Watching USA-Spain in the Gold Medal game, several things struck me. 

1. All the talk of the 37 point win was significantly out of touch.  Blow outs happen.  The Celtics destroyed the Lakers in the last game of the NBA Finals.  It doesn't mean that the Lakers couldn't play them close or beat them on a different day.  If you actually watched that first USA-Spain game, I just don't understand how you could be surprised at a close re-match, especially if Spain did a better job of taking care of the ball, which they did. 
2. Before the game I said that two things had to happen in order for Spain to have a chance.  They had to take care of the ball (they did committing only 14 turnovers compared to 28 in the first meeting); and the US had to take (and miss) a lot of threes.  Although they cooled off in the second half, a 7-10 first half and 13-28 (46.4%) overall was enough to thwart Spain's upset hopes. 
3. I mentioned it in a comment, but it was once again apparent in this game – the international referees have adjusted to NBA players, rather than vice versa.  In years past, it was hard not to see a bias against the US, but in the Final, the whistle blew a lot against both teams, with the most questionable calls going against Spain. 
4. And this is the big one.  I think we can safely state that the best teams in the world have caught up, and are now able to play with the US.  No excuses, no 'the refs helped them', no 'the international game is different', no 'the US team didn't play hard' or 'the US team didn't play well.'  Here we had a superbly talented US team, playing their asses off, shooting the lights out – and it was a 4 point game with 2 minutes to go. 

The US will always field a great team in international competitions, assuming USA basketball and the players continue to take it seriously.  Other teams will rise and fall with specific players or groups of players.  Already Argentina is on the decline – Ginobili, Scola and Oberto have formed the core of the team since 1998, and I haven't seen a group of younger players that seem ready to fill their shoes.  It's not like 19 year old Argentines are getting NBA draft buzz year after year.  On the other hand, one wonders how good Spain will be in four years when Ricky Rubio is 21, Rudy Fernandez is 27 and Marc Gasol is 27 (and Pau will only be 33).  Or maybe Italy – with rookies chosen 1, 20 and 6 in the last three drafts - will be the next international team to catch lightning in a bottle.  And of course China will eventually develop some guards (the Lakers are trying their best to help) and then watch out. 

The depth of talent in the US ensures a great team every year, while other teams will come and go.  But there will always be one or two teams capable of pushing the Team USA, no matter how good they are.  It's basketball – there are only five guys on the floor, and one player can have a massively disproportional impact (as evidenced by Germany's disproportionate success over the years with essentially one top player). It's safe to say that those Nowitzki-type players are out there and will keep showing up, in ever greater numbers, and that some of them will have other talent around a superstar.  So it's rarely if ever going to be easy.

Despite the win, I still can't resist ranting on a couple of subjects, or re-ranting I guess.

One of the most telling plays of the game came early in the second quarter.  With less than a minute gone, a long rebound of a missed Rubio three bounced out to Kobe Bryant, who had leaked out behind the defense.  As he went in uncontested for the crowd-pleasing jam, the Spanish bench erupted.  Here's the thing:  Mike Breen and Doug Collins had no idea what the Spanish bench was complaining about.  They saw them arguing, saw the ref tell them to settle down, and wondered if there'd been a push on the other end or something.  But there's so used to NBA style basketball, they couldn't even see what the Spaniards saw.  Clearly, by the rules in the rulebook and by the way the game is played in Europe, Kobe travelled, taking fully two steps after getting the rebound but before putting the ball on the floor.  This is the kind of incidental, sloppy, no-advantage-gained travel that is NEVER called in the NBA.  But it's fairly obvious from the simultaneous reaction of a dozen Spanish players and coaches that it is called where they come from, and we can all remember it being called in prior international competitions.  An almost identical play involving LeBron in Athens left him embarrassingly committing a turnover on a breakaway - something of a momentum killer.

Those calls didn't happen in Beijing.  Not just on this one Kobe play.  Frequently.  (BallinEurope chimes in on this subject as well.)  Is it a coincidence?  No way.  FIBA clearly made a conscious decision, like the NBA did years ago, to trade off some sloppy footwork for more windmill dunks.  And the Beijing crowds certainly appreciated the decision.  So there you have it.  One of the long time problems for Team USA was that they would have to adjust to international rules and international refs.  But now it seems that particular problem is solved - or rather, it has simply gone away.

Adjusting to the way the refs call traveling?  Not an issue.  The shorter three point line and the trapezoid lane?  Oh, those won't be a problem anymore either, since FIBA is adopting near-NBA court dimensions by 2012.  Ultimately, it's clearly good for the game to have everyone playing with more similar rules across the world.  But it's pretty clear that the power of the NBA had a major impact on these decisions.

