Via Maurice Brooks:

From Marc Stein:

Kelly Dwyer (with supporting testimony from some quality analysis at PickAxe & Roll) challenges the prevailing opinion that Marcus Camby is a defensive standout:

As widely documented over the past 18 hours, plucking Marcus Camby off Denver's salary scrap heap is a sensible choice for the Clippers.  But more than that, it creates some interesting schematic choices for Dunleavy.  Camby is sort of a unique big.  Offensively, he's more comfortable around the elbow as a facilitator than he is as a brute muscling down low.  Camby's pick-and-pop game is solid, and he also knows how to hit a baseline cutter.  A lot of his success as a passer derives from the fact that he likes to hang out in the high post.  What

Marc Stein over at ESPN.com has it: Sources told ESPN.com that the Clippers will only have to surrender a future second-round pick to acquire Camby, who is being jettisoned into the Clippers' salary-cap space vacated by Brand to generate payroll relief for the Nuggets.A trade call with the league to approve the deal has been completed, sources said, clearing the way for the teams to announce the swap later Tuesday.

From Marc Stein at ESPN.com: LAS VEGAS -- The Los Angeles Clippers confirmed on Sunday that lottery pick Eric Gordon will miss the remainder of the NBA Summer League on the campus of UNLV with a strained left hamstring.

AUSTIN TX -- Clipperblog is through examining the tea leaves.  I’m willing to ascribe Brand’s decision to sign with Philadelphia as a confluence of factors – all of which are now in plain view.  Maybe it’s incuriosity or boredom – or the fact that Clipperblog is on vacation away from the hermetically sealed Los Angeles media chamber --  but divvying up blame in its appropriate servings seems silly.  

I have a column over at ESPN.com. The takeaway:  For Clippers fans, each scenario is awful for a different reason. The possibility that Brand never harbored any love for Clippers fans -- that his outward displays of loyalty were intended solely to bolster his "good guy" image -- is gut-wrenching. But what's equally terrifying is the idea that the Clippers can't even get it together to retain a player who actually wants to be there, all things being equal.

What's emerging from the press corps are wildly different scenarios as to what transpired in the negotiations between the Clippers and Elton Brand.

Clipperblog over the weekend:

Abrams' report:

Marc Stein's latest:

Some speculation from Sean Deveney at the Sporting News: The motivation for his decision to opt out was that he could put pressure on the Clippers to improve the roster, to make the team better by spending a little money. They did just that. So Brand should have fallen in and re-joined the Clippers. But five days have passed and Brand still hasn't signed. It's worth asking: Why not?

Marcus Thompson II in the Contra Costa Times reports, "It appears the Warriors aren't going to be able to snatch power forward Elton Brand from the Los Angeles Clippers. The buzz among NBA insiders is that Brand — by all accounts a class act — will honor his word and remain with the Clippers." [Hat Tip: Petey Pablo]

From Jonathan Abrams at the Los Angeles Times: ...the Golden State Warriors have offered free-agent Elton Brand a more lucrative, multiyear deal than the Clippers have proposed, according to NBA sources who requested anonymity because they are not allowed to speak about other free-agent dealings. On Tuesday, the Clippers reached a verbal agreement to sign Warriors free-agent Baron Davis and were nearing a new deal with Brand.