He's inherited a bad capped out financial mess (thanks Laydumb) and has been unable to acquire that one piece that we have been lacking since Ewings departure, a true dominating center. He's put together the complementary pieces, we must agree, but we have been needing help in the middle for about 8 years now. Unless we can get LeBron or Kobe to be our scoring force and live with what we have, I don't see us winning a thing.

what if i told you, and this is completely hypothetical, that we somehow through some wheelings and dealings, end up with kmart, webber, zach, and lafrentz on this team.

would you see us winning something then?

I been known to change my wordings when something changes, yes' of course! Hopefully it's not hypothetical.

Yes, he inherited a mess.

Usually when a GM gets hired after the last one was lame, its a mess.

and the mess has grown and grown.

Its like the old arguement of what came first: the chicken or the egg?

We confuse activity with improvement and the only thing to go on is the teams record.

Starbury career has not yielded a winning cred.

Isiah career as an administer is spotty.

Larrys sucked last year, but gets a one year pass. (you'll read lots of response to that one!)

The truth, we sucked so bad there is lots of blame to go around. So BLame who ever you like. Layden, Ewing, H20, Starks, Mike Rowe Fracture, Latrell, Vader, Dooku, Dolan, Nedyal, Dido, Larry, Steph, Kendra, LJ's back, JVG, KVH, NVE, Dick Van Arnsdale, Dick Van Dyke, Van Wyck expressway, Chevy Van, and of course Isiah.

THey all have a hand in it.

IN fairness to "Zeke", he just plainly sucks, but that don't mean we got high apple pie in the sky hopes.

Posted by fishmike:

Posted by djsunyc:

what if i told you, and this is completely hypothetical, that we somehow through some wheelings and dealings, end up with kmart, webber, zach, and lafrentz on this team.

would you see us winning something then?

how could we lose?

in zeke we trust.

Posted by BlueSeats:

If i were GM I'd have taken steps to acquire a franchise caliber talent first (via the draft and/or free agency), then to surround him with role players.

Isiah has chosen to first assemble a bench and glut in the hope they can be traded for a superstar.

Isiah's idea of a franchise superstar was Stephon Marbury.

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by BlueSeats:

If i were GM I'd have taken steps to acquire a franchise caliber talent first (via the draft and/or free agency), then to surround him with role players.

Isiah has chosen to first assemble a bench and glut in the hope they can be traded for a superstar.

that's interesting b/c i would've went another direction.

i would've hired a coach first and establish a style of play. then figure out who stays and who can go. unless a franchise caliber talent drops from the sky, we just build via the draft, accumulate hard working players and set a year to be under the cap.

isiah should've said, in 2007, we will get under the cap, when h20's contract expires. all moves in the interim would be for contracts that didn't extend past that year. and of course, never to trade picks.

then figure out which franchise player we need to take us over the hump.

the problem was that isiah thought marbury was that franchise player.

That's actually not a different direction than mine. We're both talking about a traditional rebuild where you mine the draft and developing youth while shedding payroll.

it actually positions you best to exploit the three major means of talent acquisition:

Draft: (By shedding large contracts one generally lowers talent which maximizes draft positioning for opportunities at the best propects)

Free Agency: (By getting under the cap you position yourself to acquire the premium FAs relative to the MLE and LLE)

Trade: (an abundance of value contracts, as obtained through the draft and NBDL, are more desirable to trade partners that bloated overpaid and overrated player/contracts)

So the traditional rebuild positions oneself to best utilize each of the three main vehicles for quality talent acquisition.


Unfortunately isiah's approach has been the opposite.

Draft: (Rushing to make the playoffs and trading high picks for low results in poor draft positioning)
FA; (the MLE and LLE only go so far)
Trades: ("unmovable" contracts and expirings often yield "more of the same" type players. Admittedly good talent can be acquired thru this means ie, Sheed and Carter, but I'd have held back on their use until late in the game, say with Houston, Eisley and Shandon's contracts, to weigh their advantage vs possible under the cap FAs)

Thus Isiah's approach positions us to obtain low draft picks, mediocre free agents, bloated contracts, and reclamation project talent.

Posted by Killa4luv:

Posted by djsunyc:

the problem was that isiah thought marbury was that franchise player.

Thats not quite true. But then again, who needs truth when we're bashing?
Steph was brought here to play with Allan Houston. Isiah was trying to create one of the best back courts in the league, and would have done that if Allan's knees held up. When Allan retired, or even before that Steph became the default franchise player, more from a business sense, and from a 'being the best player on a team sense' than from being a player who can single-handedly carry a franchise to greatness.

isiah also said that steph was the 2nd most important person in the organization next to dolan and lenny said it was "steph's team". isiah hi-fiving al trautwig was one of the funniest things i've ever seen.

Posted by Killa4luv:

Posted by djsunyc:

the problem was that isiah thought marbury was that franchise player.

Thats not quite true. But then again, who needs truth when we're bashing?
Steph was brought here to play with Allan Houston. Isiah was trying to create one of the best back courts in the league, and would have done that if Allan's knees held up. When Allan retired, or even before that Steph became the default franchise player, more from a business sense, and from a 'being the best player on a team sense' than from being a player who can single-handedly carry a franchise to greatness.

Isiah refered to Stephon Marbury as a "franchise calibre talent" when that trade went down.

Houston took 5 months off from microfracture surgery. When Isiah got here, Houston had played in over 90% of the team's games and had been averaging over 20 PPG. More importantly, the team doctors and Houston both said he was fine. Isiah can't be expected to know more about Houston's health than the team doctors know!

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by Killa4luv:

Posted by djsunyc:

the problem was that isiah thought marbury was that franchise player.

Thats not quite true. But then again, who needs truth when we're bashing?
Steph was brought here to play with Allan Houston. Isiah was trying to create one of the best back courts in the league, and would have done that if Allan's knees held up. When Allan retired, or even before that Steph became the default franchise player, more from a business sense, and from a 'being the best player on a team sense' than from being a player who can single-handedly carry a franchise to greatness.

isiah also said that steph was the 2nd most important person in the organization next to dolan and lenny said it was "steph's team". isiah hi-fiving al trautwig was one of the funniest things i've ever seen.

Yes, and I accounted for that in my post. He was the best player on the team, he become those things.