Finally, it will be interesting to see what happens in 2010 in Turkey.  When Jerry Colangelo took over USA Basketball in 2006, his three year plan was to get a long term time commitment from players, to hold real try outs, and to put role players on the team.  A Gold medal in Beijing would seem to vindicate his leadership, but the truth of the matter is that his supposedly new approach mattered little - given that he more or less ignored his stated goals.  Improved point guard play (Jason Kidd is STILL undefeated in international competition and Chris Paul is a very different player in 2008 than he was in 2006) and the presence of one Kobe Bryant were the reasons this team finished on top, and none of that other Colangelo stuff. 

Look, I'm not a big fan of Kobe, but the guy can play.  When Spain cut the lead to 2 on a Rudy Fernandez three with 8 minutes remaining, Kobe scored or assisted on the next 10 Team USA points.  None of them came from anything resembling an offensive set.  It was just Kobe creating shots, which he can do better than any player in the world.  And of course there was the four point play a few minutes later.  It was a bad shot - a three with a player close enough to foul you is always a bad shot - but it went in. 

But I keep coming back to the fact that, even though the US played well, even though Kobe was there and carried the team in the fourth, even though they had great pass first point guards to lead the team, Spain could still have won this game.  Ask yourself a couple of questions

1. What happens if Team USA's second most important player misses this game, instead of Spain's (Jose Calderon)?
2. What happens if Wade misses his three with 2:08 left, and Jimenez makes his wide open three instead and it's a tie game with 97 seconds left?

That's how close it was people.  Get used to it.

Longtime readers of my blog are no doubt confused by the fact that I've remained (relatively) quiet on the subject of Team USA and the Olympic basketball tournament so far.  There are a few reasons: I was in Costa Rica for the start of the games, Citizen Mikey P has been doing a solid (if maybe a tad jingoistic for my tastes) job covering the subject.  Probably the biggest factor is that the team has been pretty successful.  Let's not mince words - I've been a critic of the team in the past, and it's usually easier to criticize what's WRONG than it is to praise what's RIGHT. 

But with the Spain-USA gold medal game all that remains, it's time to end the silence.

Today's semi-final win against Argentina will hopefully put an end to any invincible talk.  Let's face facts - the US built a 21 point first quarter lead, and ended up losing the rest of the game to a team playing without it's best player. 

There is a formula for beating this team, and everyone knows it.

1. Take care of the ball. 
2. Play a zone and turn the US into a jump shooting team. 

Of course, both of these things, and particularly number 1, and easier said than done.  (Chris Sheridan provides more detail on the game plan for beating Team USA at ESPN.com.)

Spain turned the ball over 28 times in the first meeting.  They also played almost exclusively man-to-man against the US.  But don't count on a repeat of either of those.

Pool play matters little, and I think Spain understands that better than the US.  I'm not saying that they turned the ball over on purpose in that game, but I am saying they will use a different game plan in the gold medal game, and their intensity level will be entirely different.  As it happens, the first meeting between these two teams could not have gone worse for the Spaniards.  28 turnovers, and the US made 12 of  25 three point attempts.  If either of those stats are anywhere close to the same, the US will win the game easily.

If on the other hand we see the US go 10 for 31 from three as they did against the Argentines (including 2 for 8 from Melo and 2 for 9 from Kobe) then it could be a very different story.  This may also be where Coach K's short rotation comes back to haunt him.  Zone buster Michael Redd has played sparingly, and is 5 for 17 from beyond the arc in the tournament - only 2 for 10 since making 3 against China in the first game.

As for forcing turnovers, I love the pressure defense the US team has applied throughout this tournament.  But it's worth noting that the objective was the same at the 2006 World Championships, and when it worked (forcing Slovenia into 25 turnovers, China 23, Germany 24) the US tended to win easily.  But they barely squeaked by against Italy and Puerto Rico in pool play when the were only able to force those teams into 15 turnovers, and in the fateful loss to Greece they forced only 11. When I compare the 2006 roster to the 2008 roster, I don't really see any major reasons that this team should be significantly better defensively.  Then again, I've never been a big believer in Kobe as stopper.

If forced turnovers are indeed the divining rod of the Redeem Team, the trend is not good.  After averaging almost 23 per contest in pool play, they forced only 11 against Australia and 16 against Argentina in the quarters and semis.  Of course, they still won both of those games, but I do think it's safe to say that Spain has more talent than Australia, and I'll mention again that Ginobili played only 6 minutes today.

