The Charlotte Bobcats are close to acquiring Shaun Livingston to help address their hole at point guard, an informed source told the Observer Wednesday.
Livingston, 6-7, is a former lottery pick by the Los Angeles Clippers, who suffered a career-threatening knee injury several years ago while playing against the Bobcats. He turned pro out of high school, after signing to play for Duke.
Livingston has since played for Miami, Oklahoma City and most recently the Washington Wizards. He played 28 games for the Wizards last season -- 18 of them starts -- averaging 9.2 points and 4.5 assists.
Livingston would compete with D.J. Augustin for the starting job vacated by Raymond Felton, signed with the New York Knicks. The Bobcats will likely bring undrafted rookie Sherron Collins to training camp as a third option at the position.
Signing Livingston would likely preclude the team from other options, such as trading for Minnesota's Ramon Sessions or Indiana's T.J. Ford, at least for now.
My guess (hope) is that this is an insurance policy and that we're really gonna go for Chris Paul.
Ahhhhh, Shaun Livingston, one of the most overhyped players when I watched him in his Rookie season, along with a ton of injuries.
The Charlotte Bobcats have one of the oddest rosters in the NBA, they seem to get these crappy washed up players from other teams. Although Gerald Wallace and Stephen Jackson are good players, but not really stars. I think the Bobcats really took a step back in free agency just because they don't want to go over the luxury tax.
Livingston is kind of like the draft pick we didn't have this year. It's a roll of the dice for MJ that has the potential to be a bust but also has the potential to really pay off.
Actually we're sitting over the LT right now by about 7 million.
Good signing. Gives us insurance in case we need to trade DJ or it'd give LB a good one two punch when he wants to go with a 2 PG set. Contract is just a little high, but everyone's getting overpaid and this isn't considered one of the worst by far.
I assume that's only because of Dampier's contract. So technically we're +/- 6 million under?
Yup. I've been betting Damp will ultimately be waived to get under the tax, but with all the speculation that we'd actually try to turn his contract into something I think that being over with it included can't be ignored.
Without an in depth look...I don't know that we'd actually be in better shape after waiving Damp vs looking for financial relief with Tyson/Nazr. It now appears Toronto was willing to give up a traded player exception for Tyrus and with that we could have been below the cap and could have conceivably re-signed Felton.
Either way we're without Tyson, but in the last scenario at least we'd still have a starting PG.
We'll just have to wait and see what they do with Damp.
Shaun Livingston always plays well with an athletic PF so it will be interesting to see him and Tyrus Thomas together. If Shaun gets starter minutes, he will easily average 12 PPG and 8 APG.
Bobcats to sign Shaun Livingston
That's hard to watch. He was playing pretty well for Washington at the end of last season.
