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Yes Corey and Elton carried this team for 7 years.

You can love Cat for all his intangibles, but math is math and the numbers say Corey out played him. Dig for all the obscure stats you want, but the main line shows a clearly superior talent.

And it was NY i said wiggled out of the contract. And to be honest, it wouldnt surprise me if the backstabbing, slick backed hair, former financial executive Mike Dunleavy Sr didnt drop the idea about Cuttinos waiver to a severely over-cap NY team as added incentive to trade for Mobely. Again, math being what is, NY got rid of an $18m contract and absorbed a total of $9M with Cats forced retirement. Forced is the word being used to describe his actions. Sounds like Walsh pulled what they now call a “Miles” on Cat with the forced retirement and removal from the books.

In the end, it was a win-win for everyone. NY just poofed 9M off their books and put themselves in drivers seat of the 2010 Free Agent market and the Clippers added the 4 they lost when Elton left. If the contracts for Thomas and Mobely werent ridiculous to begin with we’d have had the cap this summer to keep Elton, and, possibly Corey too and still gotten Baron. That’s where we could have been, and honestly, I’d have much rather seen that lineup. I wanted Brand to retire here, to put his jersey in the rafters, and to see a Clipper in the Hall of Fame.

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Do you seriously think Corey ‘carried the team’ at any time in his 7 years here just because he was able to score 20 PPG? LOL That notion is so laughable it’s not even worth discussing.

Cuttino may have never been the scorer Corey was but he was superior to Maggette in every other aspect and did things that don’t show up on the stat sheet. He provided leadership, was a major glue guy for us, he was unselfish, and he played D – things that Corey wouldn’t know the first thing about.

Cuttino was a more valuable player to us than Maggette – that is a fact. Do you realize that not even his best friend, Elton Brand, wanted to play another season with Corey?! – That’s all you need to know about the team value of a guy like Maggette. Just look at how they already regret signing him in Oakland. Being a 20PPG scorer isn’t everything – far form it – and Corey is the epitome of that.

Why are you crying about Maggette anyway? He wanted OUT. He OPTED OUT. The Clippers didn’t force him out – they simply decided there was no point in matching those GS dollars. It was a given that if we got Baron there was no way we’d retain Corey because we a) had Thornton waiting in the wings at SF and b) PG is where the money needed to be spent, first and foremost. As much as Baron has been a disappointment so far – I’d do that move all over again.

One last thing – you have no idea whether Cat’s heart condition is still the same it was when he came into the league with Houston or when he signed with the Clippers. It is very much possible that it has gotten worse. The Clippers were not being “very shrewd and cold, trying to save themselves the financial burden of a terrible contract for a mediocre player” – they needed a real PF and found a way to get a guy they were interested in going back to last summer. If it was all about getting rid of Cat, this trade would’ve gone down in the off-season. Obviously, Dunleavy wanted to keep Cat then but at the end of the day Cat became a victim of the Clippers’ miserable start and moving his contract (along with Thomas) is what it took to make the Zach deal work.

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Im glad your heart goes out to the mediocre of the world and that you have seething biting criticism for those guys that actually did carry the team.

I have nothing against Cat. He was what he was. But as a fan who wants to see a competitive team I saw him as $9M of dead weight being started over a clearly more superior talent. We decided to keep Cuttino at $9M a season rather than paying Corey $10M to average 10ppg more.

When you really think about it, and im sure this math creates a kernel panic in your processors too, Corey only makes $1M more than Cuttino in his new deal. He made $4M less last season and produced nearly 10ppg more. From the bench. However, our glorious organization, being the razor’s edge of the NBA, kept Cat and let Corey walk basically to save $1M. The thing that burned me was knowing that only $1M was the difference between Corey and Cuttino.

Sure, I was callous. But Cat to me was more than a veteran player providing his sage experience all over the court like musk in an adult movie theater. He was a terrible financial decision that kneecapped us from remaining competitive and a sore reminder of just how stupid this franchise can be, and how ridiculously overpaid he really was.

You wanna be mad and indignant? Be mad that this is how it had to happen in the real world to escape the cost of his contract. He’s signed two waivers in the past to play with his heart condition, what this was is NY, in a very shrewd and cold way, trying to save themselves the financial burden of a terrible contract for a mediocre player.

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Cat was always a valuable player for us – we sure as hell could use his 13, 14, 15 pts a night off the bench right now. Cat was always down for the team and while Maggette bitched about coming off the bench, Cat volunteered to do so if it made the team better. That’s called class, something you do not possess an ounce of. Just like Elton Brand doesn’t either.

Yes, we slightly overpaid for Cat but it’s not like he put a gun to Sterling’s head and forced him to sign him. In fact, the Clippers were lucky a FA of note wanted to come here at all and actually believed that the team’s fortunes could turn around, which it did for a while. Cat and Cassell provided great veteran leadership when they joined – something the team could never count on from their supposed leader, Brand.

Most Clipper fans will always remember Mobley as one of the good guys – too bad losers like you see it fit to belittle and disrespect the man in what has to be a pretty dark moment in his life.

Go F yourself.

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