After failing in their attempts to land free agent centers Tyson Chandler and DeAndre Jordan, the Warriors will sign Kwame Brown, who last season played for the Charlotte Bobcats. According to a source, the Warriors will sign him to a one-year, $7 million contract Signing Brown shouldn’t come as a surprise after the so-called upper-tier free agent big men all seemed spoken for. And despite the eye-rolling that may accompany the reading of Brown’s name, the reality is that of the remaining free agent centers, Brown probably makes the most sense and could make the most impact for the Warriors. But the Warriors had to pay him a nice chunk of money because he was drawing more than casual interest from Boston and Miami, not to mention his old team, Charlotte. http://www.csnbayarea.com/blog/warr...own-for-one-year-7?blockID=611198&feedID=2539
I'm okay with this. Its only one year and Kwame is a good low post defender who rebounds. In the long run this will be much better than looking at $43M for Jordan. Even if Kwame does nothing, its only $7M for one year.
It is a bit outrageous. But its a one year deal and, as the article in the original post states, there was some competition for him as he was among the best Cs left on the market. To be honest I wonder if I was in Kwame's situation if I would have taken a smaller deal in Mia/Bos, played starter minutes, maybe won a championship a la Tyson Chandler and parlayed that into a long term deal. But the W's probably well outbid everyone to get the 1 year deal done. I think he was the best option for us left on the market. We did overpay but I won't sweat it too much since we can use him in a trade at the deadline or just let him go after the season.
He would be more decent if he didn't have butterfingers. He has trouble catching the ball in the post.
Twitterverse is blowing up about this signing. Matt Steinmentz staunchly defends the signing. TK and MTII are kind of 'meh' toward it. Wojnarowski approves. Fans outraged. Steinmentz makes some good points: Steinmentz: TK and MTII are much more lukewarm on the signing, and rightfully so. But I agree with Steinmentz/Woj/Bucher that our defense does improve and a Beans/Kwame C combo is better than Beans/Udoh. Now you can play Udoh at the 4 and you're talking about a pretty decently sized frontline with Lee/Udoh and Beans/Kwame. The rebounding rate tweet is surprising and Woj makes an interesting point about not having to double team Kwame's man. W's now shifting focus to signing a wingman and possibly backup PG per MTII. I'll make another thread about it.
Let's see, they wasted their amnesty and ended up with Kwame Brown. Yay, new culture! From a basketball perspective, I see this makes some sense but I can't get too excited about this. While defensively, the prospect of Beans, Brown, and Udoh seem pretty solid, the only big man capable of self-initiated offense is David Lee, and of course his defense is non-existent. I'm jaded, so I'll leave you with this thought, Kwame Brown plays well enough to impress Joe Lacob & Co to sign him to a multi-year extension. Don't think it's not possible...
You nailed it on the head Kajita. The problem isn't Kwame. It's the failure to bring in a difference maker. We don't have anything worth coming to play for. That's the frustrating part.
I've let this soak for 24 hours, and I guess I feel better about it now than I did yesterday. The bottom line is that we signed him for one year, and I don't see any other defensive centers we could have picked up for just one year. Yeah, it's $7m, and that's too much for him, but he was bound to be overpaid no matter where he went...supply and demand. In the past, the Warriors have missed out on big names and reacted by signing a horrible multi-year contract with a far inferior player. They didn't do that this time, and I must say that's a step in the right direction. Yeah, I'm setting the bar pretty low there, but fuck it, that's where Cohan left it. Brown is a big body, and all we really need is defense and rebounding. He'll be an expiring contract around the trade deadline, and next season we can start the whole process over again (yay!). The only thing the W's have really fucked up on is the misuse of the amnesty...that was really short-sighted and disappointing. I'd really like to hear their justification for that.
Here's Larry Riley trying to justify using the amnesty on Bell: http://www.ibabuzz.com/warriors/2011/12/14/gm-larry-riley-explains-amnesty-decision/ Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. It didn't allow us to do anything that we couldn't have done without it. Stupid.
Full interview with Kwame Brown http://www.nba.com/warriors/news/warriors_sign_kwame_brown_121411.html You can tell he's been humbled from his first 10 seasons in the league. Seems like a nice enough guy, says all the right things...hopefully he'll give us some solid minutes this year.
I had Kwame in fantasy league last year and he did okay in rebounds and blocked shots. However, his scoring was inconsistent and he didn't always get blocked shots nor get double digit rebounds. I'd like to see Kwame and Udoh play together and see if they can clog the middle. I hope he allows AB to get traded since he is on the trading block. $7 M per is outrageous, but it is for one year and the Warriors do need to get within 85% of cap. The Warriors have no difference maker again, but they need to finish outrageously bad in order to get at least a top 7 pick in the 2012 draft or else Utah gets the pick. Utah gets any pick from 8 on due to the Marcus Williams deal. I thought people protected the top 13 picks.
Warriors have a difference maker already, Steph Curry. They just need to give him the ball and get out of the way!! That means you Monta!
It didn't take long for the Monta sniping to begin. Some people have higher standards phil. LOL. We are talking about all-stars here; The closest guy we have to that is Monta. Now if Curry would just pass the ball to Monta, Klay, Lee, and Wright, then they could make their shots and Curry would rack up more assists. Ellis is the SG, but he gets almost the same number of assists. This year, I want to see what Klay can do at the PG spot. Curry needs to get close to double digit assists and give Monta the ball and get out of the way.
Monta had the ball way too much last season. I agree with philsmith, let Steph run the show and be the primary ballhandler. Obviously Monta is going to get a lot of touches but we need to run more offense through Stef. I saw and interesting quote from Monta saying that when Marc Jackson visited him they discussed him taking fewer shots and he was all for it as long as it meant they won more.
I like the signing. You have the cap space now, and it's being used to rent Kwame for a season. In the mean time, the W's have a dynamic and unstoppable guard tandem and now when the get beat on defense, there's a guy to defend the rim. There weren't any real difference makers out there who wouldn't cost a good chunk of talent and picks, or a big long term hit to the cap.
Our backcourt is far from perfect, but first and foremost, we need to focus on improving the frontcourt. We won't win any championships with our backcourt, but we won't even make playoffs without stepping up our interior play.
The way I see it, if he was any effective as a motivated Erick Dampier, I'll take it! But yeah, we know how freakishly small his hands are like those burger king commercials. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu_bE7g2wqM