When creating a new theme, you should be able to specify the position of
the title bar buttons with respect to the title, so that you can place, for
example, the close button to the left while the two minimize and maximize
button are still to the right of the title bar.
The rationale for this: I actually use sawfish with the Crux theme. Crux is
set to mimick the NeXT title bar, with the minimize button to the left, no
maximize button and the close button to the right. I find it very handy
because I don't usually maximize many windows.