Posted by Solace:
The plan would be as follows:
Acquire as many high draft picks as possible.
Plan to get under the cap in time for LeBron's stint in free agency.
Trade all expirings (McDyess, Kurt Thomas, Charlie Ward) for 2 year contracts and extra draft picks.
Stay under the cap until a stud signs or we draft a stud like Oden. Don't put yourself in a position where you can't sign a stud, until this point. If it means trading good young players for future picks, to stay under, do so.
I apologize, Solace, if I oversimplified your position, but in the end, the difference between your position as I represented it and your actual position is largely a matter of logistics. I don’t think the Jalen Rose trade proves that it is easy to acquire draft picks in return for giving a year or two of cap flexibility to a team, and even if its so, those draft picks aren’t likely to be valuable.
My over-all reading of your strategy doesn’t change. Sitting tight and sucking while collecting draft picks until LeBron James (or presumably one of his class mates) becomes available was simply never an option. Did LeBron James switch teams? Did Anthony or Bosh? Was this simply because the Knicks weren’t under the cap? Come on. It rarely happens, and basing an entire strategy around it happening, and the notion that the Knicks fan base would patiently fold their hands and wait until it happens, is just absurd.
You suggest we even sacrifice young talent to keep ourselves open for a LBJ signing. So what do we do in the very likely event that he doesn’t? Suck for another three years? And why would he even want to sign with a team that sucked for years and has few prospects on the roster? Yeah, that’s a plan we can all sign on to. A suggestion Solace…keep your day jopb.
Posted by Panos:
As for the refusal of Dolan to rebuild? I'm tired of hearing that argument.
It's pure speculation! Has anyone actually HEARD Dolan say these words?
Why do I have to continually hear this propaganda?
How do you know its not Zeke that's making the decisions AS A GM SHOULD?
Crap!
Come on Panos, don’t pretend now that you have been living under a rock for the last 15 years. We know Dolan will never rebuild because neither of his teams, the Knicks or the Rangers, has ever come close. He has always preferred to throw money at the problem and acquire enough veteran skill to get his teams into the playoffs. It was true under Layden, just as it is under Isiah Thomas. Dolan may be mum on the subject of his expectations, as owners usually are, but Layden was famously quoted as saying the Knicks will never be under the cap. In other words, this is a strategy the Knicks will never pursue.
And in fact, if you look at the way other large market teams operate in other sports this strategy isn't that unusual. Owners in large markets spend the money to keep their teams as competitive as they can year to year, feeling they don't need to endure the lean rebuilding years like small market teams do. Thats clear at trade deadline every year in Baseball.As for a GM making the decisions? Again, I know you aren’t really that ignorant of the relationship of owner to GM. The GM never tells an owner what to do with his money, in the end, the decision always comes from the very top. There was a good article on ESPN pointing out how Kevin McHale shouldn’t get all of the flack for the KG trade when it was Glen Taylor calling the shots the whole time. One has to wonder, if Dolan was ever interested in blowing things up and rebuilding instead of making a big splash, why he would hire a high profile basketball icon like Isiah Thomas in the first place, followed so closely by the trade for Stephon Marbury?
I think Thomas’ plan was always to rebuild the way he helped Indiana do it, with Stephon Marbury and Allan Houston keeping the team competitive while rebuilding the teams young foundation. I don’t think that was a bad plan. But Houston retired, Thomas made bad coaching hires, and Marbury simply hasn’t been as good as we needed him to be. He is, unfortunately, no Reggie Miller.
We’re not all that different, you and I. I would love the Knicks to pursue some fiscal responsibility and operate closer to the cap number. I thought we were on our way to doing just that, which is only one more reason I disliked the trade for Zach Randolph. But as a fan you can rail against forces you can do nothing about, or you can find positive trends and hope they pan out. To me that’s what being a fan is. Bashing 25 yr old Zach Randolph as a career loser after his best season and before he has even practiced as a New York Knick? That doesn’t qualify.
Its like a groupie website, or bitter ex-wives club. -Sebstar
