In hindsight, it would obviously make more sense to go after Miller-- after all, we know for a fact that we didn't win a title with Houston, but there's a possibility we might have had we gotten Reggie.

But at the time, without advance knowledge of what would happen, I think Houston was the better signing. Houston was a young, up and coming SG and Miller was already in his 30s I believe (no one could have forseen how long his career would have lasted). Plus, there's no guarantee Miller would have really even considered signing with us-- there was the possibility he'd just use us to drive up his market value and in the process hurt our chances at getting other FAs. Can you imagine if we tried to sign Reggie and he screwed us over, and because of that we didn't even get Houston?

[Edited by - tomverve on 08-26-2005 11:00 PM]

Posted by tomverve:

In hindsight, it would obviously make more sense to go after Miller-- after all, we know for a fact that we didn't win a title with Houston, but there's a possibility we might have had we gotten Reggie.

But at the time, without advance knowledge of what would happen, I think Houston was the better signing. Houston was a young, up and coming SG and Miller was already in his 30s I believe (no one could have forseen how long his career would have lasted). Plus, there's no guarantee Miller would have really even considered signing with us-- there was the possibility he'd just use us to drive up his market value and in the process hurt our chances at getting other FAs. Can you imagine if we tried to sign Reggie and he screwed us over, and because of that we didn't even get Houston?

[Edited by - tomverve on 08-26-2005 11:00 PM]

those are all good points. At the time, I wasn't complaining about the decision either.

we signed allan in summer of 96 not 97. we were hll bent on signing allan houston--the minute he becames a FA pat ewing, checkettes and grunfeld were at his door and it culminated in him signing a 7 yr 56$ contract, we laos signed childs away from NJ we had 3 #1 draft picks that year and traded mason for larry johnson it was set-up as a retooling

they werent interested in anyone else but houston as their main FA target and they got him,miller was just a name that was hyped

The rumor was if Allan did not sign, the plane was scheduled to fly to indy and Reggie was ready to go.

Allan is the 4 all time leading scorer for the team and was doing just fine until two years ago.

With perfect hindsight its too easy to look back. There was no way to know that Reggie at his age would out last Allan.

Posted by HARDCOREKNICKSFAN:

IMHO, The signing wasn't the problem, just the size of the contract. We could've gotten Allan for 70-80 instead of 100 Mil. We outbid ourselves.

they're talking about the summer we initially got Houston for 7 years $56 mil when we could have gotten Reggie instead.

If I recall, the story (legend) was that reggie had agreed with the knicks already.

The knicks had agreed with reggie that plan "A" was Allan, and He was plan "B".

They flew with Two contracts in hand. They were coming hime with one.

But your right about Knicks being a leverage beech for players the last few years. Yankees do it too, but they do it to bid up prices so the competition has less money to do other things!