BRIGGS wrote:TMS wrote:the point is no team wants his contract, they want our young players & our draft pick... so in order to get him outta here you're gonna have to toss in some incentive.
Here is the general mentality of a Knicks fan from our old buddy tms. Let's trade Zach Randolph and let's give up draft picks to do it. We then watch the player turn back to an all star then have the pleasure of using our picks on top of it
the mentality of trading away randolph and crawford was based on cleaning up isaiah thomas's long-term poo-poo which meant getting rid of overpaid players on longer contracts and acquiring overpaid players on shorter contracts. not only was the non-plan approach damaging in terms of money... it was exacerbated by acquiring players willy-nilly with no sense of whether the players would be able to mesh. years of underachievement is testament to this:
2007: (33-49) marbury, crawford, curry, frye, lee, richardson, robinson, jeffries, francis, balkman UGH
2008: (23-59) crawford, lee, randolph, robinson, richardson, jones, curry, jeffries NO.... JUST NO!
2009: (32-50) duhon, lee, chandler, harrington, robinson, richardson, jeffries already better in a roster flush rebuilding year with an attempt at a system
2010: (29-53) lee, gallinari, chandler, harrington, duhon, jeffries, douglas year 2 of roster flush and netting 5 fewer losses over the two-year isaiah thomas stretch
one of several lessons here is that when you clean up that much mess and that particular kind of mess, then players like randolph and crawford are justifiably expendable, especially crawford who has no business starting on any team. also, when stern says that the knicks are not a "model of intelligent management" then for the sake of the league a seasoned pro like walsh is brought in, because he is going to assemble a team intelligently. lastly, there's the character issue, which is obviously a reflection of the gm, isaiah thomas: curry? marbury? richardson? robinson? HEL-lo.
the following season the knicks were headed back to the playoffs, with a 28-26 record up until the anthony trade:
2011: (28-26) stoudemire, fields, felton, douglas, chandler, gallinari, williams, turiaf even factoring in stoudemire slowing down and giving diminishing returns that season, if you look at the final standings in the regular season the pacers got into the playoffs with 37 wins.
that would mean that the knicks would have only had to have gone 9-19 the remainder of the season and they STILL would have achieved the same-- a first round playoff exit-- as after the carmelo anthony trade, which destroyed the rebuild that was well on its way under walsh. does anyone believe the knicks would not have won another 9 games? yes: only those who (1)applauded the trade and thought anthony was all that will refuse to look at this fact and (2)only those who are isaiah thomas apologists who believe that accumulating talent for its own sake (and regardless of content of character) and putting burden on the coach to mesh that talent and work with players of highly questionable character.
in the end, the only players worth hanging onto are the ones with fair contracts who possess good character and who fit into the paradigm of a particular regime, assuming that regime actually has a paradigm. this is the ideal and is in fact exactly what we see in san antonio. (notable that jackson poo-poohed this by terming the san antonio not a "dynasty" but a "force." what horse-shyt, but note what he says here about salary: Tim Duncan making the salary he's making after being part of a dynasty— not a dynasty, I wouldn't call San Antonio a dynasty— a force, a great force. They haven't been able to win consecutive championships but they've always been there. San Antonio has had a wonderful run through Tim's tenure there as a player. He's agreed to take a salary cut so other players can play with him so they can be this good. And that's the beginning of team play.)
isaiah never had a paradigm and he overpaid for every player he acquired, hence, again-- players like randolph and crawford were justifiably expendable, regardless of their relative successes after being traded.
knicks win 38-43 games in 16-17. rose MUST shoot no more than 14 shots per game, defer to kp6 + melo, and have a usage rate of less than 25%
1/16/2008 6:42 PM