As expected, it didn't take the recently bought out Drew Gooden and Joe Smith long to find new teams -- by all accounts, the two power forwards each had unofficial agreements in place even before the NBA confirmed they cleared waivers.
According to Mike Monroe of the Express-News, Gooden decided to join the Spurs, who tried and failed to add a big man at the trade deadline. Gooden has been injured for much of the year, but when healthy he's a solid rebounder who can score around the basket, easing some of the load off Tim Duncan. Considering Matt Bonner does his best work from long distance (he's shooting 48.7% from three-point land), Gooden should complement the team's rotation nicely.
It's always tough to get a new player up to speed when joining a new team this late in the season, but as Monroe points out, Gooden's three and a half years in Cleveland should give him a leg up:
Gooden's experience playing for Cavs coach Mike Brown, a former assistant under Spurs coach Gregg Popovich who employs essentially the same defensive scheme, should give him an important advantage in making the transition.Smith, meanwhile, has agreed to join the Cavaliers, who recently lost Ben Wallace for three-to-four weeks to a broke fibula. Smith has slowed a bit with age, but not as much as you might think: his 8.5 rebounds per 36 minutes are virtually identical to the 8.7 per 36 he's averaged over his career. That won't completely replace Wallace's 9.9 boards per 36 (and he's not quite the defender that Wallace is), but his ability to actually contribute on offense helps close the gap between the two.
And considering Smith spent the second half of last season with the Cavaliers (ironically, arriving in the same trade that shipped Gooden to Chicago), it shouldn't take him much time at all to get re-acclimated with his former teammates. Assuming Wallace returns in time for the playoffs, the Cavs will be incredibly deep up front with a big man rotation that features Zydrunas Ilgauksas, Anderson Varejao, Smith and rookies J.J. Hickson and Darnell Jackson.
