Paladin55 wrote:The Felton trade means to me that they are not going to match on Lin. The trade makes no sense, otherwise.

Not happy with Lin, who seems to desire the relative obscurity of Houston to the spotlight he got here. He should send MDA- his creator- a million bucks for Christmas. Yeah, I understand he is looking for the money, but I think he may have misplayed his hand- especially if Houston cannot get, or, if they do get him, keep, Howard.

Sad week, IMO- 3 of the young players I was looking forward to watching in the future- Lin, Fields, and Harrelson, are all gone, or almost gone, in Lin's case.

In only a couple of years we have gone from one of the younger teams in the league to perhaps the oldest.

We will be a competitive team, but I don't think we will ever get by the Heat with this squad. We have one young, but damaged, player on the team with experience in the NBA- Shumpert, and we have a small window of opportunity to do anything with the old team we have.

In a few years the entire process has to start over again, and we will be good enough so that we are probably not going to be picking up any lottery quality picks in the future.

I have a feeling that my enthusiasm for the team and franchise is heading toward Isiah year levels.

Not a good time to be a Knicks' fan, in my opinion.

good post. this is where i'm at.

crzymdups wrote:

Paladin55 wrote:The Felton trade means to me that they are not going to match on Lin. The trade makes no sense, otherwise.

Not happy with Lin, who seems to desire the relative obscurity of Houston to the spotlight he got here. He should send MDA- his creator- a million bucks for Christmas. Yeah, I understand he is looking for the money, but I think he may have misplayed his hand- especially if Houston cannot get, or, if they do get him, keep, Howard.

Sad week, IMO- 3 of the young players I was looking forward to watching in the future- Lin, Fields, and Harrelson, are all gone, or almost gone, in Lin's case.

In only a couple of years we have gone from one of the younger teams in the league to perhaps the oldest.

We will be a competitive team, but I don't think we will ever get by the Heat with this squad. We have one young, but damaged, player on the team with experience in the NBA- Shumpert, and we have a small window of opportunity to do anything with the old team we have.

In a few years the entire process has to start over again, and we will be good enough so that we are probably not going to be picking up any lottery quality picks in the future.

I have a feeling that my enthusiasm for the team and franchise is heading toward Isiah year levels.

Not a good time to be a Knicks' fan, in my opinion.

good post. this is where i'm at.

What do you mean? we got Felton for NOTHING, regardless if Lin is staying or not we should repeat this deal 100x over again.

The combined salary for Felton/Kidd and Lin on his 3rd year is the same thing Amare and Melo is making on their max years.....

whatever, we ain't letting lin go. y'all are buggin...

i know folks have doubts about both he and kidd, so that's where felton comes in.

kidd is 39 years old. if he stinks this year we're in trouble.

if lin isn't doing it we're in trouble.

felton is insurance, and we also have to see what shump looks like...which this also provides some insurance for.

lin and kidd, imho, can play some 2 guard. in fact, it might suit lin, since he is a more of scoring 1 guard.

felton also solidifies our d, and gives us a stronger, at least athletic enough of a player to defend 1s and some 2's.

this could also be about after this year a thing, also due to kidd's age.

why we would just let lin walk is beyond me.

he's worth too much to us.

amar'e must be happy, btw, because he and felton were good together, even if felton fell off the map after he couldn't hit a jumper in his previous tenure with us.

also, we can sign lin and then trade he or someone else later this season.

I just think Grunweld will look make the call with Dolan, if $ is the issue, they will make some calls, and see if teams have future interest in obtaining Lin.
Grunweld/Dolan and staff will have a decision to make.

My point is, Lin's contract is a bad contract for 1 year, not 3 years.
It is only bad for us because we are over the tax bracket in that year.

So trading in half a year, could net us a player, and assets.
That could be an option

Or even moving Tyson Chandler which I fear, with Camby here, could be an option, they have options, calculations, and decisions to make.
But if we make the correct move, could help us, and screw Morey.
So a Win/Win scenario to me....

Screw the analyst that said Knicks would match up to 1 BILLION Dollars...

we have no shump until later in the year, and with so many question marks with our guard situation (including shump) this was a good capture for us.

Knowing that Lin is a marketing machine and a top prospect, we should have went to him at the beginning of FA and offered him the max amount we could (I don't remember exact $ but think it was $23-24MM?) and we could have spread it over 3 years.

Instead, we gave Morey + Lin time to make the contract as poisonous as possible and we let Lin dangle while taking care of re-signing every other Knicks (Novak, Smith, etc.).

Lin is at fault too for going behind our backs to finagle more $ but it wouldn't have come down to us if we tried harder to bring him back. This is all on Woodson/Grunwald and this is a HUGE mistake that makes our off-season look average now (instead of what could have been great).

