Anthony Morrow

Anthony Morrow
SG, 6’5, 210lbs, 31 years old, 9 years of experience

Shot well in his few minutes with the ball, because aside from the anomalous four months to begin the season with Oklahoma City, he always catches and shoots well. But he contributes essentially nothing other than this, especially defensively, where he is a player opposing offences target. There should always be a need for spacers, but Chicago needed spacers about as much as anyone, and it still could not find minutes for Morrow. Nor could the Thunder, the league’s worst shooting team. That is indicative of Morrow’s marginal role.

Player Plan: Expiring $3,488,000 contract. His shooting could in theory have had some value in the Bulls’ late regular season and playoff runs, but if he was deemed surplus to requirements then, surely he will be now. Should he return, he is a minimum salary player at this point.

This is what the minimum salary exception is for. Redemption projects and long shot flyers, players who could be of some benefit to you even if they stopped being it for their previous employers. DeJuan Blair is in a similar situation to Casspi – the one time promising young big lost his effectiveness and his place with the Spurs after three years of decline, yet if (and this is of course a massive if) that decline wasn’t overly related to the state of his knees, a change of scenery and a run of health can make him a third big-caliber contributor once again. So too might be Anthony Morrow, now competing for the time Henry left behind with the Pelicans, a player who scored 42 points in a game as recently as a year and a half ago, and who struggled once he left the Warriors’s stat friendly system, but who surely hasn’t lost his deadly jumpshot.

In the past four NBA seasons, there have been 208 occasions on which a player has scored 40 or more points - regular season and playoffs combined. Fifty-seven players have combined for those 208 outbursts, including such unlikely names such as Luis Scola, C.J. Watson and C.J. Miles.

Most of the players are stars, or were stars at the time. Many still are. But some of those players have fallen from this intermittent grace so badly that they now only earn the minimum salary.

Despite their proven potency, Nick Young, Al Harrington, Anthony Morrow, Aaron Brooks and Michael Beasley are now earning as little as a player can - in the case of Beasley, not one dollar of this minimum is even guaranteed. This was agreed to less than three calendar years from his 42-point game, quite the backwards progression.

Anthony Morrow, who was quiet in the first game and who was not playing in the game due to a concussion, was diligently shooting free throws, unnervingly making every single one of them. He was the only player out on the court during the latter part of the optional shootaround.

The perennially tax-paying Suns need that money. Regardless of what happens with Amare Stoudemire, the Suns need to maintain their depth if they are to maintain competitive. To that end, free agents Channing Frye and Louis Amundson need to be brought back. With Ben Wallace's deadweight contract expiring, the Suns might just have the wiggle room to do this without being tax payers: however, they've surely had enough of fighting with that enemy over the years, no doubt still haunted by the memories of the assets it has cost them over the years. If they weren't paying $7.1 million for a third string guard who could readily be a fourth string guard, they'd have the money to retain their good players and maybe add more. Who knows; with an MLE to spend for a change, maybe they could even add Anthony Morrow. A bench unit of Dragic, Morrow, Amundson, Frye and Jared Dudley is a damn fine bench unit.

Of all the possible free agents this upcoming offseason, Golden State's Anthony Morrow is one of the restricted free agents that is garnering the most attention amongst fans. Well, amongst Bulls fans he is, at least.

Morrow only really does one thing; he shoots jumpshots. He is not much of a ball handler, nor much of a defender, nor much of an athlete, nor much of a slasher, nor much of a finisher around the basket. But he does own a jumpshot. A really, really good jumpshot. A really, really, really, really good jumpshot. A jumpshot so good that it spawned its own cult. And in this current NBA era, you can never have too many shooters.

If you need a shooter, you could always sign Casey Jacobsen. He'll need work this summer. You could also sign Desmon Farmer, Billy Thomas, Marcus Vinicius, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, or some old fringe NBA veteran who would happily sign for the minimum and relish the chance to sit on an inactive list. Worst case scenario, you could sign Ryan Ayers. But a lot of people want Morrow, for the simple fact that he has 47% and 46% from three point range in his two NBA seasons. Can't say I blame them. I want that too.

However, if you wish to sign Anthony Morrow, there's some things you should know.

Morrow went undrafted out of Georgia Tech, and, after hitting some jumpshots for the Miami Heat in summer league 2008, the Warriors signed him to a two year minimum salary contract with conditional guarantees. At the time, they probably didn't think he'd be a significant player; as it's turned out, however, he's been one of the brightest spots in a two year cycle of fail. Morrow has performed admirably and shown himself to be a decent NBA calibre player. Golden State now wishes they'd given him a third year.

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