Nearly half the team is playing for a contract and once the losses start mounting, it'll be "get mine'' time, especially since this season is being sacrificed like a fattened calf for the summer of 2010. "LeBron or Bust'' is a great motto for your fan base, but not for your undermanned squad.

What would qualify as a successful season for the Knicks? Al Harrington would obviously say playoff berth. Team prez Donnie Walsh would undoubtedly settle for trading Eddy Curry or Jared Jeffries before July 1.

Good news: Knicks have gobs of cap room in 2010. Bad news: It's still 2009. Added size in Darko Milicic and Jordan Hill should help the D, but paucity of decent wings makes it tough to play Mike D'Antoni's preferred style successfully.

Can we just fast-forward to the summer of 2010, when the Knicks' real season begins? With seven players in the last year of their contract, a ninth consecutive losing season is a foregone conclusion. The Knicks need to get something out of Gallinari and Eddy Curry -- that's how ugly things could get.

Those are just some quotes from an ESPN season preview article that featured 10 ESPN analysts predictions on the Knicks in 2009-2010. Out of all 10 analysts, 4 picked the Knicks to finish 12th in the East, another 4 picked them 13th in the East, and one analyst each picked the Knicks to finish 11th and 14th respectively.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/preview2009/news/story?page=Predictions0910-Knicks

But of course, ESPN is biased against NY, correct? So let's look at another article from someone over at Yahoo...

Asking Knicks fans to be patient? It's hard to do.

The Knicks have gone 36 years without a championship, they're nine years removed from their last appearance in the second round, and the team is about as long as shots get at putting an end to this length of loserdom.

On top of that, Knicks fans have been faced with a series of executives, ownership groups and coaches that were, shall we say, lacking. Toss in the sheer size of the Knick fan base and a tri-state temper following that doesn't really take to the word "rebuilding" all that well, and you have a tough group to sell the following ideal to — the Knicks will stink, again, in 2009-10.

They'll probably be worse than last year.

Then you have to tell them this:

S'OK, man. S'OK.

Because the team is properly rebuilding. It's trying it's damndest to get under the cap, acquire solid assets, build a real team. To build from the bottom up. But it's hard. Isiah Thomas salted the fields before he left, leaving the team with a ridiculous array of barely tradeable contracts, earned by players who flat out didn't deserve 1/10th or even 1/100th of what they made.

Donnie Walsh is the right executive for this team. Mike D'Antoni's the right coach. And soon enough, they'll have the right players. Or, at least, they'll have a chance at them. And it's just not worth commenting on any of these players because they won't be Knicks in 12 months time. Danilo Gallinari(notes) will be, and he looks like a stud. Jordan Hill looks solid, for a thin draft at least. Others might come back, but if Knicks fans have any say, they'll be role players. Even the ones who are brilliant, like Lee. Or explosive, like Robinson.

So take in one more year of nonsense. It might not net you LeBron or Bosh or Wade or even Carlos Boozer(notes).

But whatever happens, another year of taking blows will lead you toward respectability. And though New York's record won't be respectable this season, you can respect where they're going. Even if they step back in 2009-10.

Prediction: 30-52

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/BDL-s-2009-10-NBA-Preview-New-York-Knicks?urn=nba,194432

Please tell me where this nonsense started that the Knicks were supposed to be a more improved team this season? I along with several others have been saying from the beginning that NY didn't do enough in the off-season to be a better team in a Conference where several teams made the necessary additions to take that next step. Anyone that was realistic at the start of this season should realize that the results aren't a surprise and that this summer is the first time Walsh can actually start building a team with no restrictions.

How about we give management and the coaching staff an opportunity to actually build a team before we declare that everyone should be fired? It's amazing how several years ago people said this roster had to be torn down to start over and now that Walsh is doing that, a lot of those same people don't have the stomach to go through the losing.

Nobody has really talked about firing D'Antoni except for that one thread which was pretty much tongue-in-cheek. However, many around here have been very critical of him which, IMO, has been well-deserved.

Stop trying to put the onus on his critics by inventing these wild expectations that we supposedly have of him, and instead focus on the direct criticisms of D'Antoni's performance this year. CrushALot as usual covers pretty much all the bases in his post.

He's commanding an elite coach salary. So far he's been a bargain basement reject. Ya'll need to stop acting like his P.R agent for real. That arrogant twerp can handle himself.

AnubisADL wrote:

arkrud wrote:GM and coach did terrific job.
This team should win 15-20 games both last and this season and they somehow pull out close to 30.
Very impressive.
Team has biggest cap space ever and will have more next year. Flexibility is unbelievable.
I am very excited and team exceeded my expectations in so many ways.
As per losing - this was unavoidable and I don't care much at all.

You cant be serious. We didnt win less than 20 games with Isiah.

I will also say that we would have been better off winning 15 games for the last 2 season to better our draft pick.

15 wins? LOL.

The management warriors around here are taking Walsh's cues and lowering the expectations to ridiculous degrees in order to justify Walsh and D'Antoni.

arkrud wrote:

sebstar wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:

arkrud wrote:GM and coach did terrific job.
This team should win 15-20 games both last and this season and they somehow pull out close to 30.
Very impressive.
Team has biggest cap space ever and will have more next year. Flexibility is unbelievable.
I am very excited and team exceeded my expectations in so many ways.
As per losing - this was unavoidable and I don't care much at all.

You cant be serious. We didnt win less than 20 games with Isiah.

I will also say that we would have been better off winning 15 games for the last 2 season to better our draft pick.

15 wins? LOL.