The health of Jose Calderon may play a huge part in this game.  If Calderon is able to play, he's Spain's best option for protecting the ball.  As promising as Ricky Rubio is, handling withering defensive pressure with a Gold medal on the line at the age of 17 is a tall order. 

Let's be clear.  The US should win this game.  If I were betting, I'd pick the US.  If these two teams played 10 times, the US might well win 8 or 9 of them.  But having said that, that still leaves that 1 or 2 in 10 where Spain prevails.  Lots of things have to go right for Spain.  Beyond protecting the ball, they also need to make shots, and they need their big players to play big.  Pau Gasol has to be the best big man on the floor, and by a wide margin.  Rudy Fernandez has to showcase the skills that made him the best player in Europe last season.  And Calderon (or if not Calderon then Rubio or Raul Lopez) needs to play exceptionally well at that point.  And even if they do all these things, they still need the US to settle for jump shots, and then miss those.

It could happen.  The team has not faced a lot of adversity, and when they saw some against Argentina today, they did not handle it as well as Coach K probably would have liked.  Ask yourself this question:  what does this team do if the first and second quarters are reversed?  What happens if they fall behind by 15, as opposed to allowing a 21 point lead to fall to 6?  It's a straw man of course:  they didn't trail by 15, and losing a lead is not the same thing as falling behind.  But if Spain comes out inspired in the first quarter, and the US comes out flat, it will be interesting to see how the team reacts.    It's uncharted waters, and there's reason to suspect that it could be perilous.  Both Carmelo and Kobe got testy in today's game.  Not to mention that it's a team of superstars, where multiple players have (supposedly) had to keep their egos in check.  In a close game, will Kobe be content to be the defensive stopper and let the offense go through LeBron?  We may have gotten a partial answer in the closest game they've played so far - Kobe 14 shots against Argentina, LeBron 11.

Overall, I remain unconvinced in the make up of this team.  Yes, they are better than the other teams and are well on their way to a Gold medal.  But by they have exploitable weaknesses, and there's really no reason that they should.  If Dwight Howard gets into foul trouble, they become disturbing small.  Thankfully Chris Bosh has played terrific, but Boozer has remained on the bench for the most part so it's hard to know how he would respond if called on.  And despite the inclusion of Redd on the roster (not to mention Mike Miller in Las Vegas), Coach K has mostly eschewed pure shooters in this tournament.  The irony of course is that a USA Basketball program that was in disarray after missing out on the Gold medal in the last three major competitions, supposedly because of an over reliance on athleticism, a glut of wing players, and an absence of roll players, is on the verge of an impressive sweep in Beijing with a team made up almost exclusively of athletic wings. 

So I guess it helps to just have the most talent.

What's going on with Livingston?  The short answer is, I don't have any idea.  No inside sources.  No scoop.  I have no idea how he is.  Hell, I don't even know where he is.  According to Art Thompson III, apparently promoted to Lakers 'blogger' at the OCR, he's been at Tim Grover's gym in Chicago for months, working out and now playing 5 on 5.  But that would seem to contradict Citizen clipschamps report that he was playing at Pauley a couple weeks ago. (Marty Burns of SI is another one who says that Livingston has been in Chicago 'for the past month'.)

Here's what we think we know. 

• According to the LA Times, the Clippers offered Shaun a one year minimum contract, which he turned down. 
• He hasn't signed with anyone yet.
• The Nuggets and the Suns are two teams who have purportedly shown interest in the past, but there has been precious little about him in about a month.
• Which doesn't necessarily mean much.  If you were Shaun Livingston or his agent, you'd definitely be betting and hoping on a better offer later in the summer.  After all, it was only last month that he started playing one-on-one, and only recently that he's been playing five-on-five.  The more proof he can offer that he's recovered (or at least on the road, with a decent map, maybe even a GPS), the better contract offer he's likely to command.  The downside of course is that teams will make other moves in the meantime, but Shaun has the advantage of playing point guard, and there just aren't enough of those to go around.  Given where Shaun appears to be in his rehab, every week counts, barring a major setback.

Now, let's try to get into Shaun's head a little.  Why didn't he sign with the Clippers?  After all, this is the team that drafted him, and he's been through 18 months of rehab with the training staff.  Where is the loyalty?

The loyalty question is probably overstated.  Livingston was under contract to the Clippers when his knee imploded.  To say that the Clippers 'stood by him' through his rehab is really to misrepresent the situation.  The Clippers did nothing extraordinary - any team would have done as much or more.  What are they going to do?  Waive him?  They'd still have had to pay his guaranteed contract, so they'd be saving Jasen Powell and Richard Williams' time and one roster spot.  Big deal.  No team in the NBA would waive an injured lottery pick while there was any hope for a recovery.