Having an old win-now team would have been ok if we had Lin/Shump as our back-court of the future but we're old as hell right now.

I don't like what this franchise has become...not one bit. I don't think Donnie/D'Antoni would have let this happen.

smackeddog wrote:

Paladin55 wrote:The Felton trade means to me that they are not going to match on Lin. The trade makes no sense, otherwise.

Not happy with Lin, who seems to desire the relative obscurity of Houston to the spotlight he got here. He should send MDA- his creator- a million bucks for Christmas. Yeah, I understand he is looking for the money, but I think he may have misplayed his hand- especially if Houston cannot get, or, if they do get him, keep, Howard.

Sad week, IMO- 3 of the young players I was looking forward to watching in the future- Lin, Fields, and Harrelson, are all gone, or almost gone, in Lin's case.

In only a couple of years we have gone from one of the younger teams in the league to perhaps the oldest.

We will be a competitive team, but I don't think we will ever get by the Heat with this squad. We have one young, but damaged, player on the team with experience in the NBA- Shumpert, and we have a small window of opportunity to do anything with the old team we have.

In a few years the entire process has to start over again, and we will be good enough so that we are probably not going to be picking up any lottery quality picks in the future.

I have a feeling that my enthusiasm for the team and franchise is heading toward Isiah year levels.

Not a good time to be a Knicks' fan, in my opinion.

I agree that I don't think Lin is coming back, but I disagree that this is a bad time to be a Knick fan.

This trade makes no sense at all if we're keeping Lin- how the heck does a backcourt of Kidd, Lin, Felton, Shump and JR Smith work? Lin and Felton can't really play together as neither is a good shooter. Plus why did we sign that 35 year old PG too if we were going with 3 other PGs too? And then if the Knicks are balking at the luxury tax implications of Lin's 3rd year, then why sign Felton to a contract that will add yet another 3 to 4 million to our pay roll in that third year?

I don't think the Knicks have mishandled this- Lin's agent wouldn't of signed what we could have offered at the start of free agency, when he knew he could just go out and get a higher offer. If the most we can offer is $20+mil, and an outside team can offer $30+mil then every agent is going to go out hunting. I also get the impression Lin didn't want to be back, I think the media attention really got to him.

Grunwald went into this offseason knowing there was a strong possibility that Lin was going- before we won the birds rights hearing we were looking at having to use the full MLE to retain him which would have meant a hard cap at $74mil. So we must have had a plan for that outcome.

I ask you (and this is a genuine question as I don't know the answer myself)- if you take away the story of Lin, his personality and his ethnicity, is he really any better than an in condition Felton? And isn't Felton for $9 mil over 3 years better than Lin for $25mil?

I don't think this is like the IT era- we haven't done anything wrong, we got screwed by the Rockets and Lin, and we're not willing to sign a bad contract. I like a lot of players on this team- I liked Felton when he was with us, I love that Camby is back, I like Kurt Thomas, Shump, Tyson, Novak. Plus I love the defensive potential of this team- especially with a back court of Felton and Shump.

Yeah, I was looking really looking forward to seeing Lin develop, and I like seeing our younger players get better, but if Lin didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be here (the renegotiation of the rockets offer was really under hand and showed he has no loyalty to us), I don't think it's our managements fault this time.

Woodson, obviously, feels more at ease with an Iso-Anthony offense and was unwilling to develop an offense that would use Lin's skills. I should have seen this coming, because I have always had doubts about how Lin and Anthony would work together on the floor. Woodson and the Knicks have now bowed before Anthony, no doubt about it.

I agree with you about Lin- he obviously does not want to be here. I wonder how much money he will lose by not being in the New York market on a very good team. He may end up regretting this if it was truly a financial decision.

I'm not sure the Knicks really gave Lin the impression that we wanted him back. I have nothing to back this up, but I expect things will come out in the next month. Did the Knicks say that Lin was their starter after they picked up Kidd?

My big issue goes beyond Lin- we are going down the road where we will no longer take the time to develop young players- something I don't really like. We pretty much did this under Riley, but on that team we had a real star- the kind you could build a team around. We now seem to be making all of our decisions under the assumption that Anthony is the kind of player you build a team around, but Anthony is not a dominant center, and not a James, Jordan, or Kobe, who have the ability to make others better through their play and/or leadership.

We will be a competitive team the next few years, but never win it all, and then one day you are going to look at the team and realize that it is too old, with no emerging young players (Want to bet that Shumpert is traded within 2 years?)to take over. Our future will then be determined by what is available on the FA market, and Dolan will probably overpay for some 30 year player whose best years are behind him.

Nope- I don't like where this team is going.