Posted by playa2:

Posted by Solace:

I'm not necessarily saying that the entire blame for that lies strictly on Marbury, but sometimes you have to take a step back to have the room to move forward. The thing is that it's very difficult to build a championship team around a point guard. You usually build championship teams around a star big man (6'11"+). Marbury's a nice piece; but I just don't see how we're ever going to add that big man, unless fans are patient enough to let every player go in the year that H20 and Shandon expire, except for Nazr, Ariza, Sweetney, Crawford, Marbury. Then, we'd have the money to sign LeBron (in which case Nazr and Sweetney is enough to get by) or any star big man who is a free agent. Otherwise, how do we get there? Marbury for a group of young big men would be a nice way to go. We are starting to get younger, but I think we have a huge problem, seeing as how our mobility to move forward in the frontcourt is severely limited, unless we're planning on getting lucky in the draft. I guess the main thing for me is that I'm very confused as to what Isiah has planned next. We missed out on a volley of big men this offseason and now I don't know what is left that's actually attainable.

Solace you hit it right on the head!


Guys didn't want to accept the fact that trading for Marbury was as good as putting on a straight-jacket on trying to reach for candy when it comes to making room for a star big man. We should have waited and build from inside out.

Now everybody say wait wait we will be ok in a couple of yrs. Why couldn't we have waited and position ourselves in draft, maybe we have Gordon(homegrown product) instead of the Bulls .

Why didn't we do what all bonifide good teams do "THEY GO BIG FIRST"


How postas justif Marbury trade boggles my mind, another pg can be had in the draft somewhere down the line; but a big man who can find?

[Edited by - playa2 on 01/19/2005 08:58:53]

Actually top PGs and Cs (counting a few PFs who are really Cs like Duncan, Garnett) are the hardest to get. Anyone else (SGs and forwards) are much easier

From 1984 to last year, the following teams won Championships:
Celtics
Lakers
Pistons
Bulls
Rockets
Spurs

The The Rockets and Spurs were clearly led by bigs- Hakeem & Duncan. The Lakers had Shaq/Kobe and its arguable whether Shaq would have won it without Kobe.

The others had arguable talented 'smalls'- Bird, Magic, MJ & Isiah.

My point is it doesn't matter if your talent is a big or a small- the more talent wins.

Give me MJ over Brand, give me 5 MJs over 5 Brands.

Posted by playa2:

Posted by Solace:

I'm not necessarily saying that the entire blame for that lies strictly on Marbury, but sometimes you have to take a step back to have the room to move forward. The thing is that it's very difficult to build a championship team around a point guard. You usually build championship teams around a star big man (6'11"+). Marbury's a nice piece; but I just don't see how we're ever going to add that big man, unless fans are patient enough to let every player go in the year that H20 and Shandon expire, except for Nazr, Ariza, Sweetney, Crawford, Marbury. Then, we'd have the money to sign LeBron (in which case Nazr and Sweetney is enough to get by) or any star big man who is a free agent. Otherwise, how do we get there? Marbury for a group of young big men would be a nice way to go. We are starting to get younger, but I think we have a huge problem, seeing as how our mobility to move forward in the frontcourt is severely limited, unless we're planning on getting lucky in the draft. I guess the main thing for me is that I'm very confused as to what Isiah has planned next. We missed out on a volley of big men this offseason and now I don't know what is left that's actually attainable.

Solace you hit it right on the head!


Guys didn't want to accept the fact that trading for Marbury was as good as putting on a straight-jacket on trying to reach for candy when it comes to making room for a star big man. We should have waited and build from inside out.

Now everybody say wait wait we will be ok in a couple of yrs. Why couldn't we have waited and position ourselves in draft, maybe we have Gordon(homegrown product) instead of the Bulls .

Why didn't we do what all bonifide good teams do "THEY GO BIG FIRST"


How postas justif Marbury trade boggles my mind, another pg can be had in the draft somewhere down the line; but a big man who can find?