Then there's the flip side.  Was Livingston insulted that the Clippers didn't make a qualifying offer and renounced his rights?  Give me a break.  It's a business, and Livingston and his agent know full well that the Clippers couldn't tie up $6M on damaged goods for next season.  So assume that, beyond simple inertia and familiarity, Livingston felt neither compelled to remain with the Clippers, nor anxious to get away.

He most likely is looking for three things:  money, security, and opportunity.  If the Clippers offered one year, that really only covers one of the three, and that at the minimum.  It remains to be seen if he'll get a better offer, but he can hope, and I for one would not be surprised if he does.  But the money and security issues are pretty straightforward - the more money, and the more years (a player option would be the best for him if he expects to make a full recovery) the better.

Opportunity is another question.  The Clippers just signed a free agent, all-star point guard to a five year contract.  (They also signed two veteran backups, but I think you have to assume that Livingston is not intimated by competing for a job with the likes of Jason Williams and/or Jason Hart and their one year contracts.)  Furthermore, if you're Livingston and you are realizing that your NBA future may be on the wing, the fact that the Clippers spent consecutive lottery picks on a two (Eric Gordon) and a three (Al Thornton) does not bode well for future opportunity.  Bottom line - a job with the Clippers figures to be as a versatile back up in the best case scenario.  That may turn out to be his ceiling, given the seriousness of the injury, but you can't blame him for looking for a better situation. 

I think you have to look at the unique NBA talent that is Shaun Livingston.  Obviously, he's hurt and may never be the same, but the fully healthy package offered a combination of size, quickness, length, handle and vision not often seen.  On the minus side, he can't shoot much, and he's yet to show a penchant for taking over games. 

Still, there is a profile of an NBA team that might be very interested in Livingston.  One characteristic might be a team with a decent solution at point guard this season, looking at a problem in the near future.  Maybe their starter is aging, or maybe he's coming up on free agency.  Such a team might be willing to take a flyer on an injured former top 5 pick (who's still only 22, I might add) as a possible future starter.  Livingston must be realistic enough to realize that he has basically no hope of starting anywhere this season - the next best thing would be a team that needs to identify a near future starter. 

Phoenix might fit this description.  Steve Nash is 34, and the Suns have a team option for next season.  His shelf life in Phoenix is 2 years at the most, and there is absolutely no one waiting in the wings.

Or Dallas.  Jason Kidd is 107 (or thereabouts), and his knees are even older.  The fact that Kidd can't shoot also means that Carlisle's Mavs could develop a particularly style of play, and in a perfect world plug a recovered Livingston in for the aging Kidd and not miss a beat.

The Lakers are another team that kind of fits the profile.  Current starter Derek Fisher is 34 like Nash.  The difference is that the Lakers do have Jordan Farmar, so at best Livingston would be going into a situation where he was starting out behind a 21 year old on the depth chart.  That hardly sounds like a great opportunity.  Furthermore, as many people pointed out in the comments attached to the recent Livingston FanPost, Shaun's lack of outside shooting is not a good match for the triangle or for anyone sharing the court with Kobe Bryant.

The other type of team that might be interested in Livingston (and in fact, the one that makes the most sense to my mind) is any team making do with a combo guard at the point.  There are more of these than you might think.  There is a dearth of true point guards in the NBA.  Furthermore, there are a number of sublimely talented basketball players, who just happen to be under 6'3".  These guys, sometimes called scoring points, sometimes called tweeners, have great scoring ability, but tend to be too small to defend NBA wings.  If they end up playing the point, it's not their natural position on offense, and if they end up playing the wing, they struggle on defense.  Ideally, they could play on the wing on offense and the point on defense. 

Voila, in Shaun Livingston you have the yin to that yang.  He's a true point guard, fully capable of running the offense, but also a big and very effective wing defender. 

Monta Ellis.  Gilbert Arenas.  Allen Iverson.  These are all shooting guards, scorers, who have played (or will play) much of their careers essentially out of position at the point.  Golden State in particularly should take a long look at Livingston.  It's a long shot to be sure, but imagine the backcourt of Ellis and Livingston in a few years if Shaun is able to recover.  (Washington makes less sense, and Denver almost none.  The Nuggets desperately need a point guard, but by trading Marcus Camby for nothing they seemed to indicate that Iverson will not be back next season.  Livingston is too far away from contributing, and Iverson is too close to the door, for this to make much sense for the Nuggets.)  Then there's free agent Ben Gordon.  Any team interested in taking a chance on Gordon should consider bringing in Livingston and starting them together in the future.

