And i think the whole league is watching us right now ..... FA class in particular and see we stick the course which is big when it comes time to try and make someone believe you when you tell him something.....

The Vets will get burn so that maybe coach D can make them look like Raja Bell or Diaw Barbosa or someone who call ball ala D Lee..

Love his Hustle for sure but he is definitely not the player his stats suggest!! Trying to get someone out of here Like Fishlips and Chandler ....

We stick the course and as a fan we can talk sht and still get through the season ..... Being a Knick fan has never been an easy task we go through a lot .... Like Mets fans ...... Think we stick the course and give props to at least being in the conversation for Lebron or Bosh is good but when Lebron comes .......... Everyone is gonna spray cmmmm shots from brooklyn to the city .......

Cant wait

PresIke wrote:

djsunyc wrote:

zzzz.....hmmm...wha....did somebody say my name?....zzzz....

mad agist yo

i'm an anti-age-ite...

TMS wrote:this has nothing to do w/being impatient for 2010... i don't know anyone here who isn't willing to wait til 2010 to see who Donnie can sign w/the cap space he's attained... signing AI on a 1 year rental minimum deal is a move with very little downside & very big potential upside... it's understandable for people to be disappointed.

What's the huge upside? He's a one year rental. Are we winning the Championship this year? It comes down to can you evaluate and develop your players better with AI or not.

It's not like the Knicks are the only team passing on the guy. The reason he available is because nobody wants him.

TMS wrote:

OldFan wrote:

TMS wrote:this has nothing to do w/being impatient for 2010... i don't know anyone here who isn't willing to wait til 2010 to see who Donnie can sign w/the cap space he's attained... signing AI on a 1 year rental minimum deal is a move with very little downside & very big potential upside... it's understandable for people to be disappointed.

What's the huge upside? He's a one year rental. Are we winning the Championship this year? It comes down to can you evaluate and develop your players better with AI or not.

It's not like the Knicks are the only team passing on the guy. The reason he available is because nobody wants him.

the huge upside is u make the players look better on this team & possibly open an avenue for a trade at the deadline... having AI work w/Curry in the P&R on this team was our best way of pumping up Curry's value if u ask me, so right there is a benefit to evaluating our players... there's also the upside of gaining some confidence this season having a guy who is a legitimate go to presence during crunchtime... not one of our guys is going to be the central focus of any offense in the future anyway... they're all supporting type players, so tailoring their games to play around someone who dominates the ball on offense is going to happen eventually, mine as well get accustomed to it before the free agency blitz begins.

& the Knicks' situation is not like most other teams... we're searching for some sort of legitimacy this season so that potential FA's don't look at us as a laughing stock going into the offseason... everyone knows the future of our franchise is incumbent on attracting a bigtime talent in free agency this summer... do u see that happening if we finish the season with 20 wins & 4 developing prospects who are all unproven? we also no longer own our draft pick, so every win we can eek out can lessen the pain somewhat... we needed a go to guy in the worst way, & our PG situation needs addressing... in many ways, this was the perfect situation for AI to come in & do his thing.

You want to make your veteran's look more valuable by having them play along side of AI. If it's really AI making the veteran's look good and you and I know it you don't think the GMs and scouts who do this for a living are going to know it also? Besides AI has never been known for making the players around him look good.

The draft pick argument makes no sense. The knicks first pick is in the second round. Winning doesn't move the Knicks up so it provides no help in the draft (actually as far as the draft goes it hurts). Why do we care what the order is of the teams that pick in front of us?

So it comes down to how to best evaluate what you have and develop the players you plan on keeping. You think AI will make a Huge difference in their development. I don't see it. I don't think that a player can have a "Huge upside" for one team and one team only and have so little value to the rest of the league that he's drawing no interest. Especially when the player has never been willing to sacrifice his game for the good of the team.

TMS wrote:i would expect to see Toney Douglas, Gallinari & Jordan Hill getting max burn now that Donnie claims the focus is on developing our young guys, but u know that's not gonna happen... MDA will continue to play the vets for the most part... nothing will change this season unless this team simply starts to play better, bottomline.

Exactly. They talk about development but play vets that are worse than the rookies. Hill is a better post defender than Lee. Everyone sees that, but MDA continues to play Lee at center. TD is better than Dudu, but MDA continues to play Duhon heavy minutes. It makes no sense.

EnySpree wrote:Madness

TMS wrote:

OldFan wrote:

TMS wrote:OldFan, how concerned do u really think Donnie Walsh is gonna be in a few months about developing our youth when there's gonna be so many big name FA's on the market for him to try & sign? according to our GM, the reasoning against signing AI now is because we don't wanna hamper the development of our young guys... do u think Donnie's gonna let that stop him from signing FA's this offseason to longterm big money contracts? i don't.

Yep and those FA are gonna be here for the future. AI isn't. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice long-term goals for a one year "fix" when we're not going anyplace this year.

Are you suggesting AI is gonna stay and he's gonna be one of the guys we build around?

I guess we can agree to disagree. There is a part of me that wanted AI just to make things interesting and provide a glimmer of hope for this season. But rationally I think it would probably do more harm then good. My biggest disagreement was with you is that there is "Huge" upside to signing AI. I don't see it at best there is a minor upside and I think the chances of a negative impact are greater.

my point is those "longterm goals" he's claiming he wants to focus on are gonna be sacrificed in a few months regardless if we had signed AI or not... Donnie's gonna go after guys like Bosh, Amare, Lebron, Wade, etc... do u think he's gonna care about hurting the development of our young guys in the process? yeah, those FA's will be here for the longterm... i'm not suggesting AI would be a longterm solution for us... everyone knows it was gonna be a stopgap solution for this year only... it was a bone to throw to the fans to make games somewhat watchable... what was the potential harm? if AI acts up u release him, very simple... my problem with Walsh is not that he didn't wanna bring AI in here, but that he even pretended to be interested just to give off the impression that he was actually gonna do something & then try to sell us on this stuff about developing our young guys when in a couple months he's gonna do a complete 180 on that... i hate when people talk out of both sides of their mouth... just be honest & say you didn't want AI to begin with.

What benefit is it to Walsh to make believe he wanted to sign AI? None that I can see. I think he thought AI was a bad fit last summer and suspected he was a bad fit now but things were bad enough he considered it. It's not like he lingered on it for months he
took two days.

I suspect if he made the decision immediately - there would be folks complaining that he should have at least thought about it.

TMS wrote:do these guys really expect us to believe what they're saying here?

“With the development of some of our young guys and with Gallo and Wilson and Toney Douglas and Eddy, we just didn’t think right now we wanted to have that dominant force on the team,” D’Antoni said.

what happens in a few months when it comes time to sign that dominant force in free agency? is D'Antoni gonna be saying the same things then? just sounds like a buncha double talk to me.

Yes, I do believe them. I'm really looking forward to watching Marcus Landry's development as a player.

Added to this are his me first attitude, his need to hog the ball and his lack of interest in practice. This would have been a terrible signing - even for one year.