Please look at his actual numbers because you are making yourself look stupid by saying that.
ok, im home lets see how stupid i looked.
http://www.nba.com/playerfile/sam_cassell/index.html?nav=pageround 1:
his only marginally redeemable series overall. shot a decent percentage (41%) didn't turn the ball over. had a pretty good assist average for his minutes.
I already mentioned he was fine in this series, lets go to the series i said he was bad to awful in and see if i do indeed look stupid.
Round 2:
shot incredibly poorley, ending up at 23% on 6/29 shooting. had the one good game i mentioned in which he went 4-12, but provided good energy and had some assists in sparking a bench run that kept us in the game. overall, a decent series passing the ball, but not great. averaged almost a turnover per 5 minutes on the floor, and was benched for games 6 and 7 due to his inablity to stay in front of "boobie" gibson, a noted jumpshooter who took the opportunity to drive on sam. no defensive numbers, rebounds or steals, to speak of.
looks pretty forgettable to me. so far we are cashing in on that playoff experience son.
round 3:
another horrid series for sam i am. only played 4 games, due to ineffectiveness, shot a laughable 22.9 % on 3/14 shooting, and was used sparingly as his TO's jumped through the roof against full court pressure (which is what we got him for btw, to take that weakness away with eddie in the game) to 1.25 in extermly limited minutes. yanked after giving up a steal to hunter under his own basket.
again, im really looking foolish here. clearly this guy was the rock that held our backup PG position together.
Finals:
mabey this is the round im going to look stupid in, lets take a look.
shot a decent percentage, but still couldn't crack 40% . ended ay 37% in limited minutes due to the back up PG spot being given back to eddie. played ok in the loss on june 15th, his only real significant minutes, shooting by far his best night since atlanta, going 4-8 from the field. did pass the ball better as tim pointed out, pushing his average assists to 1.4
where do i "look stupid" again?
to recap
round 1: decent
round 2: trash except game 2
round 3: utter trash
finals: marginalized as the 3rd gaurd off the bench
your right, i totally overlooked his contributions. how can we afford to risk upgrading this spot, i mean, with another full season of wear and tear by next years playoffs, how can we not snap up this guys playoff "experience".
its a huge effort to replace a 39 year old gaurd that shot 30% for the playoffs and stunk up the joint in 2 series, playing ok in a third. where are we going to replace that kind of production?