Today is August 21.  It's a little over five weeks until the opening of NBA training camps on September 30th.  I would expect Livingston to sign somewhere before then - teams will want to take him through a full camp, I would think.  I still hold out some hope that he could be a Clipper, but it depends almost entirely on what other teams are willing to offer him.  If he gets what he thinks is a better offer, good for him.  If not, the Clippers can make room on the roster by waiving second round pick Mike Taylor, whose contract is not guaranteed until the season starts.  The Clippers are the one and only team who can have Shaun's Bird rights for next season, so all else being equal (i.e. if he only gets one year minimum offers, and his opportunities are not significantly better) one would think he'd choose to sign with the Clippers in that scenario. 

But if he signs with the Lakers and eventually becomes an All Star, then just put a bullet in my temple.

A few citizens have asked the question - has there ever been an NBA team with as many roster changes from one season to the next as it appears will happen with the Clippers this season?  Well, the short answer is yes, and probably there have been a lot.

With the return of Paul Davis, the Clippers, barring further changes, which is of course a distinct possibility given what has transpired so far, will begin the 2008-2009 season with five returning players on a 15 man roster:  Chris Kaman, Cat Mobley, Tim Thomas, Al Thornton and Davis.  That's a massive changeover, to be certain.

However, armed with nothing more than my vast reserve of useless NBA knowledge (and basketball-reference.com, of course), I started looking at teams that were likely candidates for similar or greater roster turnover.  (Someone smarter than me, with access to the raw data, could no doubt query a database and come up with all instance of 5 or fewer returning in consecutive seasons - if you are that person, have fun.  I am not that person.  But I'm pretty sure at this point that there would be a lot of examples.)

I started with the most obvious possibility, the 98-99 Chicago Bulls.  After winning their sixth title in eight seasons the previous season, Bulls management famously blew up the roster, parting ways from Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Coach Phil Jackson and seemingly everybody else.  Even so, with all of that turnover from the top down, the Bulls still had seven returning players on the 98-99 roster: Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper, Bill Wennington, Randy Brown, Dickey Simpkins, Rusty LaRue and Keith Booth.  So the Clippers win that battle.

Then I realized, it wouldn't be the high-profile teams with the most turnover.  It would be the dreadfully bad teams.  The teams with absolutely no reason to keep anybody on their roster.  So my next stop was the worst team of the last 20 years - probably the worst team of all time - the 97-98 Denver Nuggets.  I had the 'honor' of watching this team live once, and they were bad.  Really, really bad.  Monumentally bad.  Historically bad.  They didn't manage to break the all-time record for fewest wins of 9 held by the 72-73 Sixers, but not because they weren't really, really bad.  In 72-73 there were only 17 NBA teams, no other team won fewer than 22 games, and only 3 failed to win at least 30 games.  In 97-98, with 29 teams in the league, fully five teams other than the Nuggets won 20 games or fewer.  It was quite the suck-fest.  So although the Nuggets were clearly the worst of the worst, as the season ground towards the finish, the 5-58 Nuggets managed to win 6 of their final 19 games against almost equally dismal competition to avoid their rightful place in the record books.

At any rate, I wondered how much turnover there was on such an awful team.  Sure enough, from the 96-97 Nuggets team to the 97-98 team, there are only four names in common - LaPhonso Ellis, Bryant Stith, Anthony Goldwire and George Zidek (there's a name for Citizen Zhiv).  Consider also that Goldwire and Zidek were each acquired in a February 97 trade - so Ellis and Stith were the only two holdovers on the team from opening day 1996 to opening day 1997.  Wow.  And for good measure, the 98-99 Nuggets team only had five players from the prior team - Stith, Danny Fortson, Eric Williams, Corey Alexander and Eric Washington.  In two seasons, Bryant Stith was the only player who remained.

So I'm guessing that massive turnover of the 4 to 5 returning players variety is not all that uncommon, particularly in really bad teams.  We just tend to forget about it because the teams themselves are forgettable.

Except that Nuggets team.  They were unforgettably bad.

Returning from two weeks away, I'm a little overwhelmed by the task at hand.  To be sure, the activity of this past fortnight pales in comparison to the prior 5 or 6 weeks.  But it's not insignificant.  Furthermore, the sands were shifting so thoroughly already that I feel like I'm trying to provide an update to a situation that was completely unstable.  How have things changed since I left?  It depends on your definition of how things looked at the time.

