TMS wrote:we already had the cap space to offer Lebron & Lee contracts this summer w/o having to give up assets...

Not true.

Prior to the trade we had 27M in committed salary (we dumped 9 M to get to 18M ish). 27 + 10 for Lee's cap hold puts it at 37. Add in about 2-3M in roster holds and you have dwindled your cap down to 13-15M depending on where the salary cap number is.

Andrew wrote:

TMS wrote:we already had the cap space to offer Lebron & Lee contracts this summer w/o having to give up assets...

Not true.

Prior to the trade we had 27M in committed salary (we dumped 9 M to get to 18M ish). 27 + 10 for Lee's cap hold puts it at 37. Add in about 2-3M in roster holds and you have dwindled your cap down to 13-15M depending on where the salary cap number is.

Andrew, you are allowed to go over the soft cap to sign your own players. There was enough room to sign Lebron and then re-sign Lee. And why would Lee's caphold be $10 million?

We would have $27 million with more than enough for Lebron's first season which is the only salary you would be concern about at that point.

Andrew wrote:

Pharzeone wrote:Andrew, you are allowed to go over the soft cap to sign your own players. There was enough room to sign Lebron and then re-sign Lee. And why would Lee's caphold be $10 million?

We would have $27 million with more than enough for Lebron's first season which is the only salary you would be concern about at that point.

Again, not true. David Lee is a bird FA. His cap hold is 150% of his previous salary. So actually his cap hold is 10.5M. In order to have the 17M in space to sign a max FA, he and his cap hold would need to be renounced.

27 + 10.5 = 37.5

53M - 37.5 = 15.5

2-3M in roster holds drops the 15.5 million way below the max salary.

Either Lee would have to have been renounced or Lee would have had to sign first for 5-6M.

Are you including guys obtained in the Nate trade?

27M + 1 max contract = 43.5M
43.5M + 9M for Lee in his 1st season = $52.5M for 8 roster spots
1.8M in minimum salary capholds for 4 more roster spots + $52.5M = 54.3M total

where does the $53M figure come from? has the cap already been set for 2010?

So you start with 43.5M with 7 committed roster slots. 5 empty slots means (5*473,604) = 2.3M in roster spot holds.

43.5M + 2.3M = 45.8M

If the salary cap is at 53, which is one number that has been thrown out there, Lee has 7.2 M as a startig salary.

Why are you mentioning sign and trades. This discussion in about whether or not we would have had enough $ to sign a max player and Lee. Most likely we did not.

Andrew wrote:

Pharzeone wrote:

Andrew wrote:No.

Curry 11.2
Gallo 3.3
Will 2.1
JJ 6.8
Hill 2.4
Td 1

Numbers are approximate.

ok, I see what you are talking about. I forgot about Douglas increase. I'm using $55 million for the soft cap. Also I thought it was 125% cap hold for UFA. Is the $53 million confirmed?

53 is not comfirmed but it is one of the numbers that has been thrown out there. Hopefully it will be more.

Ok, this is the problem I have with the caphold. When the Knicks made the qualifying offer to Lee it was based on inflated number not based on his rookie contract but rather years of service. I thought you for caphold purposes go back to the rookie scale or using an average of amount of their salary and not the qualifying offer. So we take his $7 million you are saying and applying the increase?

right now i could care less if David Lee is a Knick next season... my focus is on Lebron... whoever else comes with him is fine with me... if u can sign Lee to go with him, i'd be happy with that... if we're short a mil or 2 to sign Lee then screw him, i target Scola & i'm damn happy w/Lebron & Scola with Jordan Hill & both our future picks in our possession along w/Curry's expiring contract to seek to work some trades with.

right now we have no idea what the cap will be but even if that $53.6M figure is what it ends up to be, we had no reason to really give up all those assets just to clear enough cap space for David Lee & a max contract this summer... sorry but David Lee is not worth a $12M per contract, Jordan Hill & 2 future 1st round picks protected to 1 & 5... that's just ridiculous overspending for a player who is only productive on the offensive side of the ball & isn't a go to guy who can create his own shot in crunchtime.

