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In a couple of recent games I've seen, it looks like Jamal defers to Austin now, so Austin is the one who dribbles out possessions to create for himself.

He's having his best year so the mantle for instant offense from the bench is being passed?

Austin is more than an instant offense kind of player, and he doesn't dribble out possessions that often anyway. But whenever he does, he's welcome to do it if he maintains the efficiency which with he's done it so far, he's scoring .94 PPP in his isolations, which puts him in the 70th percentile with pretty much the same numbers as Harden, Lebron, Melo and Butler among others. So he's very good.

NBA 2017 MIP.

he is pretty much a poor mans Kevin Martin. He is effective when its only expected of him to play SG and score. He is incredibly painful to watch as a PG running an offense.

kevin martin was an awful defender and a fantastic shooter who devoured people at the line. they are not alike at all

Can this horrible contract become great value for money if he remains consistent? Very late bloomer but he is heading in the right direction!

It was never a horrible contract, just people didn't evaluate him properly for a variety of reasons. He wasn't that late a bloomer either, he's pretty much the same age as some rookies people are excited about like Buddy Hield, Malcolm Brogdon or Denzel Valentine, and his development is far ahead of all of them. I've said it a few times here, but if his last name was Smith instead of Rivers, people would be ecstatic we got such a steal for Reggie Bullock and what is projected to be the 54th pick in the coming draft.

Brogdon is pretty good for a rookie. He creates shots for others, isn't really looking to score himself as much.

Oh yeah, I love Brogdon, I wanted us to draft him if you look at the draft threads here in June. But Austin is a more developed player at this stage, specially defensively.

getting tired of people thinking his contact is bad

Well at the start of the thread, just 6-7 months ago, it seems the initial reactions to the contract weren't that favorable.

I never thought it was so bad, because as I told people it didn't really change anything when it came to the teams ability to sign players. I had been tracking his improved 3PT shooting since the end of last season and felt that if that continued and he improved elsewhere, based on the contracts handed out, he wasn't really a bad one; he just needed to play SG, not PG. It was the Jamal contract that I had a problem with and still do. We needed to choose one of them and didn't need both, especially not Jamal on a large multi year.

Ah well..

wco81 wrote:Well at the start of the thread, just 6-7 months ago, it seems the initial reactions to the contract weren't that favorable.

both initial and current reactions will likely stay unfavorable. the people who didn't like him then don't like him now. it has nothing to do with his contract size and everything to do with the name on the back of his jersey. clearly that, along with all the hate, is not going to change no matter how much better the guy gets.

og15 wrote:I never thought it was so bad, because as I told people it didn't really change anything when it came to the teams ability to sign players. I had been tracking his improved 3PT shooting since the end of last season and felt that if that continued and he improved elsewhere, based on the contracts handed out, he wasn't really a bad one; he just needed to play SG, not PG It was the Jamal contract that I had a problem with and still do. We needed to choose one of them and didn't need both, especially not Jamal on a large multi year.

Ah well..

Yeah, the main problem I thought, and it's only more evident now, if you're gonna give 8 figures to a 23 y/o guy that only has mild interest from other teams, it better be the longest contract you can, so if he improves a lot you still retain him for cheap. As is, he's now improving and he can opt out after next year, so you have to give him an even bigger contract.

Have to give the guy credit. He has consistently developed his game each year. Not huge steps, but more than enough to be a solid to good rotation guy.

So he's right at the middle of his contract.

Since Austin is starting now, the contract isn't as bad as it seemed when he signed it in the summer of 2016.

If he continues to start though, he'll be due for a pretty good bump up in salary.

Would you give him a big extension after the 2018-19 season?

His 3-point shooting has improved since he joined the Clippers 3-4 years ago but he hasn't shown big improvement in other areas:

http://www.espn.com/nba/player/stats/_/id/6617/austin-rivers

His assist-to-turnover ratio is not so great, though his minutes have steadily gone up.

Austin does the same things as Pat Beverley and is 80-90% as good. About the same offensively but Pat's by far the better defender. Austin's redundant. We may have to re-sign him just to keep the talent level up but he'd probably be more valuable to some other team.

As a starter, he's at 13.6 ppg and shooting 47.2% from 3. He probably won't keep to JJ levels, but if he can keep shooting over 40% from distance, he's far from a liability. And in fairness to him, he's still deferring to Beverley and Gallo as the youngest starter, adapting to them rather than concentrating on his own game. With his dad the coach, he's still in a No Man's Land of being aggressive with his shot and bewaring shooting too much. You can see the hesitation, the mind whirling. He'd probably be more productive elsewhere.

The first possession of the spurs game tonight tells all you need to know about Austin.

donemilio21 wrote:The first possession of the spurs game tonight tells all you need to know about Austin.

Perhaps a little premature. Austin's been making a liar out of people ever since he got here.

The title should be changed to "Clippers Re-Sign Trash to $35M Over 3 Years."