Matt Barnes

Matt Barnes & Darren Collison – Los Angeles Clippers

The two are listed together as they were both acquired via the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. On his first substantial multi-year contract, Barnes will earn $3.25 million next year with one further guaranteed year, while Collison gets the remaining $1.9 million.

Collison comes from Dallas where he was somewhat exposed as an average player. Given the opportunity to lead a team, especially down the stretch of games, he couldn’t. Collison added some dynamics to the position, as well as capable scoring, defense and drive-and-kick abilities, but he was asked to prove he could be a full time point guard, and all he proved is that he wasn’t. However, that doesn’t matter on the team that has Chris Paul. In L.A, all Collison needs to do is come in and be the perfectly average player that he is. He will be getting paid less to do this than players in comparable situations who have proven less (Eric Maynor, J.J. Barea, C.J. Watson), and could theoretically fill a Jarrett Jack-like role for a third of the price of Jarrett Jack.

Meanwhile, Barnes finally gets some overdue recognition, and will provide production on both ends in a way that the team’s other wings lack. His athleticism, disruptive defense, sufficient shooting and off-the-ball movement are surely perfect compliments to the Clippers roster, and they come at a very competitive price. Rather than using their MLE to sign one quality bench contributor, then, the Clippers used theirs to sign two. And that just doesn’t happen very often.