Team 1:
C - Lee $10.5M
PF - Gallo $3.3M
SF - Lebron $16.5M
SG - Wilson $2.1M
PG - Douglas $1M
6 - $5M FA
7 - Walker $850K
8 - Giddens $1.1M
9 - 2nd rounder $650K
10 - 2nd rounder $650K
11 - Curry $11.3M
12 - minimum salary scrub $470K
Total Salary = $53.42M
(HOU's 1st round pick in 2011 & no pick in 2012)

is that a fair assessment in your opinion or have i left anything out?

now if we had not made the trade, & we were getting 1 max FA without keeping Lee, we could very well be looking at this team in 2010 (again, assuming Lebron is that max FA):

Team 2:
C - Scola $6.5M
PF - Gallo $3.3M
SF - Lebron $16.5M
SG - Wilson $2.1M
PG - Douglas $1M
6 - Hill $2.7M
7 - Fishlips $6.8M
8 - Walker $850K
9 - Giddens $1.1M
10 - 2nd rounder $650K
11 - 2nd rounder $650K
12 - Curry $11.3M
Total Salary = $53.45M
(complete ownership of our 2011 & 2012 1st round picks)

do you really see much of a difference between the quality of Team 1 vs. Team 2 in these 2 scenarios? because i really don't to tell u the truth... not enough to be worth giving up Jordan Hill & the rights to 2 future picks... not even close to justify it... the only way i could justify paying that price is if we were to sign 2 superstar players this summer... that's just me... i would be happy w/either scenario as long as we're getting Lebron, but i would much prefer to have ownership of our picks while doing it... i hope this explains my outlook on all this.

in Team 2 if you offered him a contract starting out at $6.5M, that's more than any capped out team can offer, which gives us an advantage to sign a player like him.

earthmansurfer wrote:

Cosmic wrote:

holfresh wrote:

TMS wrote:

Pharzeone wrote:I get back into town for this ****. Fire Donnie old ass now if this is true. You mean you traded 2 picks and the potential right for another team to swap your pick to get a player you could have re-sign on the cheap. How is this even posted without a pre-April Fool Day's disclaimer.

LOL! for real if that's how it plays out this guy should be fired immediately... this is just more of Donnie Walsh's cronies putting out possible failure scenarios to keep expectations down in case we miss out on landing 2 primetime FA's this summer... first it was the "2011 fallback option", now it's "Bosh isn't worth the max" excuse... pretty soon we'll be hearing about how Lebron isn't necessarily a good fit for MDA's system.

If it turns out Donnie takes the DLee, JJ route...A seemingly mundane trade to free up additional cap space that would have rolled off in 1 year anyway could destroy the Knicks for the next 5-6 years...Imagine that...

How do we get JJ and keep Lee in 2010? We don't because FishLips and Predator took up too much cap room. So what was Lee going to do. Sit out a year and wait for Curry to expire so the Knicks could re-sign him?

Imagine THAT disaster.

I thought we had enough money for a Max plus Lee at around 10 million (before getting rid of Jeffries)? Now, we have enough for 2 max's but no Lee. I don't know if it matters though as we can be VERY creative with S&T's now that we have the cap space and I bet that is a part of the flexibility they have in mind. For example, we can trade Curry's expiring and Chandler for a great player, though we don't have many more assets now that we traded Hill and those picks. Hmmm...

Though, we tipped our hands (or rather did free advertising) for Stephan Curry this last draft so I don't put it past this organization to blow it (again). I never understood why we were so open about wanting S Curry...

Considering the market being NY, I'm sure we will come away with some good players. Actually it has to be great players, for we gave away Hill and 2 1st rd picks (ok, at least 1 depending on how things go down.)

Prior to the Houston trade we had room for 1 max player and about 7M or so to play with after the fact. We couldn't even keep Lee with our MAX player. We HAD to do the Houston trade. Absolutely had to.

I also highly doubt we're doing a 2-max-player plan. I think the idea was to ensure we could lure 1-max player, keep Lee, and sign a third player. I guess it could happen and the FO tells those 2 max guys that we can't give them sidekicks for a year until Fatass gets off the books - but - I don't know if that's the true plan or not. I think it was more about 1 max + flexibility to build around the max.

Again, we'll see, who knows what happens.

TMS wrote:

"I really didn’t know what the list of free agents were."

too busy napping to research this kinda useless information in the biggest free agency summer of alltime

First off, I think Walsh is making crap up when he says that. I remember specifically, 2 years ago, that he knows of very good players that were in this free agent class. If you're gonna take his words so seriously, have fun. I'm not talking about YOU TMS. I'm just directing at this in people in general... You just can't take the media comments seriously anymore, b/c 1)People lie to the media. 2) People never give out much info, or are overly careful in fear of what the media can do. and 3) the media twists crap around, and doesn't include everything the quotes provided.

In this case, Donnie is lying. Big whop. He knew perfectly well who was in the free agent class. He probably even had his eye on it even when he was in Indiana.

And here we are talking about SOURCES and getting our panties in a bunch about what "sources" say. Have fun with that. I'll go free ballin'.