Why Camby will be in the lineup

I’m sure a lot of people are wondering whether the Clippers might just sit some of their veterans the last 12 games of the year and play the kids. But don’t expect Marcus Camby to sit much. Camby needs to play in 10 of the Clippers final 12 games to reach 65 games played, which gives him his full contract bonuses for games played –$2 million — and makes him for him to eligible for all his other bonuses which total $1,787,500. Some of those are for an All-Star appearance, winning a championship, etc. But other benchmarks are averaging 10 points or 10 rebounds or two blocks a game.

Either way, it’s safe to say Camby has plenty of reason to keep playing in these last few games.

He gets $500,000 for every benchmark of games played he hits, starting at 50. So $500,000 for 50 games played, another 500k for 55, another 500k for 60 and another 500k for 65 games.

But in order to earn the last approximately $1.78 million in incentives he must play 65 games and average at least 10 points, 10 rebounds and 2.0 blocks. If he fails to hit any of those marks, he gets none of the extra incentives. Like he could average 10 and 10, but if he ends up averaging 1.99 blocks, no dice.

Last year he hit the rebounding and blocks numbers, but averaged just 9.1 points a game.

This is not exactly a great set-up for a veteran player, but is obviously a great deal for the team. Not only do they get a veteran guy with incentives to keep playing the final few games of a season that’s been over since December, but they get a veteran guy who has to keep playing well in order to hit his contract incentives.

That said, it should be noted that if the Clippers wanted to skimp and save on paying out those incentives, they could’ve just held Camby out or limited his minutes. In speaking with a front office source on Monday, I was told they are absolutely not planning on doing that.