IMO he was better in Orlando and MUCH better in Sacramento than he was with the Clips. Why? Either because he was playing for a contract or he's over the hill. His flameout in the playoffs against the defenseless Suns was a shame. With the Rockets, the only "boneheaded" thing about him was maybe his shot selection. He played hard, left it all on the court and certainly wasn't a dumb player.
Cat's 1st four years: 1st year: 10 ppg 2nd year: 15.8 ppg 3rd year: 19.5 ppg 4th year: 21.7 ppg I don't see Kill Bill ever doing that ...definately not on this team anyway. Kill Bill seems like a crafty guy that you love to have in during crunch time (hopefully) but he doesn't strike me as a primary offensive threat like Cat. We'll see.
I think it's comparing apples to oranges. Spanoulis doesn't shoot very well, and I don't think Mobley ever passes. With him it's shoot first, shoot second.
Span's 1st four years: 1st year: 10 ppg 5 apg 2nd year: 13.8 ppg 7 apg 3rd year: 15.5 ppg 8 apg 4th year: 16.7 ppg 8 apg
I think we need to give V-Span a few years in the league before you guys start trying to draw comparisons, which doesn't usually make much sense anyway due to each player being completely different from the one he is usually being compared to.
by all accounts, cuttino loves basketball and is a gym rat. he has never played with anything less than 100%, and will play when hurt. he played hard when he got to houston, played hard after he got his first big contract, and is still playing hard. his 4.3 rpg were his 3rd highest of his career and 3.0 apg were his second highest. he wasn't asked to be as much of a scorer as in years past so his 14.8 ppg weren't huge, but still solid. plus he still played very good man to man defense (which for some cat haters, he has almost always done). the only thing that really got worse was his 3pt shooting which inexplicably fell to a career low 33.9%. other than that, he was just as good for the clips as he was in orlando (16/3/2) or sac (17.8/3.9/3.4). to say he fell off b/c of the contract is completely wrong. he is 31 now (just turned 31 on 9/1) so if he starts to get worse it's understandable. while he did have a pretty bad phoenix series, for the playoffs he was at 13.3/4.8/2.0 on 43% shooting and 37% 3pt shooting. as for vspan comparisons, come on. cat has had a very strong offensive game his whole career. the one season he really got to let it all show (francis' migraine year), he averaged almost 22 ppg and had a 40+ game stretch where he averaged 25 ppg on an amazing 47% shooting. in his younger days his first step was second to no one except iverson, his outside shooting has almost always been very solid (always above 35% on 3's and 39% and up 3 times), and he can post up smaller guys. he's usually been in situations where he couldn't fully use his offensive game and become more of just an outside shooter, but the talent is there. on defense, he can stay with faster people and has quick hands and the effort is there (and no, it didn't just start with van gundy). plus he always plays hard, hits his free throws (especially at the end of games), and doesn't turn it over much. has he always made the smartest decisions on the court? no, but i think that problem gets way overstated by the sheeplike, pile on mentality that has always existed here. if vspan comes even close to cat we should be very happy, but i have my doubts that he has the speed to produce like cat did. and i'll be banging tyra banks on the regular before kill bill averages 16.7 and 8 apg. but we can both hope .
