Los Angeles Clippers: Does Signing Antawn Jamison Mean Anything?

facebooktwitterreddit

On Monday, the Los Angeles Clippers agreed to terms with veteran forward Antawn Jamison.  Jamison, the 37-year-old versatile big man, recently entered the free-agent pool after playing one season for the cross-town rival Los Angeles Lakers.  Fortunately for the Clippers, this signing will indeed live up to the other moves they made this offseason.

For a little background information on Jamison, the first thing that shocks people is that he is entering his 16th season in the NBA.  Many teams have seen him come and go, including the Golden State Warriors, Dallas Mavericks, Washington Wizards, Cleveland Cavaliers, and of course the Lakers.  The next fact that surprises fans is that Jamison was once a reliable 20-plus point and seven-plus rebound per game asset, as he recorded six seasons with averages above those marks.  His best season was arguably his third year in the league (2000-01) when he led the Warriors with his 24.9  points and 8.7 rebounds per game on a 44.2 field goal percentage.  Coming back from memory lane, we realize that production came at a time when he had fresh legs and a body less prone to injury.

Antawn Jamison has agreed to join arguably the best offense in the league this upcoming season. Photo Credit: Scott Mecum, Flickr.com

This past season, Jamison went through the obstacles of having a displeasure with coach Mike D’Antoni and playing through torn wrist ligaments during the second half of the schedule.  D’Antoni wasn’t comfortable with Jamison receiving a lot of minutes, which wasn’t surprising in his seven or eight-man rotation he liked to feature every night.  Being one of the best 6’9″ 3-point shooters in the league, many scratched their head at Jamison being benched for the first half of the season during their embarrassing start.

He will get another fresh start with this year’s Clippers team.  Not only will be playing under the best coach he’s had in his career in Doc Rivers, but he is just another addition to the deadliest weapon Los Angeles has; poison from the perimeter.  The starting lineup for this team highlights three terrific shooters that will make for a living nightmare for most defenses in the Western Conference.  When Chris Paul, Jared Dudley and J.J. Redick are on the sidelines, having a secondary lineup featuring Jamison, Darren Collison, Matt Barnes and Jamal Crawford creates the most well-balanced bench in the league.

There are little to no doubts in Collison’s and Crawford’s ability to create offense, meanwhile Jamison can spread the floor even more and be a better defensive and more experienced backup than Byron Mullens.

The greatest advantage this signing gives the Clippers is their ability to now give Doc Rivers some options in the frontcourt.  Rivers is familiar with Jamison through their days in Boston and Cleveland, respectively.  He knows what Jamison brings to the table with his craftiness to create his own shot and play outside the paint, two things Griffin needs to improve to be an unstoppable power forward.  Going from a frontcourt that had no significant help outside of Ryan Hollins to one that now has four quality pieces means more than critics realize.

Other than Jamison’s recent reputation of signing with teams just in hopes of lucking into a championship ring, there is realistically only one year left for him to perform at a quality level.  Even with a disappointing season last year with the Lakers, Jamison still managed to have acceptable bench numbers of 9.4 points and 4.8 rebounds per game.  For a bench player that is looking to get 22 to 23 minutes per game with the Clippers, mirroring his production from last year wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

[slider_pro id=”13″]