play with more talent in Portland, or if he’s just weighing his options and any offer that KP sent him would have been met with a “let me get back to you after I talk to McHale.” It was frustrating to wait for KP to make up his mind, as if all free agents are on Pritchard’s clock.
My sense was that Portland's just a more attractive team to play for.
They’re better right now, most agree they have a higher ceiling, and their front office is top notch. None of those are digs on the Wolves, I just think they make us less attractive.
I think the only “low-ball” Livingston will get is a partial guarantee. It doesn’t seem anyone’s willing to give him more than the minimum, but I’d be surprised if teams weren’t willing to guarantee this year and make the 2nd year to the team’s advantage (team option or partial guarantee).
With regard to Miami, not only did ClipperSteve link to Ira Winderman saying he didn’t think the Heat would go after Livingston because of health, but there’s also their depth chart and potential signing of Marbury if he gets bought out (which looks like a toss-up at this point). They already have Banks, Chalmers and Quinn. Can’t imagine they’d look seriously at Livingston.
I guess that’s the sense I’ve gotten, but there is so little being reported on it that it’s hard to tell. To me, though, the reasons that Porltand probably shot him down are the same reasons that he should not have wanted to play there—namely, Brandon Roy, Jaryd Bayless, Rudy Fernandez, Steve Blake, and Sergio Rodriguez. Granted, he has the potential to be better than all of those players, but unless and until he gets healthy, he’s not as good as any of them. Minnesota has much less in his way to quick playing time, once he gets in decent shape.
Agreed
EXCEPT that Livingston has the potential to be better than Brandon Roy.
I really think Brandon Roy will be in the Paul/Williams echelon of upcoming stars/future faces of the league.
RESIST. URGE. TO… That’s why I was ecstatic when I heard David Stern say that the Wolves selected Roy… DAMN… I tried, I really did.
ha
Yeah, that was probably just careless typing on my part. It would take a full recovery from the knee injury and a lot of development in Shaun’s game for him to reach Roy’s level of excellence. But—he is a 6’7" pure point guard, and it’s hard to tell how good he could become, since there isn’t much to compare that to, aside from Magic Johnson.
Or Marko Jaric ;-)
Just kidding, if healthy he would be somewhere in between. Like I said I really hope he makes it back into the league, unfortunately not in Portland.
St. Bayno's 120 Haiku Prospects: Nicolas Batum in the paint—prairie grass, blown by wind. Jerryd Bayless—leaps over a kite string, and keeps going.
I think Portland passed for a few reasons...
First, they are already the league’s biggest MASH unit. Oden, Roy, and even their 1st pick Bayless were all injured at some point during last season. Roy is currently out, Oden is…well, no one knows.
Second, take a look at their cap/contract situation. They are already big spenders and another guaranteed contract does them nothing. Randolph got a non-guaranteed contract (from what I can tell).
I think that Pritchard appears to be in the driver’s seat because he is the golden boy GM of the league and everybody assumes that Portland is the place to be for young talent. What people don’t spend a lot of time on is talking about how they finished the year with a similar stretch as the Wolves and they have a ton of young and hurt players that have not played together a lot. Good luck with that. I may be one of the few people that would not switch out entire rosters with the Blazers. I’d love to have Oden, but beyond that, I just don’t see it.
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Boo.
I love the Wolves more than the Blazers and I’m very happy and excited about our roster, but I think it’s insane to think that we have a better roster than them at this very moment. We’ve got just as many injury concerns as they do (Foye, Telfair, McCants, Carney, Collins, Madsen, Al and Love), we’re both very young, they’ve had more time together and they’ve been more successful.
Foye/Telfair
Miller/McCants
Gomes/Brewer/Carney
Love/Smith/Cardinal
Jefferson/Collins/Madsen/Booth
Blake/Bayless/Rodriguez
Roy/Fernandez
Webster/Outlaw/Batum
Aldridge/Frye/Diogu
Oden/Przybilla/LaFrentz
A couple big questions for Portland’s long-term success will be:
1) How healthy of a career will Greg Oden have?
and
2) How many of those guys listed above can be re-signed when that time comes?
If Oden has a healthy career and Portland can keep him and Roy-Aldridge-Fernandez, it could be a dynasty in the works. I have to say, that’s more than I anticipate for Minnesota, unless somebody wins Most Improved Player in 2008-2009.
With the comment below...
…IE. I’m guessing work has some sort of block on that function. Hopefully, thanks to the new Firefox USB plug in feature, that won’t be a problem in the future.
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My intuition...
is that Livingston personally wanted to play for Portland. Supposedly McHale flew to Chicago with Randy and Big Al to make the pitch. Would you do that only to low ball him? I’d be very surprised if the Wolves offer isn’t the best on the table but Livingston is reluctant to take it for whatever reason.
I hope he gets over that and comes to town. This Wolves group certainly seems like a good bunch of guys that players will enjoy playing with (McCants excluded). Get ’em here and win them over.
I've yet to see...
…any confirmation from the Livingston camp that the Blazers have dibs. I think that’s just a blogger/media creation.
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Not that surprising that Portland would be preferred to the wolves
I mean, if you played your entire career for the clippers, wouldn’t you think that finding an organization that is well run and appears to be heading in the right direction pretty important?
And don’t you think that Cassell had some pretty choice words for the wolves organization while he was playing in LA with SL?
I still hope he comes here, but Miami is potentially stiff competition. If Miami wants him (seems like they need a PG to play NOW and by all accounts SL isn’t ready), who wouldn’t want to live there, there’s a lot of talent on that roster, a true superstar with a ring, and no state sales tax. Hard to beat.
For some reason...
…I can’t reply to an above post with the reply button, but I’m not saying that I don’t think Portland has some very, very nice talent; I’m simply saying I wouldn’t swap out rosters. Oden yes, roster no.
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By the way
what’s he doing up there, giving a motivational speech or something? Nice jacket, maybe he hasn’t signed because he was appalled by what McHale was wearing in Chicago.
The photo
That photo was from late last season – Shaun thanked the Clipper fans for supporting him, and promised that he was working hard and would be back. I guess not with the Clippers though.
In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. - Elwood P. Dowd
by Steve Perrin on Sep 25, 2008 11:16 PM CDT up reply actions
Hopefully...
…it will be with the Wolves.
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