I love our team, period, without Josh Smith. I will always remember him as an outstanding performer in the playoffs and when it really mattered and not so much by his shooting % or anything else really. My question is, why leave? I have not seen or heard a clear answer to this. Smith is being paid almost the same on the Clippers as he was with the Rockets. Smith will probably receive around the same minutes and the same role. Smith and Howard knew each other on a personal level and excelled when on the court together. Houston came back and defeated the clippers 4-3 in the playoffs after a historic come back.. and he joins the CLippers the next off season? Discuss.
Go back and find the threads on Josh leaving. It's been covered. From what I recall it was basically the guarantee to be the first big man off the bench for LAC versus a very cloudy PF situation here.
Discussions broke down about headband proprietary. Only Paul Pierce wears a headband for the Clippers.
The principle of Bev and Brewer, who'd have comparable role/PT as Josh, getting considerably more 3-4 times more $ per year (which is dumb because he's still getting paid by Detroit)
More guaranteed playing time = more guaranteed hero ball chuck time. He's gotta get off 15 shots in 25 minutes to get that long-term Clippers money from Doc "I'm neither a GM nor a doctor" Rivers.
Josh couldn't handle the pressure of championship expectations, which would've lead to more chucking and throwing balls out of bounds.
Obviously he feels he was treated with disrespect by us not making him a priority to resign and giving KJ MLE after he showed up pretty big for us in our playoff run. I'd feel disrespected. I guess he wanted to go to the Clippers to stick it to us. Will miss his post defense, rebounding and passing, but not the rest.
I really think (and I'm not claiming this is fact, just my thoughts) that Morey did the same thing with Terry as he did with Smith. Made them an offer and left it on the table for them to take or leave. It worked for Terry, he wanted to get more but didn't want to leave and eventually settled for Moreys offer. Morey probably hoped it would work for Smith and Smith probably took offense to the strategy while they went out and made offers for Bev and Brewer. In the end I'll never understand why Morey didn't communicate more and pass on KJ to retain Smith.
Nothing to discusss...that's not accurate or guaranteed, so he left somewhere he'd play and look good to get a new deal later.
If he felt disrespected by us, then he probably felt disrespected by all the other teams in the league also. No one stepped up to give him a big contract offer, did they? I think he may feel he will get more playing time with the Clippers. If he has a solid year with the Clippers, maybe he can get some team to give him a nice offer next summer. I'm not upset with Josh. He was a good teammate, and made a contribution.
Jones/Motiejunas (whichever doesn't start) and Capela are far superior to LA's reserve bigs. Smith might receive the same minutes in LA that he did in HOU last year, when the Houston rotation was never healthy at the same time. However, his outlook for playing time moving forward was much clearer with the Clippers.
