FanHouse

Earlier today, Ziller mentioned how the Celtics wasted no time in offering recent Clippers castoff Corey Maggette a place on their championship roster, but it now appears that another title contender is likely to land him instead. Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that the San Antonio Spurs are the front-runners to land Maggette, with a multi-year contract offer for the mid-level exception expected to be forthcoming.

The Spurs seem like a better fit than the Celtics for Corey. If he's taking less money to compete for a title -- and unless he wants to go somewhere like Golden State or Philadelphia for substantially more money, that's what he's doing -- he's going to want to see the floor. Maggette is a legitimate starter in this league, and with the Spurs more than happy to bring Manu Ginobili off the bench, Corey will get plenty of minutes and plenty of shot attempts. I don't think that would necessarily be the case in Boston, where he'd undoubtedly have a tough time cracking that starting five.

The naysayers point out that Corey has been a defensive liability at times in his career, and that, specifically in the Spurs' offense, he'll need to dramatically improve his three-point shooting from the corners. To both of these assertions, I say: hogwash.

Maggette is not being brought to San Antonio to be a young Bruce Bowen, who would need to play lock-down defense and float to the corners to shoot open three-pointers. With Maggette's offensive skill set, he likely won't be the one in those corners getting the open looks from three. You would happily leave Bowen out there to double Tim Duncan, but I seriously doubt that teams are going to double off of Maggette with all of the ways he's capable of beating you.

As for Maggette's defense? It hasn't been the best, but I've certainly found it to be serviceable when necessary. Every time the Clippers faced the Lakers for example, Maggette stepped up defensively and made things extremely tough on cross-town rival Kobe Bryant. With Gregg Popovich demanding defense from his players, and Corey wanting to get his minutes on a championship contender, I see him having no problem at all giving the type of effort on the defensive end of the floor that we've come to expect from this Spurs team. It's a good fit, and one that might be enough to get the Spurs back to the Finals in 2009.