Invariably, when I don't have a clear angle on a post, all I can do is dive in and start writing.  So here goes:

Jason Williams - I guess I assumed that Jason Williams would warrant more than the veteran's minimum, so in that sense it seems like a good signing.  I'm no fan of Hart, so if we're going to have a Jason as a backup point guard, this is certainly my preference.  Still, how many guys from the 1998 draft does one team need to sign in a single off season?  Along with Brain Skinner and Ricky Davis, this now makes three 1998 first rounders the Clippers have signed a decade later.  It's probably not too late to call Michael Olowokandi.

Still, Williams can play some ball.  It's actually pretty hard to imagine a more exciting player signing for the min.  His off-the-elbow pass is probably the most amazing pass I've ever seen.  (By the way, I seem to recall that he's made that pass in a real game at least once, but the only video I can find is from the 2000 Rookie game - a game I happened to attend.)  But for all his street-ball chops, he certainly played his best ball in Memphis when he settled down and just ran the team.  In fact, until last season when he struggled playing for the hapless Heat, he put up six consecutive seasons with a PER of 15 or better.  Not earth-shattering, but not bad. 

Steve Novak - As it happens, I like Steve Novak - a lot.  I was trying to come up with trades for him as far back as December 2006 (in the same post in which I imagined trading for Allen Iverson, believe it or not.)  The guy can really shoot the ball.  I remember watching him as a freshman (I think) on Wade's Marquette team and thinking that he could play.  He's never had much of a chance in Houston, but he's proven that he has NBA range in the few opportunities he's gotten.  He was 34 for 71 shooting the three in very limited minutes last season.  Truthfully, if Tim Thomas' role is supposed to be the 6'10" guy who can shoot threes, Novak does that for a lot less money. 

Paul Davis - This one is surprising, if only because it seemed for a while there that the Clippers were bound and determined to distance themselves from anything and everything related to the 07-08 season.  Of all the players that might have returned (Josh Powell, Quinton Ross, Shaun Livingston, Nick Fazekas, Marcus Williams) Paul Davis would in many ways seem to be the least likely.  Yes, the Clippers were very high on his prospects this time last year - much higher, for instance, than they were on Josh Powell.  Yes, he had finally starting playing well when he got injured.  But let's face it - he has a couple of decent NBA games and a ruptured ACL on his resume and not much else. 

Which leads me to the real question.  Roster math is a zero-sum game.  There are only 15 spots, maximum.  So giving a spot to Davis (or trading a second round pick for Novak) means NOT giving a spot to Nick Fazekas.  That's a little tough to figure.  Obviously, none of these guys (Davis, Novak, Fazekas) has proven much at the NBA level so far.  Novak has played 455 NBA minutes, Davis 374 and Fazekas 269.  So, we can rave about Fazekas' stellar PER, but the sample size is so small that I'm willing to admit that maybe MDsr sees something that overrides that data.  (Of course Novak's PER of 17.3 last year is none-too-shabby.)  But when a guy gets into a game and produces results, you kind of want to see him get into more games and for more minutes, and that's why it hurts to say goodbye to Fazekas.  Coincidentally, all three of these guys were all taken in about the same spot in the draft - Novak 32nd in 2006, Davis 34th in 2006, Fazekas 34th in 2007.  For what it's worth.

Likewise in the backcourt, the LA Times reported when the Clippers signed Williams that it probably meant an end to Shaun Livingston's career with the team.  Apparently the Clippers offered him a one year minimum deal, which he turned down.  Of course, it remains to be seen if any other NBA team (teams without the same emotional and financial investment in Livingston) will offer even that much to a player who is not yet cleared to play.  One wonders if Livingston might become a possibility again as the season gets closer and no other offers are forthcoming.  A roster spot can easily be made available for him by cutting Mike Taylor.  So I'm crossing my fingers that my Livingston jersey will not have to follow the Wilcox and Brand versions into the dumpster.  But it's a long shot at this point.  (And by the way, what's with the Clippers' coverage in the Times from the likes of Chris Hine and Lonnie White?  Jonathan Abrams hasn't written a word about the team in almost 3 weeks.  Seems suspicious.) 

I'm not ready for a complete, 'big picture' post quite yet.  It's all still coalescing in my head.  Guys like Ricky Davis and Jason Williams are not exactly the classic 'locker room' types.  But maybe Davis and Williams and Tim Thomas can form some sort of 'cancer survivors' group and overcome their somewhat checkered pasts.  Or is it more likely that they'll drag one another down?  We'll see.  The contracts are all cheap and short - the Clippers cap situation looks good for next summer, and great for 2010, as of right now.  But it's certainly not looking like a youth movement.  Baron Davis (29), Ricky Davis (28), Jason Hart (30), Jason Williams (32), Brian Skinner (32) and Marcus Camby (34) are joining Cat Mobley (32) and Tim Thomas (31).  Yuck.  It's a good thing none of those guys other than Baron are signed for more than two seasons, because some of them may not last that long.

