Posted by fishmike:

Posted by djsunyc:

i actually thought our team had cohesion - i mean, it basically was iso's for spree and allan, but ward was always at the same spot for 3's and kurt was around the elbow. nothing to write home about, but those teams actually had chemistry, albeit they were undertalented.

as for expiring contracts, 4 words - NO MORE MAX PLAYERS!!!

agreed... we won 37 games with the worst froncourt I have ever seen on a pro team. We took care of the ball and took high % 3's off Houston and Spree creating on the perimeter. I always thought with some better role players that was at least a playoff team. Fortson and Tony Battie were the two guys I thought would help.

Chaney getting 37 wins from that team was impressive to me.

Posted by Bonn1997:

Posted by fishmike:

Posted by djsunyc:

i actually thought our team had cohesion - i mean, it basically was iso's for spree and allan, but ward was always at the same spot for 3's and kurt was around the elbow. nothing to write home about, but those teams actually had chemistry, albeit they were undertalented.

as for expiring contracts, 4 words - NO MORE MAX PLAYERS!!!

agreed... we won 37 games with the worst froncourt I have ever seen on a pro team. We took care of the ball and took high % 3's off Houston and Spree creating on the perimeter. I always thought with some better role players that was at least a playoff team. Fortson and Tony Battie were the two guys I thought would help.

Chaney getting 37 wins from that team was impressive to me.

I bet that team would go about 31-51 in the east this year consider how much stronger the east is now than it was then.

[Edited by - Bonn1997 on 04/05/2005 11:53:53]

Posted by fishmike:

Chaney getting 37 wins from that team was impressive to me.

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by fishmike:

Chaney getting 37 wins from that team was impressive to me.

it's funny b/c i wanted to give him the rest of the 03/04 season with marbs. he did have the team playing hard in those previous years. to me, it was always about the talent. was he coach of the year, nope, but getting 37 wins out of that groups AFTER dice went down for the year (minus camby) and AFTER spree was gone the first 8 games was a pretty good accomplishment.

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by Bonn1997:


I bet that team would go about 31-51 in the east this year consider how much stronger the east is now than it was then.

you mean, kinda like what we are now, only $200 mil later?

Nope; statements like that result from blindly looking at W/L records. That team consisted solely of players in or past their primes. In contrast, the current team has young players whose best days are ahead of them in Ariza, Crawford, and maybe Sweetney and a star with many years left in Marbury, and four 1st rd picks over the next 2 years.
(I'm not sure where you get the idea from that this team costs $200 mil more than that team, either. There were many overpaid players on that team too. I believe we led the league in team payroll that year like this year.)

Posted by fishmike:

Tom.. I have a pretty high respect for your opinion. Ive read you for awhile on the NYTimes board, so let me ask you this; do you think Isiah has done a good job so far?

Posted by tomverve:

Posted by fishmike:

Tom.. I have a pretty high respect for your opinion. Ive read you for awhile on the NYTimes board, so let me ask you this; do you think Isiah has done a good job so far?

I think he's done a pretty good job, given what he had to work with. It is essential to take into account the various constraints and assets that Isiah inherited upon coming here, and how they have conditioned what he has been able to do; player movement is not done in a vacuum. Simply put, Isiah stepped into a very poor situation; lots of roster garbage, very little tradable assets, an astronomical cap figure. It is just not realistic to expect anyone to turn around a situation like that overnight.

That we've even been able to assemble the modest talent we have on our roster now is impressive. Go back a year and a half, and tell a random Knicks fan that pretty soon NY will have acquired an All Star PG, a young SG with some promise, and a 19 year old SF just oozing with athleticism and potential. The random Knick fan will probably give you a funny look and say something about 5 more years of hamstrung cap hell where it'll be impossible to do anything like that in only a year.

