Posted by PresIke:
I'm surprised at either how low Lee is being rated here, how high Miller is or an unproven late 1st round pick is here.
What are you surprised about exactly Ike??? Lee's a role player and no matter who he works out with in the offseason or no matter how much he tightens up that jumpshot with Steve Nash in the gym he will always be a role player. Listen, he's a good one, one of the NBA's best role players in fact. I love his work ethic, his hustle, his high character (his little 'go Knicks' at the end of interviews is awesome and always makes me proud of him), the fact that he's proved already that he's dedicated to make himself better, all of it.... I LOVE DAVID LEE MAN!!!! We all do. If you don't like David Lee there's something wrong with you. But make no mistake, we're not talking Amare Stoudemire or David West here OK? And, he's a role player that's more or less overachieved so far and he's preparing to cash in on that soon. We all heard his agent come out with the comments a while ago - he's gonna be looking for BIG MONEY for his client. You wanna pay Lee 50-60 million dollars to stay here? That's the thing. It's not that I don't want to (God bless this kid - I want him to get a big payday), it's that we can't do it, not unless we come up with a heavy frontloaded contract that Lee agrees to which won't compromise our cap during that crucial 2010 FA period that we absolutely need to be a player in.
Regardless, I still think the right move would be to deal Lee now for an additional pick in this deep draft. You gotta give talent to get talent.... Why hang onto a role player now when (1) it's going to cost us a huge amount of money to keep him here and we don't have the cap flexibility to do so & (2) we're possibly 3 years or longer from becoming anything as a team anyway???? I went through almost every team's roster the other day and couldn't come up with a better scenario than Lee/Balkman/filler to Sacramento for Shelden Williams and pick #12. That's good value for both teams going in different directions. The Knicks can turn that pick into a real impact player possibly even a star (for this alone it's worth it), get Shelden Williams, who I'm not ready to right off like a lot of people out there, to slide right into the Lee reserve forward role and wind up opening up more playing time for Wilson Chandler by including Balkman in the deal. What's not to like here with this scenario if you're a Knick fan????
5/16/2008 3:19 PM
