With Dallas getting ready to aquire Eric Dampier, could we possible get C. Booth? Houston trades: C. Weatherspoon Dallas trades: C. Booth This could help both teams. When they make the Dampier trade, Dallas could use a back up power forward and we know Houston needs a back up center. Your thoughts?
We missed our chance on this. Seattle might have done a Booth for Spoon deal seeing how they took on the injury prone one dimensional Forston with an even longer contract (than Spoons), but Dallas isn't stupid enough to trade Booth for a similarly undersized, limited utility, back-up 4. Alternatively, a Booth for TE would have surely worked for Seattle, but we would have had to be willing to add the salary. Besides, Dallas needs all the interior defense they can get. Booth provides a valuable back-up and injury protection for Damp. We might be able to get Shawn Bradley for the TE
Weatherspoon as our third string PF can help us much more than Calvin Booth as our backup C. Seriously. Booth is not good at basketball at all. He's terribly injury prone to boot.
I don't agree with this. The only way Spoon will get any PT is if Howard or MoT have to play back-up C. Neither Howard or MoT are quite as undersized as Spoon, and both are much better offensive players. If we get a Booth, or say a Deke or Keon--there are no meaningfull minutes for Spoon to play. A center sub who can provide 15 minutes of shot blocking and be a modest defensive presence in the middle is much more important than Spoon as a mop-up minute 3rd string PF.
Maybe they would trade S. Bradley for E. Pailkowski. But I am not sure Shawn is the type of back up center Houston needs.
Spoon's hard work will make it difficult for JVG to keep him on the bench. Mo's defense and rebounding will make it difficult for JVG to keep him on the floor. I'm telling you guys; Clarence has a decent shot at overtaking Mo as the primary backup 4. He is not the liability that Booth, a set shooting, shotblocking, immobile robot would be.
I agree totally. Spoon's hustle & work ethic more than make up for Booth's 4" height advantage. I hadn't thought about it before, but maybe Spoon could play some backup 5.
Per minute basis, there is virtually no difference in Howard, Mot or Spoon's defensive rebouding. Spoon has a edge in ORPM over the other two, but you could argue this is mainly because he doesn't have the scoring abilities or shooting range so he stays close to the rim and focuses on OR for his offense. Further, JH and MoT are vastly superior offensive players, and a beg to differ Spoon can play better individual defense or make his opponents work as much as MoT or JH can on a 6"10 or taller dominant big (TD, KG, Webber, etc). In fact MoT, though no great shotblocker, still blocks almost twice as much as JH or Spoon. Spoon is a fine 3rd string PF, but he is not close to the caliber of player MoT (or JH) is. Right now he is a luxury compared to other needs. Of course we may end up using JH/MoT to back up Yao, so Spoon may get some minutes opened up at the 4, but I'd rather have a true back-up 5 with a defensive presence and give all the 4 minutes to JH/MoT.
What games were you watching last year? Spoon has a very nice shooting touch with range out to about 15 ' . I certainly don't think he has the offensive abilities that MoT or Juwan have but he certainly did not earn his 50% scoring average but just making lay ups either. You make it sound with that quote that Spoon's offensive game is similar to Cato's offensive game and that is just not true.
Amen brutha! As someone that watched him here in Dallas a couple of years ago I thought he was a waist of skin on a basketball court. That guy can block shots OK but he does not rebound and has worse offensive skills than Cato.
The thing about these C's is that they are just fine on a good team, but are crap when the team has to rely on them. Never expected him to do well for the Sonics. As a backup 5 for the Rockets, he'd be good. Just like Cato. However, I wouldn't swap Spoon with Booth. Booth makes around 18M over 3 years, while Spoon makes just under 12M for two seasons. I don't think Booth is worth that much money. I think the Mutombo deal is going to happen, and I think I'd artehr pay Mutombo 4.5M for one season, than Booth 18M over 3 seasons, here's why: 1) We only have 15 minutes to spare at C, and that's a best case scenario. You don't put a guy on the books for 3 years and 18M to play around 13 minutes per game. 2) Mutombo is actually a better player, even at this age. 3) We won't NEED someone of their calibre after this year according to Falsone: I say we get Mutombo, and bring in Badiane for peanuts... For one year, we get Mutombo to do his thing for 15 minutes while Badiane benefits from NBA coaching, learning from Mutombo and Yao, playing against NBA competition however rare that may be... Given his apparently stunning physical attributes, and a year of an NBA conditioning program, I'm sure he'll be able to handle 10-13 minutes once Mutombo is gone, while Yao should be able to play 35 or 36 minutes easily. Think long-term. I don't think Booth does anything that Badiane can't be taught to do very quickly.
