It looks as though the Cavs will sign Larry Hughes to play shooting guard. Five years, about 65 to 70 million. I thought I'd take a little statistical look at Hughes, alongside the two players many Cavs fans had hoped for, Ray Allen and Michael Redd:

                     Hughes  Allen    Redd

age in 2006            27      30      26
new contract length  5 yrs.  5 yrs.  6 yrs.
millions per year    ≈13.5   ≈16.0   ≈15.5

2005 O-Rating         110     117     110
2005 D-Rating         104     112     113
2005 player win%     .691    .657    .418

career O-Rating       100     113     113
career D-Rating       105     109     109
career player win%   .367    .623    .616

Note that the Cavs have reportedly signed Hughes for the exact same amount and length of time they offered to Redd. The table above would seem to reveal Hughes and Redd to be somewhat comparable, in fact, with Redd being a year younger and significantly better on offense, but Hughes being significantly better on defense. Hughes is clearly the best defender of the three. The biggest concern I have about him is that he appears to be a poor offensive contributor who happened to have a good year offensively in 2005 (10 points per 100 above his career average!). Whether or not this change represents a new level of ability or a fluctuation remains to be seen.

Ray Allen, being the oldest and most expensive, would probably have been the worst signing the Cavs could have made (out of the three). He has had the best career, clearly, but is now likely to fall off a bit.

Of course the most important part of this signing is the comparison between Hughes' numbers, above, and these:

                    Newble

2005 O-Rating        102
2005 D-Rating        109
2005 player win%    .288

career O-Rating      104
career D-Rating      108
career player win%  .398

I wonder if Cavs fans are a little too quick to dismiss another, in-house two-guard option: Luke Jackson. In 2006 he will be 24 years old and making about $2 mil. He didn't play enough in 2005 for us to put much stock in his statistics, making Luke something of an unknown. I hope Coach Brown at least gives Luke a chance to prove himself.

When you have cap space, as the Cavaliers do, it makes sense to use it--usually. If we assume (and I know it's a big assumption, but just for the sake of argument) that the Cavs re-sign Z and somebody else to play point guard, they will have made efficient use of their cap space for 2006; I simply hope, in the back of my mind, that the large contracts for Hughes and (perhaps) Ilgauskas do not restrict the (admittedly huge) amount of money we will need to offer LeBron two years from now.