Of course, most of the trades Isiah has made thus far do not come without their various caveats; but, again, I think this results largely from having to work from a position of weakness. Given where we started from at the end of the Layden era, if we were to build up our talent base through trades, it simply could not have been done without having to give a little extra in terms of future assets or take a little extra in terms of salary. It's just the way things work, just the price we had to pay for accelerating our rebuilding by a couple of years; perhaps in an ideal world we wouldn't have had to have done that, but as I said earlier, I'm just completely convinced now that no properly done, long term rebuild will be tolerated by NY fans.

This is not to say that Isiah gets a pass on whatever moves he might make. This coming draft, we'll finally be in a favorable position to acquire talent, instead of working from a position of weakness. It's fair to say that Isiah must do something to significantly improve our roster this summer for the long term, simply because he will finally have the means to do it in the first place. This is why I urge us fans to wait for the summer before we get too worried about what direction we're headed in. Fans have mostly complained about the compromises we've made in various transactions, without appreciating the circumstances surrounding those compromises. For once, Isiah will not have to compromise one way or the other to get something good for us this summer.

Posted by codeunknown:

And why should we do that? Sorry, that's weak logic. Instead of appraising our total assets in each scenario, you think that "whether we can do Marbury trade" in a particular year is the best assessment of our total worth? Thats peculiar.

Our assets don't take a significant hit - ignoring the "frills," as you put it, is insane as those players/picks/cap space = many opportunities for the Knicks. Mcdyess was of value to them and that we gave them. Whether or not Phoenix values the rest of the package is irrelevant - those assets were definitely valuable to us.

Think of it this way: can we presently trade Marbury for the assets we gave up for him? I doubt it. Because those assets in all probability are worth more. Thus, the Marbury trade was a gamble.

Posted by Bonn1997:

When the Knicks made the playoffs last year, it was an unexpected bonus. This bonus, however, raised everyone's (including mine) expectations that rebuilding could be achieved very rapidly

Posted by Bonn1997:

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by Bonn1997:

When the Knicks made the playoffs last year, it was an unexpected bonus. This bonus, however, raised everyone's (including mine) expectations that rebuilding could be achieved very rapidly

the mandate from dolan was to make the playoffs. it was not unexpected.

So, whatever Dolan mandates becomes unexpected? If he mandates a championship next year, a championship becomes expected? What kind of logic is that?

Posted by tomverve:

Posted by codeunknown:

And why should we do that? Sorry, that's weak logic. Instead of appraising our total assets in each scenario, you think that "whether we can do Marbury trade" in a particular year is the best assessment of our total worth? Thats peculiar.

It seems fair to use Marbury as an example, since 1) we know that we could have acquired him with the net assets that we had at the time, since we in fact did acquire him, and 2) Marbury is roughly representative of the kind of very high quality, All Star or borderline All Star players we should be interested in acquiring. With McDyess's expiring contract, we had the wherewithal to pick up that kind of player; without it, we wouldn't have.

Our assets don't take a significant hit - ignoring the "frills," as you put it, is insane as those players/picks/cap space = many opportunities for the Knicks. Mcdyess was of value to them and that we gave them. Whether or not Phoenix values the rest of the package is irrelevant - those assets were definitely valuable to us.

Of course, we'd have been left with some assets had we just let McDyess expire. But what, really? Thus far, Lampe hasn't seemed to be anything special, and Vujanic is a lost cause. Neither have figured heavily either in terms of on court production or trade value. So it largely comes down to the picks. I'm not sure where you're getting a top 5 pick from-- perhaps a projection of how bad we would have been last year, had we not acquired Marbury?

Think of it this way: can we presently trade Marbury for the assets we gave up for him? I doubt it. Because those assets in all probability are worth more. Thus, the Marbury trade was a gamble.

We're trying to evaluate the value McDyess had for us a trading chip, right? So we should ask, could we trade Marbury for a package similar to the one we used to get him, sans the huge expiring contract? Could we trade Marbury and a bad contract for another team's bad contracts, plus a couple of lottery protected, mid first round picks and a couple of big question mark Euros? I think the answer is clearly yes.