Elton Brand Gives a Big Middle Finger to the Clippers – And Packs His Bags for Philly

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Fantasy Basketball, Free Agency, LA Clippers, Philadelphia 76ers, Player News
Posted on: July 9th, 2008

Well, that was a quick moment of relevance for the LA Clippers. A week after Baron Davis opted out of the final year of his contract and signed a 5 year $65 million contract with Los Angeles, Brand has walked away from his verbal agreement with the Clips and, according to the LA Times, signed a five year $82 million contract with the 76ers. This was after Brand’s agent, David Falk, said that he was opting out of the final year of his contract to “give the Clippers more payroll flexibility to strengthen the team around Brand.” The Sixers offer was apparently on par with that of LA’s, so someone – and the word on the street is that it’s Falk – really, really despises the Clippers. I mean, it’s like he can’t even stand the way the Clippers smell.

Sixers

This signing basically completes the 76ers roster for next season and leaves the Clippers in shambles, so it’s really only worth discussing the fantasy implications for the Sixers at the moment.

Brand will presumably slide into the PF spot on the Sixers and immediately become their best player (no offense, Andre Iguodala). While his legs have seen better days, he should still be able to keep up with the young guys and becomes the low post threat that the Sixers sorely lacked last year. Brand is still good enough to be a 20-10 guy (ok, maybe a 20 and 9 guy) while shooting 50% from the floor on just about any team, including this one.

Andre Miller’s scoring will certainly drop from the career high 17.1 a game he averaged last season – and back to the 13ish range that he has averaged most of his career. With Brand now fronting a lot more of the offense, Miller can focus on his PG duties, which will hopefully boost his assists back into the 8+ a game range (they fell to 6.9 last season). The trade for Brand also puts the Sixers in clear “win now” mode, which is good for Miller’s status with the team and his playing time – at the unfortunate expense of Louis Williams (we might have to console Nels – I believe he was in the running for the vice presidency of the Louis Williams fan club).

We’ll have to wait to see how much, if at all, Andre Iguodala is hurt fantasy-wise from this trade. Word on the street is that he could move to the SG position, which would allow Thaddeus Young move to his more natural SF position and Willie Green to his more natural bench position. Iguodala’s game is so well-rounded that I think he’ll be ok even if he loses a few touches on offense and a rebound a game because of the move to SG. Young will be a nice sleeper going into the year who will improve on his rookie season, as long as the minutes are there for him. And Samuel Dalembert… who the hell knows? I’d be afraid that he might regress a little bit by playing alongside a great player like Brand, but the opposite could be true.

Clippers

Does Baron Davis want a do over on this one? The poor Clippers just can’t catch a break. In additional to losing Brand, the icing on the irony cake is that Corey Maggette jetted to the Warriors on the same day. That leaves them with a starting 5 of Baron Davis, Cuttino Mobley, Tim Thomas, Al Thornton, and Chris Kaman. Not exactly a group I’d want to go into battle with.

But the Clippers offseason is far from over. Just ask Mike Dunleavy: “Now, we’ll just have to go out and find new good players.”

Wow, I never knew it was that easy. The Clippers DO have the cap space and are supposedly going to be meeting with Josh Smith and Emeka Okafor, so something good could be in store for them*. But as long as the Clippers have their current roster in place, Al Thornton really starts to shimmy his way up draft boards. To be continued…

* Although the amount of goodness exuded by Emeka Okafor is very debatable

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