Thanks Fishy.....
Yo JohnWallace thanks for the long rant basically justifying the quote above.
Do you (johnwallace) even read the part about nate not having control of his emotions or the game yet?
I stand by what I said about Nate can stand toe to toe offensively with deron and chris paul, cuz its the truth.
Point guard skills no, but he needs to be groomed like anybody else. Nobody seems to want to. The Knicks would be making a huge mistake if they let the kid go.
Eny, look, I think Nate's highest value player on the team. He's also my favorite player to watch, my favorite since Sean Kemp was in his heyday with Seattle.
Those dark Knicks days where we were down 30 all the time and Nate, Lee, and Ariza/Balkman would bring us back... awesome... just incredible stretches to watch and completely invalidated Larry Brown's refusal to start them..
What I'm saying is that this franchise had better play him as a real PG the rest of the way out and a REAL PG, not Allen Iverson taking the entire game in his hands, and figure out if he can lead this team.
If you go into the offseason and Nate is still the guy who gets tech's every few games, and won't pass it to Gallo, Chandler or Al and would rather take it to the hole himself, then I'm telling you, you have to swallow hard and deal him. Otherwise, what difference does it make how talented he is?
He's a statement that will get people riled up, but tell me what the difference is between Nate right now and Zach. Zach puts up crazy numbers, Zach holds the ball too much, Zach doesn't win, he's supremely talented, heroic at times...
I can see Nate maturing at some point, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
If we can get him to sign a cheap deal, we can trade him anyway, but any major deal for Nate or Lee you can't go near if you're the Knicks because of the cap situation. The right move to make is to try and deal both of them for picks. It just is. You can't get away from that.
I wanted to keep Nate and Dave prior to the trade deadline, or at least one. Problem is that all of those expiring deals are gone now, so that path is now closed to us. You have to completely rebuild starting with this draft, you get hopefully 3 first round picks and a second round pick out of it. You come out with a big, a PG and a shooting guard. You build them along with Gallo and Chandler next year. (you could trade for Melo at this point as an alternative) You sign the best available Max UFA in the Summer of 2010 and trade Chandler for more picks because he'll have to be resigned at the end of the year. You probably make it to the 2nd round of the playoffs that year. You get another bigtime free agent in 2011 and a Posey type glue player and you make a run at the title.
That's how Donnie wanted to do it when he got here. He didn't deviate from the plan at the deadline. That would have been the time to bail. At this point you can't let Nate or Lee distract from that plan.
Its not fun for a fan, not fun for me. I think its just the reality.
Alan Hahn:
Nate Robinson has been on a ridonkulous scoring tear lately (remember when he couldn't hit Jerome James with a Big Mac in early January?)
3/12/2009 7:26 PM