Posted by fishmike:
What I was refering too is people constantly using Houston as an excuse for everything wrong with this team, and every lousy contract Isiah brings on. People around here are always saying it doesnt matter who we bring in because Houston's deal ruins us anyway. Thats the most backwards way to think I can imagine.
Lets say Pharzeone is the head of a big company. Pharzeone is taking over for a recently fired CEO that made bad decisions. Say one of those bad calls was buying Amtrak which costs the company millions each year. Now imagine Pharzeone makes numerous bad moves of his own that cost the company millions. When asked to justify them he says "it doesnt make a difference. We are paying millions for Amtrack anyhow so who cares?"
You're comparing apples and oranges. When people say that bringing in big contracts is OK as long as they don't outlive Houston's, pure financial concerns have
nothing to do with it. Dolan owns the team, he's filthy stinking rich, and obviously he can afford to dole out the dollars or else he would have set Isiah more stringent constraints. It's Dolan's money to do with as he wishes, not yours, so what does it matter?
The relevance of judging contract sizes and lengths relative to Houston's has to do with the salary cap. Realistically, no matter what we do, we'll be over the cap until Houston and Shamdon expire and shed a combined dead weight of about $28mm (that's more than half the cap right there). The
only thing that should concern us about the contracts on our roster is how they effect the cap, since that in turn constrains what kind of roster upgrading we can do, and that directly effects us as fans. And the cap is pretty much a binary issue; either you're under it and have some extra money to throw at FAs, or you're not and you don't. Given that we're not getting under the cap until Houston and Shamdon expire, it really matters not a whit what kind of contracts we add in the meantime, so long as they do not outlive H&S. Thus, MoT's contract, while out of proportion to his production, is not a practical hinderance with respect to our cap situation, while Rose's is.
Your Amtrak metaphor applies to the first situation (the one we shouldn't care about), not the second one (the one we should care about). Here's a metaphor for the latter. Suppose that fishmike wants to work overtime to make some extra money, but he also really likes to spend his spare time talking about the Knicks on ultimateknicks.com. Now, these two are diametrically opposed; if fishmike wants to work overtime, he'll have to sacrifice proportionately from the time he spends here. But now suppose that for some reason, overtime hours are not available for him until two months from now. Well, in this case, fishmike can temporarily spend all the spare time on ultimateknicks.com that he wants without detracting from his goal to make extra money, since he won't be able to do that for two months anyway. Spending time talking about the Knicks will only detract from his goal once the opportunity for working overtime is actually available to him. Once that time comes, then he has to seriously worry about balancing between spending his spare time working and talking Knicks; but until that time, doing the latter will not bear any relevance to his ability to do the former.
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I can see where this is going already. When Phil comes in (and he is coming) the team will start a nice turnaround over the next two years with the infusion of talent from the upcoming drafts and free agent pools. Then all of a sudden it will be Phil saved us from Isiah. I'm calling it now.
Now that same livery cab driver will run over someone to get in front of you and the time he does that he'll slowdown ten cars of traffic behind him to make sure he can gets the next fare standing on the corner. Just as long as he's in front he doesn't care that the cars behind him don't make the light. 
4/2/2005 11:37 AM