The management warriors around here are taking Walsh's cues and lowering the expectations to ridiculous degrees in order to justify Walsh and D'Antoni.

I had 0 expectation for this team sinse 2005/06 season.
If they will have 5-wins year I will not be surprised.
Bunch of losers, malcontents, and junkies of NBA do not deserve to win.
I am very optimistic regardless of Mike and Walsh will be there or not.
We finally are on right track.

I dont understand this at all, which is usual with one of your posts.

Why pay D'Antoni 6 million dollars a year and Walsh millions of dollars if they're not expected to do anything?

Just be real and say you're covering for management because you like them.

1 - playing the rookies maximum amount of minutes during a meaningless season we all knew they would suck = fail... MDA waited until 3/4 of the season was over before giving Toney Douglas any significant run, & Jordan Hill was never afforded a fair chance at all before he was traded... we failed in our #1 mission statement this year & that's a big part of the reason why i'm up in arms over the way this team has been handled this season

2 - getting good value in return for Nate in a trade = we got Bill Walker & JR Giddens which i consider a success... credit to Donnie Walsh for salvaging the hack job MDA did with the handling of Nate this season, minus credit to MDA for not playing a guy we should have been featuring

3 - dumping Fishlips contract without having to give up a considerable amount of assets = bigtime fail... i don't know of any other franchise in the history of sports that has given up as much as we did in this T-Mac trade to unload $9 million worth of cap space... the failure to play the rooks plays directly into this failure as well, because it's very likely if Jordan Hill had been playing we don't have to give up as much to unload Fishlips at the trade deadline... it's widely known we overpaid to free up that amount of cap space... i've maintained from the start that playing Fishlips max minutes was never going to do anything to raise his trade value

4 - getting good value in return for Lee in a trade = we chose not to trade Lee at the deadline, so this one's still up in the air depending on what happens this summer

Now it's true that MDA could've called off the dogs early after the slow start, but then he'd still be in a bad spot with vets who needed to play cuz they were on the last year of a contract trying to get another one. You think it's easy for a coach to just say OK it's only 17 games in and we're 3-14, time to give up on the season and just play the kids! That's not real life, that's some fantasy fan crap. In the real world you can't do that. In the end none of that matters now. We're weeks from the end of this long nightmare and we can all watch as this team is reloaded with better players. Just the opportunity to possibly add a top 10 player is a huge positive for this franchise, much more so that we could end up with 2!!!!! Now that may not happen, but there's a great chance that it can happen for us this time. Despite all the naysayers, we can possibly have put ourselves in a better position to quickly change the fortunes of this franchise.

nixluva wrote:I didn't expect a ton of minutes from the kids at the start, cuz I didn't think either of them was READY at the start. The thing that killed any hope was going 3-14. Culprits: Duhon sucking more than he ever has in his career. Chandler coming out slow after an offseason of inactivity due to surgery and the same for Gallo. MDA not really handling the poor start well. Getting caught between trying to fit everyone in early as opposed to trying to win period and going with the vets. Once he did cut the rotation down and focused on the vets things settled down, but still no Duhon, so it really messed up the small shot they had to make the playoffs.

Now it's true that MDA could've called off the dogs early after the slow start, but then he'd still be in a bad spot with vets who needed to play cuz they were on the last year of a contract trying to get another one. You think it's easy for a coach to just say OK it's only 17 games in and we're 3-14, time to give up on the season and just play the kids! That's not real life, that's some fantasy fan crap. In the real world you can't do that. In the end none of that matters now. We're weeks from the end of this long nightmare and we can all watch as this team is reloaded with better players. Just the opportunity to possibly add a top 10 player is a huge positive for this franchise, much more so that we could end up with 2!!!!! Now that may not happen, but there's a great chance that it can happen for us this time. Despite all the naysayers, we can possibly have put ourselves in a better position to quickly change the fortunes of this franchise.

who gives a crap? he needs to worry about the future of the team and most of those guys who did play were not it. this team has sucked for a decade and the FO is worried about scrubs getting new deals?? how about worry what the heck you are gonna do with guys who will be here? how about worry about whats best for the team going forward?? in the real world, unless you are friends of the boss, you will be cut from the company if they think you stink/save $$$. this IS real world. you dont pay homage to vets at the expense of your future.

sebstar had it best today -- just say you reaaaaaly like the coach/FO. fine. i understand. i happen to think they have made mistakes, and hope they get it right this summer at the least/start (just ans anyone else i hope). not much else i can do.

JohnWallace44 wrote:How would you whiners like it if you were hired to do a job, but the owners weren't committed to putting any resources into your group for 2 years, and your HR department kept sending you rejects? If you were judged by the performance of that group, would you consider that fair? Let's say you came in as a proven success before that. Does that sound reasonable?

Dude's a good coach. He'd be snapped up immediately if we ever let him go.

People need to calm down about the coach and point their angst at the GM.

here's a better question... how would u like it if you were a stock holder in a company & they were making decisions that you felt were not in the best interests of the company's longterm success & you were told to just shut your yapper & hold your tongue over it? would you be content to just let them do as they please with the franchise you have invested into or would you feel you have every right to have your objections heard over it, no matter how insignificant those complaints may be in the grand scheme of things?

as far as i'm aware us "whiners" have expressed our disagreements at both the GM & the head coach when warranted... if you'd rather take a blind mule's approach to how this team is being handled, that's up to you... some of us like to think for ourselves & draw our own conclusions as to how this team is being managed, or mismanaged in some cases, & we have no problems expressing our complaints on a fan message board... i believe that is largely the function of what a message board is for, to exchange viewpoints whether you agree with them or not.