According to several sources including ESPN and the San Antonio Express-News, 12-year NBA vet Damon Stoudamire may join the Spurs as early as tomorrow, when he officially becomes a free agent.
Stoudamire’s buyout with the Memphis Grizzlies was finally completed late Monday, and although it seemed Boston was the front-runner to land the sharpshooting guard, that all changed when San Antonio became part of the equation.
According to Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News, “spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who doubles as the team’s vice-president of basketball operations, can’t speak about Stoudamire until he clears waivers tomorrow night. He did, however, express a high degree of interest before Monday night’s game against the Utah Jazz in whether or not Stoudamire had officially gotten out of his deal in Memphis.”
Boston is probably in most need of a point guard, and I have mixed feelings about bringing aboard the 5-10 Stoudamire who once said the Spurs would never win a championship with Avery Johnson as the starting point guard. Let me break it down a bit.
The Positives: With Stoudamire, the Spurs would be able to bring a point guard off the bench with more offensive skills than Vaughn and another three-point threat. It would also allow them to play Tony Parker sparingly over the road trip or rest him for a couple of games since it doesn’t seem like his nagging injury is getting any better. When he’s given significant minutes he can easily score in double figures and get close to six assists per game.
The Negatives: Stoudamire is a 12-year vet who’ll be added to the oldest team in the league that has more pressing needs including getting younger and finding a solution to this starting center experiment that’s been going on since David Robinson retired. Trading for a young, viable starting center that has to do nothing but rebound, block a few shots and be a presence in the paint would go much farther than a point guard who’ll have to compete with Jacque Vaughn for the backup role. The Spurs have also clearly had troubles taking care of the ball and Stoudamire’s assist-to-turnover ratio is horrible (33rd among NBA point guards). Mighty Mouse is far from a choir boy: he had several marijuana-related incidents while a member of the Blazers and was known to be a lockerrom cancer in his earlier days, but he has supposedly changed his ways since.
The Bottom Line: By now, everyone knows I’m a Darius Washington fanboy, and as I said in the latest Spurscast, coming out tonight, I would have rather seen the Spurs keep D-Wash and take their chances on an young, athletic and aggressive point guard, but now that he’s signed with a team in Greece, that’s not a possibility. If the Spurs do sign him, I’m hoping it’ll be a one-year contract, but the Spurs have a history of signing vets to long contracts (see Bowen, Finley , Barry, Horry). I’ll hope for the best and also hope Pop would sit Tony completely at least for 4-5 games until he is healthy. We’ll find out tomorrow whether or not Stoudamire will be donning the Silver&Black.