Here's the press release:

CLIPPERS SIGN FREE AGENT CENTER PAUL DAVIS

Team Adds A Third "Davis" To Bring Roster to 15

The Los Angeles Clippers today signed free agent center Paul Davis, according to Vice President of Basketball Operations Elgin Baylor.  Per team policy, terms of the deal were not announced.

Paul Davis joins Baron Davis and Ricky Davis on the Clippers’ roster to bring the "Davis" count to an NBA tying three.  Many teams’ rosters have had as many as three players with the same surname throughout league history, but none with four.  The most recent example?  The ’05-’06 Toronto Raptors, with Aaron, Alvin and Eric Williams. 

Paul Davis was drafted by the Clippers with the 34^th overall selection in the second round of the 2006 NBA Draft and appeared in a total of 53 games for Los Angeles over the last two seasons. The Clippers had previously renounced his rights on July 16.

Paul Davis, 24, averaged 2.5 points, 2.1 rebounds and 0.5 assists in 8.8 minutes in 22 games last season before having his season cut short by a torn anterior cruciate ligament and torn lateral meniscus suffered in his right knee on Dec. 21, 2007.

A former stand-out at Michigan State University, the 6-foot-11 center has career averages of 2.0 points and 1.7 rebounds in 7.1 minutes.

The Clippers new-look roster now stands at 15 players as Los Angeles has revamped its roster by adding a total of 10 new faces for the 2008-09 season.

So the roster is at 15, but bear in mind that Taylor and Jordan both have 'make good' contracts that only pay out if they make the team.  There are no official details yet on Davis' deal, but I assume it's guaranteed, and I'm told that it is for one season, with a team option for a second season.

I had a great time in Costa Rica, and I'm back.  Thanks to the guys for stepping up in my absence, especially Citizen Mikey P for doing an outstanding job on the Olympic basketball pool play.  As you might expect, I'll have plenty to say about that soon enough.  For now, suffice it to say that Redeem Team has looked great, but don't bet the farm on them - not yet.  Pool play doesn't matter.  Now it gets serious, and one bad game and you're out.

I'm digging out from my absence on a couple of fronts, but I'll be here soon with a big post about Jason Williams (dubious), Steve Novak (I actually always liked him), Shaun Livingston (there goes my last Clippers jersey), Nick Fazekas (confusing), the schedule, etc. very soon.

My bags are packed, but the plane doesn't leave for another four hours.  The ClipperWife is grabbing a nap, and I figure I have 45 minutes or so to squeeze out one more post.

Long time readers of the blog (and the one or two of you who were there for the old blog) know that Team USA is a bit of a pet subject of mine.  If I had the time, I'd link to lots of things I've said before, but I'm in a pretty big rush.  You can just do the search.  Or I guess this one and this one should summarize what I was thinking in 2007 and 2006.

So, this rant isn't going to be particularly well-researched - more off the top of my head.  But the Olympics start next week, and I'm going to miss most of the pool play games while I'm in Costa Rica; so I thought I should get on the record before it's all over.

I was reading in the August 4 issue of Newsweek the other day about the basketball team (sorry, I couldn't find an online link).  It's always interesting reading about sports in a non-sports focused publication.  They're writing for a different audience, and they have to take a different approach.  I won't say they have to dumb it down, but they can't skip steps like a sports publication would.

At any rate, there was one very interesting thing (at least to me) in that article. 

Since [2002], despite a pledge to restore American supremacy at its own game, Team USA has added only a pair of bronze medals - at the 2004 Olympics and at the 2006 worlds.  So America's basketball brain trust regrouped and came up with a new plan:(1) apply pressure to elite NBA superstars to commit; (2) require all of them to play in early qualifying rounds so that a cohesive team shows up in Beijing, rather than a collection of All-Stars, and (3) include role players, notable defenders and long range shooters, to provide more balance.

Interesting.  And pretty much completely incorrect. 

The re-grouping (making Colangelo the head of USA Basketball, appointing the coaching staff of Coach K, D'Antoni and McMillan, etc.) came BEFORE 2006, not after.  And getting superstars to commit was NEVER really part of the stated plan - they wanted commitments, but not necessarily from the elite players.  In fact, in the above 'plan', number (1) would seem to be incompatible with numbers (2) and (3) since elite NBA superstars would in fact make up a collection of all stars and would presumably not include role players.