[Edited by - playa2 on 01/19/2005 08:58:53]

I agree, Playa. The bigs are very hard to get. Franco's stats are a little flawed. Yes, teams don't win with solely bigs, however, almost all the championship teams (Bulls are the exception) had one of the top centers of significant size. Often, this was in ADDITION to another star. Sure, you need two stars, but you better start with a big, because you won't get a star big later. Teams don't trade their bigs unless they absolutely have to or just get an offer that they can't refuse. Most of the best teams in the league have a star big (Ben Wallace, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Jermaine O'Neal, Shaq, Dwight Howard, Antoine Jamison, Chris Webber, Kevin Garnett, Lamar Odom, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, etc... and the list goes on). We have Kurt Thomas and Nazr Mohammed. KT is arguably a 6th man-type at this point, and Nazr isn't even close to being an all-star. Unless we're banking on Sweetney becoming a star, we're in trouble. However, if we got the big man first, we could've easily traded for a good PG (could've even had Crawford as our starting PG) and had nice balance. Instead, we are what we are. I, for one, hope to see Marbury traded, since it's the one way I could reasonably see us getting a talented star big. Without the star big, any hopes of a championship are fantasy. At this point, I'm having trouble seeing this team doing better than 41-41. As they say, the climb from 45 wins to 50 wins is the toughest in the NBA. The Knicks are not elite; they have talent. With luck and good fortune, they could win 45. With bad luck and misfortune, they could win 30-35.

In the NBA, size rules. Right now we're undersized and undertalented in the front court (Terrible Tim plays like he's 4'3" and has feminine injuries).

At this point, I'd like us to try to fill up with young talent and focus on getting under the cap. Rebuilding in NY is possible. Sorry, but Marbury isn't the answer. He's just a holdover to keep the fans happy. Keeping the fans happy was another setback to this team, IMHO.

You missed the point. Teams aren't giving up great young big men. Even Curry, Chandler, Kwame, etc... are near impossible to acquire. So what you do is trade to try to get picks and rebuild... or you offer picks to rid yourself of bad contracts, not to bring in worse ones. Getting under the cap as quick as possible by offering multiple picks for a team to take Allan Houston, etc.. would've been one way to go. We need to rebuild from the ground up. Lampe was a keeper (not based on what he's doing now), but based on the fact that a 7' talented guy who can shoot the ball and has a center body is EXTREMELY hard to find. He could easily be as good as Okur, Raef, etc... could easily be better. It's a valuable piece.

The one thing you don't do is trade away two first round draft picks, a young up and coming big man, a european star PG (yes he never came over, but that was only because the teams he was interested in had too many PGs for him to be guaranteed a big role) and take on $100 MM for one guy you want and two guys you don't, in the process. The money would've been better spent paying a way for Houston, Eisley, Shandon out of NY. Houston and pick for expiring deal(s). Eisley, Anderson, pick, Vujanic for expiring deal(s). Now you traded the same two picks and Vujanic, but keep Lampe. Then we could use the same trade to get Crawford, if we like, fine. In all seriousness, we could've built up a young core of Lampe, Sweetney, Ariza (I liked that draft pick), Crawford, Frank Williams (I'm sure we could've worked it out to keep Frank in the trade with the Bulls), with the potential of having Van Horn, McDyess, etc... as our veteran core and adding a few MLE players to keep us somewhat competitive while we were waiting to get under the cap. We could've been under the cap during the offseason when Penny, TT, etc... expire, and possibly added a star or more young players. We could've added Yao had we done this! The key is getting youth and being under the cap. We still can have both, but... Isiah has to stop the spending with Crawford, trade KT and let the team get under the cap in the year LeBron is a free agent. That's the only way I see it right now.

Posted by Solace:

You missed the point. Teams aren't giving up great young big men. Even Curry, Chandler, Kwame, etc... are near impossible to acquire. So what you do is trade to try to get picks and rebuild... or you offer picks to rid yourself of bad contracts, not to bring in worse ones. Getting under the cap as quick as possible by offering multiple picks for a team to take Allan Houston, etc.. would've been one way to go. We need to rebuild from the ground up. Lampe was a keeper (not based on what he's doing now), but based on the fact that a 7' talented guy who can shoot the ball and has a center body is EXTREMELY hard to find. He could easily be as good as Okur, Raef, etc... could easily be better. It's a valuable piece.

