How much 'upside' does Josh Smith has? That's the kicker-

[madmaxmedia]

Okay, the Clippers are interested in Josh Smith, and based on the fact that they've had meetings I think Josh Smith is at least open to joining the Clippers (or interested in signing a big offer sheet that Atlanta might match, same difference.) He does not seem bulky enough to play the 4, but I've often read that the 4 is probably the best position for him, so let's go with that.

We also know the key here is not to make an offer that will make Josh Smith happy, but to make an offer that Atlanta will be hard-pressed to match. Knowing that, I think the Clips will have to make a near-max or max contract offer to Smith to realistically have a chance of actually bagging him. Yes, take a deep gulp and offer the same amount of money we were hoping to re-sign Elton Brand with.

I think Josh Smith's current production is clearly not worth a max contract- he's simply not in that echelon of players, the difference makers, the marquee players.

But...he's a four year player who left after high school, so is still very young. Perhaps he will improve over the years and at least come reasonably close to justifying a max contract? (in addition to being an exciting young player who along with BDiddy can sell tickets?) And it's not like if really matters if we pay him $13 or $18 million, does it?- the Clippers are going to be up against the cap either way and will have to rely on MLE's from here on out.

The bottom line is- are you willing to sign him to a max or practically-max offer? I think anything less is jerking around as Atlanta will match. What say you?

[JJ LoDuca]

Madmax, I feel the exact same way you do. I like Josh Smith, but I don't know enough about him to accurately estimate his worth. This I do know: he ain't worth Brand-type money, but that is what we'd have to pay him to pry him away from the ATL. As a fan, I'd like to see Smoove here...even if we do sorely overpay.

[madmaxmedia]

The one thing I will say is that I saw some nice highlight YouTube clips. The guy can throw down some nasty blocks and dunks.

There's obviously so much more to basketball than that, but I'm wondering about the overall squad if we were to sign him. BDiddy, Smith, Kaman, Thornton, Gordon...we might not be championship caliber, but I think we could truly enjoy watching and grow to really love this team, and maybe make at least 1 good run at some point before BDiddy runs out of gas.

If you just give me something to root for, something I can enjoy watching, some real passion, I'm happy with that. I don't need a championship to be happy rooting for the Clippers. One of my favorite seasons was in 2000-2001, when we had all those young guys. They played hard, they ran a lot, and they ended up with a pretty darn good record in the second half consider the average age of their starters was UNDER 21.

[GuyverX]

I wasn't really big on Josh Smith before the Clippers started contacting him. I just don't think his offensive game is up to par in demanding a max contract...which, like you said madmax, is what they'll have to offer him. But at some point you kind of just have to take a risk in young players that have the potential--especially when you have a team that is geared to winning now instead of just rebuilding. If we didn't sign Baron I would say no, there's no point in going after him because we wouldn't have much of a chance in the west anyway and Josh Smith is not really the type of guy who is a franchise player right now.

I honestly think if we pair Davis, Kaman and Smith we'll have a very exciting team with a good chance not only to make the playoffs but to be competitive in the first round. We can wait around forever for the young guys to develop and maybe we get lucky in the next few drafts but Baron only has a few more years left of being an elite PG. Honestly, I would give him the money we were set to give Brand and hope 17/8 becomes 20/10 and that his FG% improves playing with Baron. I think Davis and Smith would be a pretty darn exciting combo.

[Tucker74]

I honestly think if we pair Davis, Kaman and Smith we'll have a very exciting team with a good chance not only to make the playoffs but to be competitive in the first round. We can wait around forever for the young guys to develop and maybe we get lucky in the next few drafts but Baron only has a few more years left of being an elite PG. Honestly, I would give him the money we were set to give Brand and hope 17/8 becomes 20/10 and that his FG% improves playing with Baron. I think Davis and Smith would be a pretty darn exciting combo.

