Monday, May 8, 2006, 07:00 PM EST
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Los Angeles Clippers]
He's not the league's MVP. He's not the best player on his team. He's not even a good-looking man. But the one thing Sam Cassell does happen to be is a winner.
For whatever reason, "Sam I Am" gets overlooked in the discussion of the best point guards in the Association. Kidd and Nash definitely run the break better and AI and Gilbert are far more accomplished scorers, but not too many players in the league have led their teams as successfully as Cassell.
Fresh from Florida State, he played an integral role as the backup point guard for the two Houston championship squads in the mid-90s. He took the Milwaukee Bucks to within one game of the NBA Finals back in 2001. He even led the Minnesota Timberwolves - who were notorious for getting bounced in the first round every year - to the 2004 Western Conference Finals. His greatest achievement, however, might have come this season with the "other" basketball team in Los Angeles.
There's bad, there's awful... and then there's the Clippers. For the better part of the past two generations, the Los Angeles Clippers have redefined futility. Until this season, they hadn't made the playoffs since 1997, and they hadn't won a playoff series since they were in the Eastern Conference: then known as the Buffalo Braves, they lost 4 games to 2 in the conference semifinals to the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics. Even with a relatively talented duo in Elton Brand and Corey Maggette, the Clippers weren't quite playoff material. Enter Sam Cassell.
In one of Elgin Baylor's few shrewd moves during his tenure as GM, he acquired Sam Cassell (and a first-round pick!) from the Timberwolves for Marko Jaric this past off-season. That move, along with the signing of free-agent Cuttino Mobley (which some may consider a spending splurge, due to the history of tight-fisted owner Donald Sterling), has paid immediate dividends for the franchise. Despite losing Maggette for fifty games in mid-season, Cassell held the team together and led to Clippers to 47 wins in the regular season.
As the 6th seed in the Western Conference, they took apart the Denver Nuggets in five games, and appear poised to make some noise against the Phoenix Suns, who had to fight off a 3-1 deficit in order to take out the Lakers in seven games. On the surface, it appears that the Suns have more firepower and more playoff experience than the young Clippers. But don't count Sam Cassell out just yet. To paraphrase Buddy Ryan's infamous quote about former Eagles' and Vikings' wide receiver Cris Carter, all Sam Cassell does is win.
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