Udoka available again

[greenwise]

Update, it's official:

Blazers waive F Udoka, C Collins


The Portland Trail Blazers announced Thursday that they have waived both forward Ime Udoka and center Jarron Collins.

Udoka had originally been signed on September 27 to an undisclosed contract after playing in 140 games over the past two seasons with San Antonio. In 67 contests -- three starts -- for the Spurs last season, the 32-year-old averaged 4.3 points and 2.8 rebounds.

The Portland State product Udoka started 75 games for the Blazers in 2006-07 and recorded career-high per-game averages of 8.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists.

Collins spent his entire eight-year career with Utah before playing in four preseason games for the Blazers. In 480 regular season games with the Jazz, the 6-foot-11 Collins averaged 4.3 points and 3.1 boards.
http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/basketball/wires/story/1295834.html

[greenhead85]

Frankly, is there a possibility of getting another mobile and highly serviceable big man like Goran Suton? He was recently released by Utah. He performed really well in last year's Final Four for the Spartans.

[jdpapa3]

Suton is really not an NBA player. He looked like he didn't belong in the Orlando Summer League.

[ssspence]

It's weird though; he wasn't good enough to make the Portland training camp and was easily expendable by the Spurs. He turns 33 during the season, and something tells me that his age may have just caused him to be a liability defensively now.

That also seems to be the case looking at the blazersedge forums.

He may have declined, but still, it's not so weird when you think about it.

Portland has really a lot of useful and effective wings (Batum, Webster). San Antonio could have kept him but they preferred to spend their money on Dice, Jefferson and Bogans (who fills the Udoka role with more talent and youth).

So I still think he would be perfect for us, for the minimum salary.

Minimum salary is still just shy of 2 million since we're in tax. And if Danny really wanted to upgrade, wouldn't he have just cut Walker or Giddens already instead of Sweetney?

I think we may be grasping at straw at this point, but I think one of Giddens / Walker / TA will work for spot minutes.

Considering the league picks up half the salary on minimum deals, I don't think this is true. In fact, if the team could trade Giddens for an exception to a young team, then sign Udoka (or the like), they'd actually save money I believe.

If we could do this, I'd be for it.

[Chris]

It's weird though; he wasn't good enough to make the Portland training camp and was easily expendable by the Spurs. He turns 33 during the season, and something tells me that his age may have just caused him to be a liability defensively now.

That also seems to be the case looking at the blazersedge forums.

He may have declined, but still, it's not so weird when you think about it.

Portland has really a lot of useful and effective wings (Batum, Webster). San Antonio could have kept him but they preferred to spend their money on Dice, Jefferson and Bogans (who fills the Udoka role with more talent and youth).

So I still think he would be perfect for us, for the minimum salary.

Minimum salary is still just shy of 2 million since we're in tax. And if Danny really wanted to upgrade, wouldn't he have just cut Walker or Giddens already instead of Sweetney?

I think we may be grasping at straw at this point, but I think one of Giddens / Walker / TA will work for spot minutes.

Considering the league picks up half the salary on minimum deals, I don't think this is true. In fact, if the team could trade Giddens for an exception to a young team, then sign Udoka (or the like), they'd actually save money I believe.

If we could do this, I'd be for it.

Well, they wouldn't save money, because they would almost certainly need to send cash along with Giddens to make it palatable for another team.  But it might come close to breaking even, which makes it at least intriguing.

I just am not positive Udoka is actually a good NBA player.  He had one decent year on a bad Portland team a few years back, where he looked like he could be the next Bruce Bowen, with his combination of physical man to man defense, and 3 point shooting from the corner.  However, he has struggled to break into an aging Spurs lineup, and has been getting little interest around the league. 

I just don't know if he is the answer...at least not enough to go through the effort of trading someone away to open up a roster spot for him.  I have a feeling there will be some buyouts this year that will be much better use of that roster spot.

[moiso]

can we just have a collective WHO CARES!?! Udoka is nothing special.

You said it.  His defense doesn't look as good as it used to; his offense was never good.  At least Giddens will grab some rebounds.  I say wait and see if somebody a little more significant becomes avaiable.

[ssspence]

replace Udoka with Stackhouse in this discussion --- more interesting? maybe the Clippers would take Giddens for their Q Rich trade exception.

[Who]

Udoka is an above average defender (good defender) and an above average rebounder (good rebounder for a SF, outstanding rebounder for a SG).

His shooting was poor last year but I think he can back to his previous levels. Also, he was never comfortable in San Antonio's offense and underperformed relative to his talent offensively. That's what stopped him from filling the next-Bowen role that the Spurs hoped he could fill.

[Chris]

Udoka is an above average defender (good defender) and an above average rebounder (good rebounder for a SF, outstanding rebounder for a SG).

His shooting was poor last year but I think he can back to his previous levels. Also, he was never comfortable in San Antonio's offense and underperformed relative to his talent offensively. That's what stopped him from filling the next-Bowen role that the Spurs hoped he could fill.

You may be right.  Although I have a sneaking suspicion he may be a Tony Allen defender.  Meaning he can be a very good one on one defender, but he can struggle at times in the team defensive concept.

Now, this is complete conjecture, since I really did not see him play much in San Antonio.  But it seems like it could be a reason, given the fact that he looked like a good defender on a bad team, that did not really play team defense, and then came to a team that is very well coached, and struggled to see the floor.

[HomeRunBaker]

It's weird though; he wasn't good enough to make the Portland training camp and was easily expendable by the Spurs. He turns 33 during the season, and something tells me that his age may have just caused him to be a liability defensively now.

That also seems to be the case looking at the blazersedge forums.

He may have declined, but still, it's not so weird when you think about it.

Portland has really a lot of useful and effective wings (Batum, Webster). San Antonio could have kept him but they preferred to spend their money on Dice, Jefferson and Bogans (who fills the Udoka role with more talent and youth).

So I still think he would be perfect for us, for the minimum salary.

Not sure how much he declined since he was never a very good player that the Spurs dumped adn now Portland has no use for.  He really doesn't do anything well except matchup well physically with certain frontcourt players.  He wouldn't dress in our top 12 with everyone healthy and we have 15 contracts already so Udoka won't be a Celtic anytime soon.