Originally Posted by yamaneko

Once again, has nothing to do with injury. Some people are so clueless its incredible.

Its one thing to take issue with someone's opinions, but when you can't face pure and simple facts, then you have to wonder about what you are basing your statements on.

Lets stick to the facts please.

1. Injury or not, brand would not have led us anywhere, just like usual, look at the team we have this year.
2. Has nothing to do with being fair weather fans or not, if you cannot see the reason those of us realistic fans are exploring other options at this point is that BRAND HAS ONLY ONE YEAR LEFT ON HIS DEAL, OR CAN OPT OUT THIS YEAR, and/or IS DUE AN EXTENSION. Why would anyone be talking about this 2 years ago when hes in the middle of his contract? Were talking about extending brand for max money next year. I for one feel that its not money well spent...
3. Brand with the bulls:
99-00 20 points, 10 boards, 2 blocks. ROY. Bulls record: 17-65. Nothing much can be said about that bulls team, they would have sucked with or without brand..you add a superstar to that team, they probably would have barely made the playoffs if that

00-01 20 points, 10 boards, 2 blocks. Bulls record: 15-67. Bulls realized hey, this brand guy isnt really going to take us places despite good stats...lets trade him for a high school player. The next two years, they increased in wins about 8 each year. Would i have traded him for a high school player? Heck no.

Clippers:

01-02 18 points, 11.6 boards, 2 blocks. Clippers Record: 39-43. 8 win increase over the previous season which is pretty reasonable considering you add a great player in brand and dont lose anyone noteable from the year before .however, might be not as good as poential considering that team was way better than us this or last year...Brand/Mccinis/Qrich/Kandiman/Dmiles/Maggette/Pike/boykins/dooling. But it was only good enough to get us 5th in the pacific division.

02-03 18 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks. Clippers record: 27-55. Lost miles and added andre miller. Yet, without a true leader on the team on or off the court (Miller for sure was far from it), we lost 12 more games than the previous year. Gentry fired, miller let go. In comes Dunleavvy. Before he signs he says, we have to 1. sign elton brand, 2. sign maggette, and 3. make a run at a superstar. They take care of step one and 2, giving elton a max deal. I had no problem with giving brand max money at that point. He had a couple good years with us, and despite our futility, it could possibly have been attributed to the coaching. So with the best coach we had since larry brown, one could be optimistic and say, hey maybe he can turn brand into the superstar leader we have needed...lets give it a shot.

03-04 20 points, 10 rebounds 2 blocks. Clippers record: 28-54 Ok, so individually brand was pretty much the same guy. Record wise, despite loosing odom and miller, Richardson became twice the player he was. We added kaman, and maggette continued to get better. Brand id give a pass again. At this point it was obvious though hed never be an on the court nor off the court leader. However, perhaps still a glimmer of hope he could become a superstar player, albeit a slight hope.

04-05 20 points, 9.5 rebounds, 2 blocks. Clippers record: 37-45. With pretty much the same team as the previous year, and everyone else getting better since they were so young, this was a reasonable increase in wins. However, with the talent on the team it seemed strange that our record was so bad despite being better on paper than teams who finished ahead of us.

05-06 25 points, 10 rebounds, 2 blocks. Clippers record: 47-35. FINALLY the clipers put it together. Brand puts up for the first time in his career superstar numbers. On one head the pessimit (i wasnt one of them...) might have said, well, its only because brand had an elite PG and leader that he did so much better. Most of us, including myself, thought that maybe brand was just a late superstar bloomer like a Tmac or something. For the first time he earned his max deal, and i thought this was just the beginning. I didnt attribute all of our success to him though. Any fool could see it was cassell's leadership, plus the best SG (mobley) we have had in the longest time, plus kamans surprisingly great year. But still, this year, i thought brand had turned the corner, and truly became a max player on the level of duncan and garnett.

06-07 20 points, 9 rebounds, 2 blocks. Clippers record: 40-42. Oh well. The pessmists were right. Brand's outburst wasnt the turning of a corner, it was mostly due to cassell's savvy and leadership. With cassell injured much of the year, Brand was back to his normal self. (nothing wrong with his normal self BTW).

07-08 DNP Clipper Record: TBD. Regardless of his injury, he most likely would have had the same year hes had most of his career, a very impressive 20,10 and 2. However, we wouldnt have gone anywhere as even with him we probably suck more than last year due to cassell still being hobbled, mobley aging faster than a dog, and all the other injuries we have had.

That brings us to this off season. (or next) Do we extend brand with a max deal, thus capping us out, meaning the only new guys we will get on our team are minimum level guys, or guys that we draft? To me, that would be insane. We alrady have 50 million tied up with Kaman. With brand, kaman is at best a 12 and 10 guy. Not my fault we signed kaman for 50 million, but its a done deal, and hes going nowhere. So if we resign brand for max money, we will be paying 27 million a year, more than half of our capspace, for 32 points, 20 rebounds. Couple that with our backup SF, and backup SG Thomas and mobley, making another 15 million, we have almost our full salary cap for our front court and 2 backups.

So then the logic dictates, well, really SHOULD we resign brand for the max? We have a terrible track record of drafting, so we cant necessarily bank on getting a surprise superstar all of a sudden. After this year, we have zero tradeable assets pretty much. Not that we have that great of a trading record anyway, but still, we cant bank on getting a superstar through trade. IF we resign brand, what can we expect? Without an elite PG, we can bank on his dependeable 20/10/2, but his entire career has shown us, thats not enough to even get to the playoffs, let alone win a championship.

Thus the only logical move is, like other teams, try something new. If its broke, then you fix it. If we have a forumla that cant win games for us, you dont resign that forumla for years to come.

Going after an arenas or similar player does not guarantee us anything. But its something new, something that we really dont know if it will work or not. With brand we already know it doesnt work.

If we can resign brand for a kaman like deal, i say youve got to do that. But i dont think anyone here actually believes brand will be looking for a deal that is a lot less than his current one.

If ANYONE here thinks brand is worth the max, and how its going to get us a championship, id love to hear that logic.