Chris Kaman

New Orleans Hornets Shopping Chris Kaman

by Josh Dhani on January 28, 2012

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It looks like Chris Kaman’s tenure with the New Orleans Hornets has now come to an end. According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, Kaman is being shopped now by the Hornets as the team is looking towards a different direction, and that includes leaving the former All-Star center out of the picture.

With how young the team is, featuring guys like Eric Gordon and Al-Farouq Aminu, New Orleans is looking to give more minutes for their young guys than Kaman. With that, it seems that Kaman won’t be playing until he gets traded as he has been inactive, even though he doesn’t have an injury.

“We’ve informed Chris that we are looking into possible trades and he was understanding about the situation,” Hornets GM Dell Demps said. “We’re working together on this.

“Chris has been the ultimate professional since he joined us. In no way is this a disciplinary action. We had discussions about extending his current contract when he first came to the Hornets, but the organization decided to go in a different direction.”

New Orleans received Kaman, Aminu, and Gordon during a blockbluster trade that sent Chris Paul to the Clippers. However, Kaman being traded now comes to no one’s surprise as he was assumed to be traded pretty soon once he hit New Orleans.

“It’s just something (where) we want to play our young guys and we certainly don’t want to disrespect Chris at all,” Hornets coach Monty Williams told local reporters before Friday night’s game against the Magic.

“This is something we want to keep internally. It’s certainly not disciplinary and he understands and I talked to him. We’re going to play Jason Smith, Gustavo Ayon and Al-Farouq Aminu. It’s just difficult to play that many bigs and I understand how difficult it is for (Kaman) to not get the minutes he wants.”

The 29-year-old is currently averaging 9.2 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. If any team is need of a center, Kaman could be your guy. I mean, he has been an All-Star before.

Now all he needs to do is get a new picture for his NBA profile, because this really won’t attract many NBA teams:

http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/nba/players/full/1982.png&w=350&h=254

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Written by Josh Dhani, Founder (Archive/RSS)

Josh has been writing since 2009 and founded FootBasket in April 2009. He also writes at Hardcourt Mayhem and contributes to TrueHoop’s Eight Points Nine Seconds. He also owns his own Pacers blog at StaringDownSpike.com. Check him out on JoshDhani.com and follow him on Twitter @JoshDhani

Josh has been writing since January 2009 and founded FootBasket in April 2009. He also owns the websites, Hardcourt Mayhem and Gridiron Mayhem. For a full bio, check out JoshDhani.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshDhani

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Gordon, Kaman Not Pleased With The Clippers

by Josh Dhani on January 6, 2012

It looked like the Los Angeles Clippers had finally shed their image of being a cheap organization when they made the trade for Chris Paul. It was a big moment for the team and maybe a moment where the Clippers can finally sit at the big boy table.

Former Clippers Eric Gordon and Chris Kaman weren’t too thrilled about the turn of events. They’re happy to be members of the New Orleans Hornets, but felt they were misled by team management.

“All you do is take the man’s word and take that he said that no one is going to go anywhere,” Gordon told Yahoo! Sports. “… To completely lie like that is something unprofessional.”

Strong words calling a man a liar. But since there’s more to the story which consists of two sides we’ll keep going. Since it is the Clippers we’re talking about, Gordon might not be too far off base.

“I’m not deceptive enough to look players in the eye and tell them something that is not true,”general manager Neil Olshey said. “And I can tell you from an ownership level, the president of our company, myself, we made a corporate decision Monday morning that when the deal didn’t go through on Sunday night we would no longer pursue the trade. And that’s when we notified our players, to get the elephant out of the room during our abbreviated training camp.”    


Gordon and Kaman felt deceived since Olshey and head coach Vinny Del Negro held a team meeting pledging to move forward after the initial Paul trade was rejected.

I can see how Gordon could’ve felt that he was deceived since Olshey and Del Negro pretty much said everything was going to remain status quo.

Said Gordon: “They literally told me as an organization that they wanted to keep me, and [the trade still] went down?”

Kaman found out the details through his real estate agent’s son.

“He said, ‘Hey, you got traded.’ I was like, ‘C’mon,’ ” Kaman said. “Then everyone started talking to me like, ‘Hey, what happened?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ Then my agent wasn’t calling me. I couldn’t get ahold of him. Then Farouq talked to his agent and said it was done.


“The Clippers didn’t tell me anything. They didn’t tell me I was traded or nothing after eight years. They didn’t have the guts to come tell me they traded me.”  

I would like to say I feel sorry for them but I don’t. They know the NBA is all about business. As difficult as it  is to defend the Clippers on any front, they were offered a good deal and took it. You can’t blame them for that. Both seem happy with the trade and Kaman took a jab at the Clippers.
“They’re very professional,” Kaman said. “I’m not used to that. No, serious. It was an adjustment. After eight years [with the Clippers], I didn’t know it could be like this. I wasn’t used to it. The way they handle business … they’re up front with you and they tell you what’s going on and what’s going to happen.”  

Better than the way Donald Sterling has his puppets handling business.

Josh has been writing since January 2009 and founded FootBasket in April 2009. He also owns the websites, Hardcourt Mayhem and Gridiron Mayhem. For a full bio, check out JoshDhani.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshDhani

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