That's where I'm at now with this whole Elton thing behind us and Baron's arrival along with Smith's potential signing. At the least, we are relevant and potentially fun to watch and it's been a couple of years since you could say that about us. So ideally I wouldn't build a team around Baron or Smith but given the circumstances they'll be a fun group to watch run up and down the court; provided Dunleavy let' them.

My greatest concern isn't with the Smith offer. It will be what it is but tying up our cap room for a week assuming the Hawks wait to the very last minute to decide to match. In the event that they do match, then we are potentially screwed not only out of Smith but the next best alternatives as well. I guess the flip side is that we're the only game in town money-wise and maybe the market will wait for things to play out.

[tontoz]

As far as Smiths game goes he is defeinitely best suited for the 4. He can sometimes be overpowered by bigger 4s but overall he plays good D. D is something he takes pride in and he doesn't like being shown up. Nobody is going to have much success trying to take advantage of Smith.

Plus he is obviously a great help defender and can disrupt opponents fast breaks better than anyone i have ever seen.

But.... he gets in his own way. He has a lot of desire and wants to be an all around player which is good. The problem is he just doesn't have the skills to be an all around player. he doesn't have any range on his jumper but insists on shooting long 2s and 3s which he shooots at a horrible clip and kills his shooting percentage. Plus he tries to hard to be a playmaker at times and will throw low percentage passes near the basket just to show his passing skills when he should be looking to finish. Most of these passes wind up in turnovers but they look great when they get through.

He posted up for the first time this season with some success, although he tended to settle for shooting quick shots over bigger players instead of being patient and trying to get around them. He needs to use his athleticism, be patient, keep his pivot foot and try to get all the way rim. When he did this he had good success.

He doesn't have great handles but he can beat most 4s off the dribble fairly consistently, as he showed in the playoffs against Garnett. If he ever decides to stop hanging around outside on offense it will make a huge difference in his game. he could be a real force on the offensive glass if he played inside more.

He just isn't a max player. I would be ok with paying him $13 million/yr but more than that is really pushing it. Really i think he is worth more like $11-12 million /yr.

[madmaxmedia]

Thanks for the post tontoz. Your salary range seems to be the general consensus. So for the Clippers to actually get him, they will have to offer more.

Maybe not max (I don't even remember the exact number on that), but in the range of $15 to $16, something like that.

My greatest concern isn't with the Smith offer. It will be what it is but tying up our cap room for a week assuming the Hawks wait to the very last minute to decide to match. In the event that they do match, then we are potentially screwed not only out of Smith but the next best alternatives as well. I guess the flip side is that we're the only game in town money-wise and maybe the market will wait for things to play out.

I think that concern will the case whomever we go after. And right now it seems to be focused on only 2 targets anyway- Smith or Okafur. I would prefer Smith, he's a few years younger and has better numbers/ athleticism. So I think the most important thing to do is to really go for it, if that's what they do decide to do. The worst case scenario is sign him to a relatively low number, then get that money tied up for awhile until the Hawks inevitably match.

I would give him the money we were set to give Brand and hope 17/8 becomes 20/10 and that his FG% improves playing with Baron. I think Davis and Smith would be a pretty darn exciting combo.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking. He doesn't have to be a 28PPG scorer for us or anything. IF he can increase his effectiveness (as tontaz says), then that will do for us, combined with defense.

After that, who knows- maybe the year after we can pull off a Lakers maneuver and trade some expiring contracts (Mobley, TT, etc.) for some decent if not Gasol-like help.

[conleyorbust]

tontoz breaks it down pretty nicely. I am a huge Smith fan but his production traditionally wouldn't warrant the max but the market is what it is.

When looking at his numbers and weakness, I would like to point out that he is often played as a small forward on offense because Josh Childress is played sort of as a post player (he is really our only effective bench player so there isn't much of a choice). I think if we played Smith down low for the 15-20 minutes a night of overlap, he would should a few % pts higher and grab near another offensive rebound.

