Posted by teslawlo:

I believe in rebuilding on the fly , and drafting a true franchise player even with a high pick is very difficult.
stay the course.

I agree. all the other points in ur post were good too btw.

Posted by simrud:

The rebuilding you are talkin about is not possible, its Thomases marekting ploy.

I will agree with you if we trade for Jalen Rose. Right now, I just think the rebuilding process that is going on is going on very slow. teslawlo was talking about rebuilding on the fly. Its happening, but its taking a little longer cause Layden left us in a horrible situation. Have some patience, I think we willl be in great shape in the summer.

If Isiah does not get a legit bigman this summer or gets us someone like Jalen Rose, then I will agree that this is all a marketing ploy.

1 thing i can say is getting Jamal Crawford & Jerome Williams for scrap parts with expiring contracts was an awesome trade for the Knicks...& Isiah's sole draft pick, Trevor Ariza, is already the steal of last year's draft & could very well turn out to be our starting SF for the foreseeable future with a little more work on his game...props must go to IT for those moves, regardless of how you feel about the current state of the team or about Isiah personally.

Posted by TMS:

1 thing i can say is getting Jamal Crawford & Jerome Williams for scrap parts with expiring contracts was an awesome trade for the Knicks...& Isiah's sole draft pick, Trevor Ariza, is already the steal of last year's draft & could very well turn out to be our starting SF for the foreseeable future with a little more work on his game...props must go to IT for those moves, regardless of how you feel about the current state of the team or about Isiah personally.

These were great moves, but the real question I have for the anti-knick knick fans is:

What is it that you think he should have done? and
Why is it that you say you tha you have the patience to wait as we suck for 3 years, when you can't even wait until the trade deadline of this season before getting your panties in a bunch? Between this summer and next season, IT will have the best chance to make moves considering the chips we have. Based on the players he moves for, you should judge on that. But not before that when he has already made moves for 2 young stars, a great draft pick and a solid big man?

Briggs, despite the loss Trevor Ariza pretty much met the stat line you hoped for from him (you said it would be a dream) in a recent thread.....18pts, 9rbs, 2ast, 1blk, 1stl. In your heading it states; "we are not one step closer to winning anything than when laydumb was here". When you get a chance answer the following questions. How do you process in your mind the fact that prior the the Bulls game you wanted TA to excell and he did with now stating that we are not one step closer to winning anything? After Ewing was traded who did we have on the court (playing, not on the bench) that exhibited the obvious potential of Ariza, Sweetney(pine brother earlier) and Crawford? Last question, do you think Jamal Crawford playing in yesterdays game would have made a difference in the result (W vs L)? Curious to hear your response because a good number of people here feel you are an authority on this kinda stuff. Educate me.

I seriously can't believe what I'm reading. I thought we all knew going into this season that our team though talented, would have a lot of flaws (especially on the defensive end). Are any of you that surprised at out record? For all of you guys saying that we should rebuild, well, that is exactly what we are doing right now (except we are doing it quickly with Marbury as our focal point). As killa said, you guys say you have enough patience to wait another 3 years, yet, you cannot give Isiah another year to work with our major assets which are of course the expiring contracts.

This is our freaking first full year of rebuilding, we are not suppossed to be a good team yet. Shouldn't you guys be happy that Isiah isn't rushing into anything and is patiently waiting for "the right deal." If Isiah went out and got Jalen Rose tomorrow for Penny Hardaway, then I would understand why some of you would be upset. However, as of right now, Isiah hasn't done anything to screw us over. Instead, he has us going into the right direction.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't really care about our record for this year. I don't care if we only win 40 games. Coming into this season I only wanted to see three things from this team...

1. I wanted to see if Stephon had elevated his game and if he could truly be part of a championship contender, so far, I like what I have seen from him.

2. I wanted assets. I wanted Nazr to have a pretty good year (I said on a different board that I wouldn't be surprised if he averaged something like 12 ppg and 9 rpg this year), so far he has done that. I also wanted Tim and Penny to have decent years, unfortunately, neither has done that so far. However, both will still have big expiring contracts next season which will still have a lot of value.

3. I wanted to see a future. I wanted some of our younger players to play well this season and to show that we have some young and promising players that will still be a part of our team in the future. Trevor Ariza has come up huge in this area. When I saw him play in the SL, I knew that we had a steal but I still wasn't convinced that he would turn into a good NBA player. From what I have seen from Trevor this year, I truly believe we are set at the 3 for the next 10 years. As for Sweets, I really like what I have seen from him so far. He has established himself as a good low post player and it is only his 2nd year in the league. Before ever putting him in a trade for another player, I would really like to see Sweets get to start for some games (though if its a trade where you need to do it at that moment and its for a player like Eddy Curry, I would obviously pull the trigger). If Sweets can lose some more weight and learn how to stay away from foul trouble, then I'm pretty confident that he can really help us. We really need to get him the ball more though. Whenever we get him the ball in the low post, good things almost always happen.

So even though we are rebuilding, we are almost set at 3 positions (I say almost because even though I like Crawford at the 2, I still haven't seen enough to say that he is our future 2, and I also need to see Sweets get more playing time before I can predict if he can be our future 4). With a ton of expiring contracts, including a young athletic Center that is getting all-star consideration, I have to say that I like our chances of improving at those other two positions.



[Edited by - s3231 on 01/16/2005 10:15:26]

For the knicks to compete for a championship- I see only four things missing

1 All Star caliber big man

2 slightly more talent on the bench

3 Chemistry

4 A recovered Houston (to whatever level he is going to return)

We could get all three in the next two years on the current course- luck in the draft, IT swings a great deal, etc.

We might also not get any of those three.

We could blow this roster up- and here I'd like some help from you BRIGGS-

Who is taking Allan Houston?

Who is taking Marbury and sending us youth & Picks

Who is taking KT?

Who is taking Shandon Anderson (oops, wait, we let him go and still have his contract on the books)

Who is taking Penny, TT, Moochie & Vin Baker?

How do all this and not give up Sweets or Trevor (who I figure you'd like to keep) in any of those deals?

And you do all that and in ten years you might not be any closer to getting a championship caliber team.