The stat line is nice but I'm glad to see at least a few people who understand my POV of how and why he gets those stats and why if he came here, to this roster, why those stats would evaporate and/or be meaningless, and we'd all be punching holes in our walls wondering why we got yet another Jared Jeffries player and contract on the roster.

I don't know why so many fans can not take a player and his stats from another team and understand that what he does on that team would not necessarily happen on THIS team. We don't have Dwight Howard, Hedo Turkoglu, Rashard Lewis, Jameer Nelson on this roster. Those four players are better than anyone we have on this roster. Gortat on the Magic is a 8th, 9th man. On the Knicks he'd be a 3rd, 4th, 5th man. In the Knick role he'd stink it up because he is not meant to be in that role. On the Magic he looks serviceable. Yet, some refuse to take this into account, and assume that Gortat would do here what he would do on the Magic and somehow we'd look like the Magic if he were here.

This really is more about your low opinion of Gortat himself. Just because a player is buried behind great players, doesn't mean he can't be a great starter for a great team if given the opportunity. Jermaine O'Neal and Mehmet Okur are two of the most obvious examples. Zach Randolph, Michael Redd, and Joe Johnson all needed veterans to get out of their way before they could show how productive they could really be.

Lamar Odom is having the worst statistical year of his career. Camby's numbers while backing up Ewing in 1998-99: 7.2 points and 5.5 rebounds.

Is Gortat a world beater? Probably not. It doesn't mean he can't be a meaningful contributor to a playoff team as a starter, though, unless you just don't think he has meaningful skills. Have you watched so many Magic games that you just know?

Btw, he played 15 games of 20+ minutes last year: 26.9 minutes, 8.2 points, 9 boards, 1.5 blocks.

I love how every year we pick two or three backup players on other teams and fixate on them all off-season about how great they would be with expanded minutes.

Posted by TMS:

if Walsh throws a full MLE at this guy i'll puke.

Nah, I don't think thats happening.. I think more like 3 yeras 10mill

Posted by nyk4ever:

Posted by TMS:

if Walsh throws a full MLE at this guy i'll puke.

Nah, I don't think thats happening.. I think more like 3 yeras 10mill

we really gotta jettison Fishlips & Curry before we start thinking about signing more backup C's imo... next year we especially gotta showcase Curry so he can somehow raise his trade value... dumping 1 of those guys or both for expirings would be HUGER than Curry's expanding waistline at this point.

Posted by Marv:

Posted by TMS:

Posted by nyk4ever:

Posted by TMS:

if Walsh throws a full MLE at this guy i'll puke.

Nah, I don't think thats happening.. I think more like 3 yeras 10mill

we really gotta jettison Fishlips & Curry before we start thinking about signing more backup C's imo... next year we especially gotta showcase Curry so he can somehow raise his trade value... dumping 1 of those guys or both for expirings would be HUGER than Curry's expanding waistline at this point.

don't hate. eddy's gonna come in at 265.

265 kilos?

the most id offer this guy is 4 mil a year

3 years 10 million seems light to me and 5 years 40 million seems too much. I have no problem with a long contract for a center who can board and play d, but the $40 m part seems a bit much.

Posted by unstopaball12:

the 5 years 40 million is for lee my question is who would you rather have now gortat who is good in d or lee who plays really well in this system but for twice the price id get gortat he is agile for a guy his size and a hard worker plus he has finals exp aleady

I'm thinking this is in Walsh's caclulus - who does he rather have and at what price - Gortat at 3 years, $12mm (assuming you can get him at that rate) or Lee at 5 years $40mm.

And for that matter- we need to dig up the other thread on Gortat's countryman, Lampe! Because I think I might prefer Lampe over Gortat - and I suspect MDA might as well.

Posted by Marv:

hey never mind what we're building or not. i just don't like gortat that much as a player.

But that latent subliminal attraction to his face, his nose, has you oddly attracted to him?

Rather than quoting the few responses to my POV I'll just sum this up like this:


Gortat's not even a Chris Dudley and believe me I loved Chris Dudley coming in off the bench for the Knicks and just playing rough. Gortat kind of reminds me of that type of player and that's great on a great team but on a crap team it doesn't do anything to help that crap team - he's just another Jared Jeffries on this team.

So to me, given we have so many problems to address, why would we bother with a backup center? That's what I don't understand the most. If this were the summer of 1998 then the Knicks would do great adding a Gortat.

You don't go rushing to add a Gortat to a 32 win team you know? You do it to a 52 win team.

I'm not saying he IS Jared what I am alluding to is the fact that when Jared was on Washington, who was a very good team until the injuries hit, Jeffries looked like a big part of why they were so good - he was their defender and some times their point-forward. So we pick him up.

What happens? He turns into a big pile of trash. Now why is this? It is because he went to a bad team and was never a good player in the first place. As an off the ball player who was the worst starter on the floor for a very good team he did his thing and it helped the team win. As a top player on a crappy team he simply cannot carry the load and the team still loses with or without him because the team stinks overall.

It's the same thing with Gortat, Ariza, Barnes, Balkman, and on down the list. They look terrific on terrific teams but when they come to a bad team they are tasked to do too much and even if they produce the same stats the thing is the rest of the team still stinks so it does not help the team one bit.

We're that team that stinks right now.

So what I am saying is, although he is an intriguing player, do we really want to spend money on him when our primary focus is to throw our hat into the 2010 ring?

There will always be a Gortat out there to be had.

I know some will reason that you don't always have to add the big pieces first, if you find a complimentary player you grab him and when you finally add the big pieces you'd be happy you did, but in our present situation I don't feel that's the right thing to do.

Just to give an idea of how I feel with that is that Gallo was potentially picked up as a future complimentary player to a future roster. So I was fine with the pick (not the injuries of course...) in that if you had a LeBron-Wade type team that you'd love to add a big time shooter like Gallo - so - what's the big deal if you pick up Gallo first?

It is the same with Gortat except that our cap situation is still not what we want and we can always find a Gortat the summer of 2011 when we should have a pretty decent core in place.