martin wrote:

JohnStarksFan wrote:

martin wrote:
totally forgot about Ilyasova, good call. I am pretty sure JJ Hickson is UFA as he was waived? Jason Thompson would be another good piece.

Hickson was picked up for his full contract price, making him restricted and a team option.

you know what... I think he is in same spot as Lin and Novak. TBD by the arbitrator in mid June. is that right?

He's not even on the Kings, he's on Portland. My bad. Maybe they pick up the option then.
There needs to be a QO from Portland, otherwise he's a UFA.

VDesai wrote:Quite honestly I have a hard time reading this board. Not really referring to the thread topic or starter per se, but some of the overreactions and stubborn opinions that have formed. Yes Amare's contract is massive, yes he had a bad year. That being said I am no where near convinced that he is done. I thought he came on strong at the end of the year. Remember this is a guy who is a legit 25 ppg scorer with a 53% FG. Knicks coaching staff and players need to get together and figure out a better way to get their players to mesh. Its not impossible, but they have made very little progress with their offensive schemes to suit the strengths of Melo and Amare. That needs to be the focus of the staff and players all offseason. Having two players this good is just not worth giving up on as of yet. How many times are you gonna tear down and try to re-load? I think we've put together the most talented nucleus we have had in a while and we need to figure out how to make it work. Having a healthy J Lin work with them is an element we need to see before make wholesale changes. Patience is a virtue.

OK...How about Amare for Kwame Brown..He is a robust rebounder and an even better fit with Melo...

Bonn1997 wrote:

VDesai wrote:Quite honestly I have a hard time reading this board. Not really referring to the thread topic or starter per se, but some of the overreactions and stubborn opinions that have formed. Yes Amare's contract is massive, yes he had a bad year. That being said I am no where near convinced that he is done. I thought he came on strong at the end of the year. Remember this is a guy who is a legit 25 ppg scorer with a 53% FG. Knicks coaching staff and players need to get together and figure out a better way to get their players to mesh. Its not impossible, but they have made very little progress with their offensive schemes to suit the strengths of Melo and Amare. That needs to be the focus of the staff and players all offseason. Having two players this good is just not worth giving up on as of yet. How many times are you gonna tear down and try to re-load? I think we've put together the most talented nucleus we have had in a while and we need to figure out how to make it work. Having a healthy J Lin work with them is an element we need to see before make wholesale changes. Patience is a virtue.

If he were an FA now, would you offer him 3 years, $63 mil? If you say no, then logically you should be eager to get out of his contract by trading him for an expiring contract.

no it isn't

VDesai wrote:Quite honestly I have a hard time reading this board. Not really referring to the thread topic or starter per se, but some of the overreactions and stubborn opinions that have formed. Yes Amare's contract is massive, yes he had a bad year. That being said I am no where near convinced that he is done. I thought he came on strong at the end of the year. Remember this is a guy who is a legit 25 ppg scorer with a 53% FG. Knicks coaching staff and players need to get together and figure out a better way to get their players to mesh. Its not impossible, but they have made very little progress with their offensive schemes to suit the strengths of Melo and Amare. That needs to be the focus of the staff and players all offseason. Having two players this good is just not worth giving up on as of yet. How many times are you gonna tear down and try to re-load? I think we've put together the most talented nucleus we have had in a while and we need to figure out how to make it work. Having a healthy J Lin work with them is an element we need to see before make wholesale changes. Patience is a virtue.

I do so much agree with you on this!

If anything, why cant we be the team that does a sound trade for once? Iggy and some, for Melo would have brought in depths, younger players and maybe even some picks and would have solved so many of our problems. (Well, at least I do have a problem with re-building a team from one end of the scale, fast and ball sharing, to the exact opposite one, slow isoball, for one freaking player that is not willing to change his ways)

Lin, Shumpert, Iggy, STAT, Tyson as a fastball, hard nosed defensive starting lineup supported by JR, Novak, Jorts, Jeffries, Fields, Baron and whatever Philly would give us on top of Iggy would have made soooo much sense...

Oh wait! They decided not to do it, but rebuild the team-concept for the 13th time in a decade! And you know what? The guarden is sold out, the Knicks are in the playoffs and the show does go on! And there will allways be a next year we can hope for! Hurray!

nykshaknbake wrote:I'd like to see if we can finally get the team working together. We'll have a real PG for once starting training camp and we'll have a real coach to help the process along for the first time in years. We need to focus on acquiring a backup PG and devloping the youth we have. No more major sweeping changes for now I think.

I'm partly on board with this post but that coach comment is kinda ridiculous:
Mike Woodson
Mike D'antoni
Isiah Thomas (ok, you got it on that one)
Larry Brown
Lenny Wilkins
Don Chaney
Jeff Van Gundy
Don Nelson
Pat Riley
Stu Jackson
Rick Pitino
Hubie Brown
Red Holzman
Willis Reed

Knicks coaches for the last 4 decades. We've had great coaches. Maybe it didn't work out for Chaney, Wilkins, Brown, D'antoni, but I'll be damned if they aren't great coaches.

nykshaknbake wrote:We haven't had this kind of talent since the Ewing era. And our last string of coaches has not been great. Wilkins did a passable - above average job. Brown was embroiled in a power stuggle to get the GM position. I beleive he could have made it work if he was trying to coach. CHaney did a terible job as did MDA. To put MDA in the same sentence as greats like RIley and Brown is an insult. I'm not sure why Nelson and down are on your list.

JohnStarksFan wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:I'd like to see if we can finally get the team working together. We'll have a real PG for once starting training camp and we'll have a real coach to help the process along for the first time in years. We need to focus on acquiring a backup PG and devloping the youth we have. No more major sweeping changes for now I think.

I'm partly on board with this post but that coach comment is kinda ridiculous:
Mike Woodson
Mike D'antoni
Isiah Thomas (ok, you got it on that one)
Larry Brown
Lenny Wilkins
Don Chaney
Jeff Van Gundy
Don Nelson
Pat Riley
Stu Jackson
Rick Pitino
Hubie Brown
Red Holzman
Willis Reed

Knicks coaches for the last 4 decades. We've had great coaches. Maybe it didn't work out for Chaney, Wilkins, Brown, D'antoni, but I'll be damned if they aren't great coaches.

The coaches on that list except for Reed had proven themselves in other places as good if not great coaches. Its been said only 12 coaches in the last 32 years have won titles.

Being a good/Great coach and doing that in NY with the Knicks is a different story long chronicled on many a post in the UK.

Chaney did not do a terrible job. He did a very good job in fact with the talent he had. They were a good group of guys, played hard, had pride and they only thing was they were boring and going nowhere. Thats not the coaches job. Look at the players.

We were "rebuilding" at the time not making starphuch panic moves and letting contracts expire. It was boring. Enter Isiah.

No longer boring.

nykshaknbake wrote:But the point is no more major flux for now.

Thanks. That's the truth. Either that, or we'll be ****ting on Woody. The guy needs to be given the chance to have a major role in developing the players and developing the team if it's going to have success.

I just wanted to clarify that NY HAS had good (D'antoni / Chaney), even GREAT coaches (Brown, Wilkins), but they weren't given the talent or the authority to prove their worth.

You can **** on MDA all you want, but I bet you he will find a new suitor soon enough and be allowed to play his style of ball, and find success with it. He's good at what he does, proved that in spurts here, and wasn't given the room to make decisions and take control. The only guy on that list that was given control and still f**ked that up royally was Isiah.

And I added from Nelson down because I said 4 decades. Maybe a bit of an overkill, but I wanted to make my point.