Of the three points above, only number (3) was actually a stated goal of USA Basketball, and of course that's the one that has been almost completely ignored (of the players in China right now, only Tayshaun Prince could be referred to as a 'role player' by any reasonable person).  But I don't think this is just sloppy reportage by a non-basketball reporter.  I think it's revisionist history, and I suspect we'll be in for a lot of it.  Win the Gold medal, and whatever you did must have worked.

What's interesting about Colangelo and company's attempts to 'fix' USA Basketball is that they have done almost NONE of the things they said they would do.  But of course, if they win the Gold Medal, they'll take all of the credit for fixing it nonetheless.  At the end of the day, simply getting Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd onto the court is what appears to be making a difference for this team.  And presumably any of Colangelo's predecessors would have tried to do that as well.

In fact, other than putting together a pretty good group of All Stars, which after all has been the approach since 1992 and was supposedly the approach that this new brain trust was going to avoid, one has to really worry about how this team is constructed.  Wasn't one of the big problems with the 2002 team in Indianapolis that it was made up of so many similar players?  Just a bunch of athletic wings?  Well, guess what?  Fully half of the 12 man roster in Beijing falls into that category. 

I said it last summer, and I still think it's true.  This team is built to beat opponents by 40 - or to lose by 4.  A team with more size and a low post presence would not win by as wide a margin, and would be less likely to lose at all.  Remember that when a Gold Medal is all that counts, Pool Play is meaningless.  When the single elimination rounds start with the quarter finals, that's when it gets interesting.  One loss and you're out.  What happens when this version of Team USA runs into an opponent that handles their pressure?  Take away the easy baskets that come from that pressure defense, and the team is suddenly going to take a lot of jump shots.  So three things have to happen for Team USA to lose.  The opponent has to handle the pressure.  The opponent has to make shots.  Team USA has to miss shots.  None of those seem extremely unlikely.  Sure, Team USA will probably win the Gold Medal, because they have the most talent.  But I don't think this team has been challenged since it's been together.  What happens when they get challenged?

Carmelo Anthony (a mediocre rebounder for a SMALL forward in his NBA career) is the team's power forward.  Dwight Howard is the only legitimate center.  What if Howard gets hurt?  What if he gets into foul trouble at the hands of the admittedly capricious international refs?  Actually, Team USA is lucky that Germany and China do not appear to be major medal threats, because both Kaman and Yao would have a field day against Bosh or Boozer.  But Greece has size AND a complete team. 

It's pretty hard to figure how anybody watched the Greece game in 2006 and said, "You know what our problem was?  Too much size."  Time and again the Greek pick-and-roll drew the only US player with any size (be it Brand or Howard, but they were never on the court at the same time) away from the basket, while a Greek big rolled down the lane being defended by a point guard, with the likes of Carmelo as the only help defender.  So, yes, by all means, go smaller. 

The Newsweek article goes on to point out something interesting about the goal of including role players on the team.  Eight of the twelve players on the squad led their NBA team in scoring.  Digging a little deeper, you'll notice that 3 of the other 4 are point guards - not a position that typically leads a team in scoring, but it's hard to argue that Jason Kidd, Chris Paul and Deron Williams are any thing other than top tier NBA stars.  That leaves the aforementioned Prince as the only 'role player' on the team.  Let's hope there aren't too many roles.

Of course, nothing necessarily precludes players who are superstars in their NBA lives from becoming role players on this team.  And of course USA Basketball would tell you that's exactly what's happening.  But it's easy to play a role when you're ahead by 40.  What happens when this team faces some adversity?  Who will take the last shot, when the last shot actually matters?  Accepting a role in a blow out is one thing - accepting a role in a close game is quite another.  Who will be on the floor when they receive the inevitable challenge?  And how will the seven players NOT on the floor react to their new 'role' of benchwarmer?

I could go on about this for hours and hours, but I have a plane to catch.  Like I said, Team USA will probably win on talent alone.  But don't believe Jerry Colangelo when he tells you he planned it all.  The plan wasn't executed, but at least they brought some pretty good players to Beijing.

I'm leaving for two weeks in Costa Rica with the ClipperWife.  As it happens, ClipperMax and ClipperZoe will be with their grandparents, and we're actually taking a vacation sans enfants - for two weeks!  By far the longest kid-free trip since we became parents.  So it should be fun.

As we saw when I went to Yosemite, you guys don't even need me.  Have fun; keep those FanPosts flowing.  Now that we've got Taylor posting here, there's no stopping Clips Nation!

Carry on Citizens.  I'll be back August 16th.