The one thing you don't do is trade away two first round draft picks, a young up and coming big man, a european star PG (yes he never came over, but that was only because the teams he was interested in had too many PGs for him to be guaranteed a big role) and take on $100 MM for one guy you want and two guys you don't, in the process. The money would've been better spent paying a way for Houston, Eisley, Shandon out of NY. Houston and pick for expiring deal(s). Eisley, Anderson, pick, Vujanic for expiring deal(s). Now you traded the same two picks and Vujanic, but keep Lampe. Then we could use the same trade to get Crawford, if we like, fine. In all seriousness, we could've built up a young core of Lampe, Sweetney, Ariza (I liked that draft pick), Crawford, Frank Williams (I'm sure we could've worked it out to keep Frank in the trade with the Bulls), with the potential of having Van Horn, McDyess, etc... as our veteran core and adding a few MLE players to keep us somewhat competitive while we were waiting to get under the cap. We could've been under the cap during the offseason when Penny, TT, etc... expire, and possibly added a star or more young players. We could've added Yao had we done this! The key is getting youth and being under the cap. We still can have both, but... Isiah has to stop the spending with Crawford, trade KT and let the team get under the cap in the year LeBron is a free agent. That's the only way I see it right now.

two things though, if we did absolutely nothing and just let contracts expire, we wouldn't get under the cap until 06/07. which is where we are now. we may have pushed it back to 07/08 but you get my point. we were never bad enough to get a top 8 pick either.

secondly, teams shouldn't give up big men but they do for a variety of reasons with $$$ being number 1. if the knicks are prepared to give kwame $8 mil/year, would washington match that? i don't know. the knicks would have to have kwame's agent bully washington into a sign and trade or sign with another team. washington doesn't want to lose kwame for nothing so they're in a catch-22 and that's how we can aquire a big man. is chicago prepared to give tyson AND curry over $15-20 mil combined a year? i don't know. we have the money to do it as exhibited by getting marbury and crawford while we were still over the cap. expiring deals can do wonders. (sheed, jamison, sar - all three big that were moved in trades).

One more point I want to address.

we were never bad enough to get a top 8 pick either.

Really? We got the #7 pick a few years back (Nene) but traded it. We had the #9 pick more recently with Sweetney (pretty close to a #8). Had we kept the Mutombo, Kurt, Van Horn, Houston, Howard Eisley core, many of you felt we weren't good enough to win more than 35 games. I think that does qualify as a legitimate contender to nab a top 8 pick.

We got Marbury & Crawford thats going to be the backcourt for the future. Thats the way Zeke choose to go so thats the way we are going. Now lets worry about the frontcourt. We won't be in cap hell forever. It took the Suns drafting Stoudemire to solidify there frontcourt for the next 20yrs. Indy stole J'Oneal from Portland and solidified there frontcourt for the next 15yrs. Im Just hopeing that we can land a guy like Dalembert or Kwame Brown during the offseason or maybe draft this guy Johan Petro and they turn out to be studs and solidify our frontcourt for the next 15yrs. To go along with our deadly backcourt. Muhammad & Thomas & our draft pick are solid pieces to get things done this offseason.

All I know is the teams that are dedicated to getting young explosive player, executing in the draft and keeping their rosters flexible are the teams that are good every year. This is the offseason where Isiah's plan will surface. If its to package expiring contracts and a pick for Webber then we are screwed. If its execute with our #1 and work to add guys like Stro, Hunter and guys in their early/mid 20s with upside then we are on the right track.

Lets get good first. Good teams have options. Bad teams are stuck.

Posted by newyorknewyork:

Layden through the window of opportunity to rebuild out the window

If you throw a window of oppurtunity out of a window isn't that creating a gaping hole in the wall of oppurtunity?

Just curious?