I find this whole article to be slanderous and completely unobjective...
Pat Riley was also planning on letting players go to chase free agent prizes... a good argument can be made that Riley had a stronger roster than the Walsh, how well did his team do last year???
The article completely ignores that players like Curry and Starbury, expect to be treated as stars when they are liabilities. The team cannot rely on them, and you must plan around them while dealing with their egos, selfishness in the locker room. If the argument is to buy these players at the start of the season, that is absurd. You have to try to trade and leverage max expiring deals for a team that may have a need in the season. No one except the knicks buys out players for such vast amounts of money. Ironically, they could not be traded because Isiah was not a GM for another team. & Curry may never be healthy and disciplined to have a career again. This year Curry's deal is an asset... an expiring one... These 2 "Players" hijacked the professionalism of the organization and setback the team culture and chances for stability enormously.
Add to that players like Nate & Harrigton who were looking to pad their stats for their next contract. And that they did not appreciate that they just were not as good as they insisted until the market tis summer showed them that they had serious defecits in their respective games, and are at best supporting players on well disciplined teams.
The shocking disappearance of Duhan's confidence and ability to play baketball contributed heavily to this teams demise. Anyone is free to check the record of the Knicks in games that Duhan played well of the last 2 seasons. Point guard play is the lynchpin to D'Antoni's system.
Considering the lack of interior toughness,it is a miracle this team played as hard as it did most nights.
I do not see the great errors... sure it was sloppy, but it could have been a hell of a lot uglier... this is New York... and everyone knows that the press will kill you when you try to build in New York... rebuilding is too boring, it does not sell papers... the NY media want a good team or a lot of drama. And they are ready to instigate that drama with a team's unprofessional athletes (yes, I am talking about you Mark Berman)...
Either way, there is something to talk about.
Obtaining a former star who can only gimp down the court after playing a few games was necessary for shedding Jefferies ridiculous deal, remember how shocked the media was that someone was actually interested in a player that has no offensive game and is as thin as a stick.
Now of course this was not easy for Walsh and D'antoni to endure and orchestrate, it required playing Jefferies and Harrington heavy minutes.
I actually applaud D'Antoni for how competitive that ragtag of ill-suited players for his system played.
People that went to games found the knicks competing most nights only to get outclassed in the 4th quarter of games. They simply were an ill-conceived team with of young inexperienced players and fading stars who thought they were far better than they are.
How many overtime losses did this team have last year... is that not indicative of effort to compete???
The coach deserves credit for putting his ego aside and taking on this mess, allowing his reputation to get shot by having to be associated with fading star point guard that was losing his mind, treated the Garden and its employees like his personal playground, while showcasing skills that diminished so extensively he is a deficit to any professional team he joins. (And the Celtics highlighted just how extensive his skill set had deminished in the Playoffs).
Add a chronically lazy and overweight center that will go down as one of the greatest big man wastes of talent in our time. Curry's career trajectory was shot the day the NBA changes the roles to fasten the pace of the game, he is not a player with skills for the present NBA, it may have been interesting to see his game in the early '90s, but Ewing and Oakley would have demonstrated how painfully soft a player Eddie Curry is (the man has no heart, just a big vacuum of an appetite, he disgraced the Knick uniform, and teh memory of Willis and Ewing .
In the mean time, D'antoni can hardly create a team culture and identity because pieces were always moving in the middle of the season. And raising the value of your players to move them was always the plan for going into the summer of 2010. Now D'antoni's system in not the easiest system to ajust to mid season... it requires heady ball players that can pass, stretch the floor and be unselfish.
Add to that the fact that Zeke left the team with incredibly un-tradable assets, these simply could not all just be bought out.
It was clear that the Knicks had to unload players and Walsh did this, often mid-season, when no one said her could. And looking at the team they put together this summer, a team that actually makes sense, it was thoroughly worth the sacrifice.
Now, here is the kicker... anyone who watched tis team most nights, saw a team that simply did not have enough talent to compete. Yet, unless they played a championship contender, they generally competed and played exciting ball... they simply did not have the right experienced pieces and the good players they had were really not that good and were certainly ill suited for the style of play the coach was brought here to run.