I think thats significant in this case because he wouldn't necessarilly be in that situation in LA where there are a bunch of rotation players who can space the floor.

LA seems like a good fit for him if you do sign. Kaman could always cover the bigger, traditional low post players and Smith could handle the more perimeter based bigs. You'd have two help defenders as the last lines of defense too. On offense, he'd always be on the block or the high post where he is solid because he is quicker than most 4s. He'd also probably be playing off BDiddy which would limit the TOs (if you look, his TOs went down when Bibby arrived - they went back up in the playoffs but that is different scene altogether).

[CelicaLuva]

Great topic and I agree with most of the inputs. In terms of how Smith would complement the current team compared to the team with Brand and Maggette: while his shot selection could be questionable, he doesn't demand the shot as much. Check out the amount of shots attempted by the highlighted players when their respective teams made the playoffs:

Josh Smith: 14.0 (1.2 from 3pt in 07/08, 2.1 in 06/07) => 17.2 ppg
Elton Brand: 18.0 => 24.1 ppg

His percentage from long range is ugly (25% from 3pt), but from numbers and the couple of hawks games i've watched it appears he was willing to comply when it's beneficial to the team (with Joe Johnson & co. taking the shots, our equivalent would be Baron, Kaman and the young guys). That, in addition to Smith doing the utility work at the frontcourt, could bode well for Thornton, who can grow on his natural scoring ability and also take some heat off of him if he doesn't contribute as much in in other areas. If Brand stayed and all else being equal, Thornton would be asked to be more versatile and place less emphasis on scoring. A similar argument could be made for Gordon - when you have shooters and scorers you want to give them enough shots to go around.

In terms of the range of contract that he deserves, tontonz gave a very reasonable range and I concur with max, so seems like a contract of $14-15mil/yr is what we have to give at the very least. Correct me if this is not possible for larger contracts, but seeing warrior's contract for Turiaf I wonder if we can take advantage of Atlanta's near-term uncertainties and put pressure on them by making an offer to Smith that's more evenly loaded - meaning less yr-by-yr raises but making the starting salary higher. This could potentially make it harder for the Hawks to match without killing ourselves going forward.

[clipperfan4life]

josh smith will only get better as he develops, i just hope that the clippers get him with his potential! I think he was in the same draft class alongside livingston.

[madmaxmedia]

I'm thinking that it doesn't really matter cap-wise whether we pay $14 or $16 for him, since we will be up against the cap either way, and future significant signings will be via MLE.

I am also in favor of going ahead and signing Smith knowing we will overpay, because realistically you will have to overpay for any RFA, and I don't think the Clippers want to waste Year 1 of BDiddy's contract to see what UFA's might come up next year (whom we probably won't get anyway.) All these factors come into play here and are ultimately just as important alongside the nuts and bolts of Josh Smith's abilities and rough 'market value'.

So pretty much you either fold, or go all in. I say take a deep gulp, and make it $15 or $16 per year (with whatever other tweaks we can come up with within the contract), and we will have a decent shot of keeping him. If we sign him to $12 then it's just jerking around, Atlanta will surely match and we will have spun our wheels.

[UCFknight84]

You guys definitely should get him and play him at PF. excellent shot blocker/defender and can raise a teams defense just by his presence (similar to Posey)..he just needs to develop a consistent outside shot and hes the complete package

[JJ LoDuca]

You guys definitely should get him and play him at PF. excellent shot blocker/defender and can raise a teams defense just by his presence (similar to Posey)..he just needs to develop a consistent outside shot and hes the complete package

This is more or less the way I see it. We won't be relying on him to provide the bulk of our scoring like we did with our last PF, so I think that as long as Smith steps up and plays great defense and provides us with a few highlight-reel dunks a game, it would be a good signing.

[gsuteke]

If the ASG (Atlanta's ownership group) were to not match basically any offer for Josh Smith they'd be facing a PR nightmare in the City of Atlanta.