LeBron's easily the #1 choice -- if he stays in Cleveland however, Gay and Bosh would make for a very good off-season. I don't think Gay wants to stay there (if you believe Alan Hahn) and Memphis will have trouble shelling out the big bucks to keep him. Trouble is, for us, I think we'll have to approach a max offer in order to scare off Memphis. Anything less that even remotely resembles fair market value, I think the Grizzles will match, budget constraints and all. Gay's too good already and too young not too...You always have to overpay in order to pry a player away from their original team and that concerns me but what are we supposed to do? If we do get Gay, here's hoping it won't be for the max but I wouldn't count on it being that much less... As for Chris Bosh, I really think he's in the mix here -- either we sign and trade for him using Lee (it'll probably have to be Lee + though and I'm curious to see what else we'd have to include because although Bosh is better and actually a year younger, Lee's pretty close to Bosh production-wise. Recently I haven't really heard that much of an interest in Bosh as a FA so as of right now, I can't see another team offering Toronto a player like Lee in return. If we decide to go this route, let's hope it won't take that much more than Lee -- we can't possibly trade away another draft pick can we??) OR we can offer him a max offer sheet outright and put the pressure squarely on Bryan Colangelo. Again, early on in the season, Colangelo went on the record and publicly questioned whether or not Bosh was even a max player and if he'd even be back in Toronto or not. Since then Bosh has gone on to have a monster year. No doubt Colangelo has most likely reconsidered his position on Bosh, but don't for one second think Bosh has forgotten all about what was said. Plus, Bosh's agent is from Long Island, went to Hofstra University and supposedly grew up a huge Knick fan.

(1) Lebron + another really good player (hopefully Chris Bosh)
(2) Gay + Bosh
(3) Bosh, a solid young PG like a Ray Felton and then hopefully Melo in 2011

That's what I could see happening. I'm not even considering Wade & Stoudemire. Wade's not leaving Miami Beach anyway and besides both guys, like Joe Johnson, are a little bit older and at this stage of their careers, as good as they are, may not be worth long-term max deals...

Johnson is a better more experienced defender than rudy at this point

Andrew wrote:Rudy's max salary is 13.5M or so. That makes him a bit more attractive than JJ IMO.

i thought it was more like $12M even. which makes him more attractive.

i like gay a lot, but i think the team would still need a leader. gay could be a solid #2 if he developed properly.

Calderon
Johnson
Gay
Gallo/Chandler
Bosh

JJ does that. Gay doesnt

Hey don't get me wrong, I voted for JJ too. Seeing Gay as a young, bigger and more talented player doesn't mean he's the better fit. He hasn't proven to have the right mindset to utilize all his talents and become a huge star.

He plays the same position as Gallo and Chandler. I would have been more ok with Gay if we didn't already mortgage the future in getting all this capspace. We're not going to try and get young talent with upside and build on that a year later with more freed up capspace (the then would have ended deal of Jeffries and Curry) with additional draft picks.

2010 is it, the Knicks are going all in, Gay doesn't make sense in that strategy.

What are our building blocks,
Gallo, Chandler, Douglas, Walker, Giddens and Rodriguez

hopefully add Lee but he's a restricted fa

now we're going after LBJ, Wade and Bosh

any consolation prize would be JJ and possibly Gay BUT JJ compliments what we have while Gay duplicates and doesn't mean such a huge upgrade like LBJ that we can AFFORD to do so while building our team

To me its not so much that one is better than the other. They are different players. If we cant upgrade PG then I would prefer JJ and run Douglas out there. That gives you two ball handlers and Douglas can go lock down the opposing PG and have less pressure to run an offense (JJ can do that for MDA).

Gay is good. I like his game, but JJ brings more things we need. We could sign all three (JJ+Lee+Gay).

I think the "Gay has yet to reach his potential" talk is a joke. People around here say things like putting Gallo in the starting lineup is a joke but 5 years in the league we can max out Rudy Gay cause he hasnt reached his potiential yet. I dont get it. Rudy is what you see is what you get. He's a good player.

Of course, a lot of this hinges on how much we would have to pay each guy. I'm assuming Gay would command something in the $10 million range and Johnson would probably get $14 million per season.

Gay is a very talented player and his age is attractive to a situation like ours. With that said, if you watch the Grizzlies and dig deeper by looking at his advanced stats, you will see that while Gay is efficient offensively, his opponents are more efficient. As a rule of thumb, I don't think it's a great idea to give big contracts to players that aren't at least as efficient as the guys they are guarding. You can make the case that Lee is terrible on defense and consequently, we shouldn't give him a contract either but he is so good offensively that he is still as efficient as his opponents are and his rebounding along with that makes him worth the investment. Gay doesn't really have anything else to fall back on though. I realize he is 24 years old, but do you honestly think D'Antoni is going to make this guy better defensively? Gay has already been in the league 4 years and has played significant minutes in each season. I don't see him improving significantly on the defensive end and that is a problem because he hasn't shown enough consistency on offense to be worth a big investment.

Johnson is a big-time player though and while I hate that he tends to hog the ball often, he is good enough offensively that you can live with it. We need a playmaking wing player pretty badly and Johnson could definitely be that guy for us. Not to mention, he is so versatile that he can give you minutes at the 1, 2, and the 3. That is a huge plus in D'Antoni's system and I think Joe would fit in awfully well here.

knicksbabyyeah wrote:iSergio, and what do you plan on doing with Chandler and Gallo in the scenario where we'd sign Gay?

Rudy Gay or not, I think we have to trade either Danilo Gallinari or Wilson Chandler. I'd trade Gallo.