Posted by Papabear:
Papabear Says
If I was an owner of a NBA team and had a president of my NBA team At first I would not be concerned about making the playoffs. The first thing is getting that franchise player. (Superstar) then build around that. If you make the lottery again find that other star.
Our first mistake was giving Ewing away for free. I would have traded him to a lottery bound team and got some first round picks and players with one year or less on thier contract.
This is essentially what we did. We got Glenn Rice, with a year or two on his contract, and two first round picks. The problem is Layden turned those picks into Othella Harrington and an ancient Mark Jackson. To add insult to injury we then turned Glenn Rice into Shandon an Eisley.
The Ewing deal in itself was not so bad, his career was on the serious decline and he wanted huge money. But how we proceeded with the assets was bad.
Teams that are in the middle tier of the league always stay there because they never are bad enough to get that lottery pick and not good enough to compete for the ring. That is us.
How good really is David Lee, Balkman, and Collins? Now Lee is smart but players know who he is now since he has a little rep and they are paying more attention to him. I love my Knicks but whoever is our defensive coach Zeke needs to get rid of a bring someone else in.
The Knicks always plays down to the level of the team they are playing. They do not have that killer instinc. When they are ahead they get cute and make all kinds of crazy passes and turnovers. I thought that Marb would not want to go out this way. I thought that he would step up and do his best but maybe his best is not good enough. I still have hope that this team can turn it around.
Papabear
Now your echoing what I've been singing for three years. Isiah spent our franchise player acquisition assets (4 first round draft picks, some which were quite high and could have been higher if we played our cards right) on Starbust and Chubby.
It's been a race to mediocrity with little regard to how to maximize one's chances of acquiring top tier talent. We don't position ourselves to maximize our assets in the means of player acquisition: draft, trades or free agency. It's simply been a spending spree to bring "excitement" back to the garden. To borrow from DJ's vernacular, Isiah has put the sizzle before the steak at every opportunity.
