Posted by SupremeCommander:
I say let him test the market... I don't want another Allan Houston situation part II, where the team is expected to pay a premium because of his tenure.
Good business know how to exploit market inefficiencies. The Knicks ownership is one of the only ownership groups that will pay big bucks. Why not see what everyone else can do and beat it? I mean, times are tough.
I do think LeBron and Lee is a great little one-two, because of how active both are. Add a guy like Mike Miller, keep Duhon, draft a big the team is in business...
BUT, I would almost prefer to sign an elite UFA, draft Curry, trade Lee for a top pick and a young guy, have Chandler be the starting PF and still have enough cash available to sign a second big-time UFA. Obviously this scenario is riskier, but **** it
This is the best approach.
Look there isn't going to be much room to sign Lebron as people think there will be unless we unload Curry. Lebron will command $17mil in salary at a minimum. You add Lee's probable market value of $9mil projected that's $26mil by $2010. You add Curry's $11mil that's $37mil. Add Effries near $7mil that's $44mil add Gallo and Chan's combined Team Option salary of $5.5mil, that's $49.5mil. The cap probably at best won't go past $60mil by 2010 because it's believed to drop this coming summer. This means we're looking at a potential cap of $49.5mil on the books, with us having to renounce all of our FA. If we renounce them they can only be resigned with available cap space. If we don't renounce them their cap hits are usually 105-120%(ball parking here) of the previous yr's salary. This guarantees Harrington, Q, James, Thomas are getting renounced. At best I see $10mil to play with, yet the players we want besides Lebron are Max Players(at least they think they are or the opinion is as such) Bosh, Joe Johnson, Amare, Wade, Dirk, Ray Allen. None of them will sign for less than $10mil. This also means we would have to either let Nate walk or trade for no salary coming back past 2010. We have no point guard if we renounce Duhon. Now our FA's can be resigned going over the cap but once again if this is done then their previous yrs salary is included in the 2010 cap at 105-120%. We'll have no MLE because this also has to be renounced in order to make as much cap room available. We'll only have the LLE and VME to sign other FA(including our own). If we don't win next yr Utah says thank U and we're winning too much this yr. Big mistake trashing Curry and Marbury this yr because we closed the book on trading them this season.
Something must be done with Effries and or Curry via trades, or we have to hope they both opt out.
[Edited by - GallOfFame on 01-15-2009 7:56 PM]
1/15/2009 11:31 PM