http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/basketball/knicks/blog/2009/02/peripheral_vision.html

Aside from what Larry Hughes and Chris Wilcox give the Knicks on the court for this push for a playoff spot in the final 29 games . . .

The Knicks open up two roster spots with the Hughes trade. This allows them to sign a D-League player such as Will Conroy (26.4 ppg, 8 assists) as a backup point guard or, of course, Patrick Ewing Jr. (16 ppg, 8.5 rebounds), if they want to give either a look. Another name to consider out of the D-League is Blake Ahern (22.9 ppg, 53.1 pct from three-point range).

OR . . . they can give Quincy Douby a look. He was waived by the Sacramento Kings yesterday when Sam Cassell was acquired. Others may be available on the waiver wire tomorrow.

It also sets things up nicely for 2009-10. Consider . . .

* - The roster has four expiring contracts -- five if you include Cuttino Mobley -- in 2009-10 to offer in possible trades for high-salary, star-quality players in the summer and up until the 2010 trade deadline. The expirings include: Larry Hughes ($13.6M), Al Harrington ($10.03M), Cuttino Mobley ($9.5M), Quentin Richardson ($8.7M) and Chris Duhon ($6.03M).

So you don't necessarily have to wait until the Summer of 2010 and try to sign free agents. You have expiring deals to offer to cash-strapped teams (and the number of them are growing by the day) for high-salary players and come next year's deadline, there will be several teams that have to decide what to do with those high-end players who will be going into free agency in the 2010 offseason. Think: Celtics in 2008. They had the assets and Minnesota and Seattle had the players. Instant karma.

* - The Knicks only have nine players under contract in 09-10 for a total of $69,225,446. This doesn't include restricted free agents David Lee and Nate Robinson, of course. The Knicks will still be well over the cap and once they give Lee a contract they'll be paying some luxury tax, but it's most likely they'll have the lowest payroll total they've had in years.

* - So far the payroll in 2010-11 has commitments to just four players -- Eddy Curry, Jared Jeffries, Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler -- for $24.4 million. Now, again, whatever David Lee gets will count against it and you have to consider Duhon as a potential signee, as well, but be assured Walsh's mission over the next 365 days is to dump the Curry and Jeffries contracts. And, as we said above, DO NOT get fixated, Fixers, on the free agency sweepstakes. The Knicks have just set themselves up to be major players in trade scenarios because of the assets and cap space they have collected.

Just bloggin.

I do think the parts that I bolded are true. We will have the flexibility to do a number of moves come this time next year and I think we as Knick fans just have to be really patient. Look at what the Hornets are trying to do. They tried to give Chandler away for nothing - you think Paul is happy about that? A year from now we might be able to trade for him.

It's all about flexibility.

Great analysis, dude. The Knicks 2010 plan may not go exactly as planned, but nothing ever does. Irregardless from the obvious, this team is going to have options. And the team will be able to take the many significant options it believes will be best.

I still think Walsh needs to find a way to move Curry the most. I can live with Jeffries but Curry needs to go or be forced to retire. One or the other. How he does it is the problem. Does he gamble and try to see if fatso comes to play next season? Does he trade our 1st rounder with Curry at the draft for salary cap relief? Or is moving Curry just impossible at this point? Do we just enter 2010 with $10 million already on our cap due to Curry's worthless ass?

Posted by sebstar:

Yep, I think I speak for the sane and rational when I say thank god Walsh didnt panic and trade Nate just to get rid of Jeffries contract. With all the assets we are piling up, we are in a more than capable position to capitalize on whatever opportunities arise over the next year.

i still think that if lebron or wade aren't here in 2010, walsh's plan wasn't necessary...but we won't know that til the summer of 2010 is over.

I do think the parts that I bolded are true. We will have the flexibility to do a number of moves come this time next year and I think we as Knick fans just have to be really patient. Look at what the Hornets are trying to do. They tried to give Chandler away for nothing - you think Paul is happy about that? A year from now we might be able to trade for him.

It's all about flexibility.

I think comparing us to the Celtics is a little crazy. When the Celts made that deal for KG, they weren't just trading expiring deals. They did trade Al Jefferson in that deal who was a serious prospect. Is Chandler going to be our Al Jefferson?

Maybe we'll be able to do Chandler and expirings for Bosh next year. Maybe that's where Walsh fits the salaries in. That would make everything fit pretty nice in a $54 million dollar box.

1. Nobody is going to sign and trade us a top free agent or even a big bag of **** for Hughes, Harrington, Mobley, Q and Duhon. Without something of real value to trade, the only way to get a top player is signing them with cap space.

2. The 2008 Celtics?!? They had the 5th overall pick to trade for Allen, a 20 year old 20/10 future all star to trade for KG and they already had an all star in Pierce to bring it all together. What exactly does this current Knicks team have in common with any of that?

Posted by TMS:

D Lee & Nate are valuable assets IMO... but obviously Donnie chose to hold onto those guys for whatever reason... i still say we coulda gotten teams interested in those 2 if we'd packaged them w/our lottery pick this year & gotten a very, very good player... or if we'd dealt them for draft picks like i was saying we should we woulda had 3 lottery picks w/which to make moves with on draft night... don't tell me teams won't be looking to make deals w/us if we had that kind of ammo.

You can still package Lee/Nate in deals for any top star since they will have pretty modest deals and we will have the expiring contracts to go along with it. I'm guessing this is Walsh's plan if the FA route doesn't work.

Posted by TMS:

Posted by nyk4ever:

http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/basketball/knicks/blog/2009/02/peripheral_vision.html

Aside from what Larry Hughes and Chris Wilcox give the Knicks on the court for this push for a playoff spot in the final 29 games . . .

The Knicks open up two roster spots with the Hughes trade. This allows them to sign a D-League player such as Will Conroy (26.4 ppg, 8 assists) as a backup point guard or, of course, Patrick Ewing Jr. (16 ppg, 8.5 rebounds), if they want to give either a look. Another name to consider out of the D-League is Blake Ahern (22.9 ppg, 53.1 pct from three-point range).

OR . . . they can give Quincy Douby a look. He was waived by the Sacramento Kings yesterday when Sam Cassell was acquired. Others may be available on the waiver wire tomorrow.

It also sets things up nicely for 2009-10. Consider . . .

* - The roster has four expiring contracts -- five if you include Cuttino Mobley -- in 2009-10 to offer in possible trades for high-salary, star-quality players in the summer and up until the 2010 trade deadline. The expirings include: Larry Hughes ($13.6M), Al Harrington ($10.03M), Cuttino Mobley ($9.5M), Quentin Richardson ($8.7M) and Chris Duhon ($6.03M).

So you don't necessarily have to wait until the Summer of 2010 and try to sign free agents. You have expiring deals to offer to cash-strapped teams (and the number of them are growing by the day) for high-salary players and come next year's deadline, there will be several teams that have to decide what to do with those high-end players who will be going into free agency in the 2010 offseason. Think: Celtics in 2008. They had the assets and Minnesota and Seattle had the players. Instant karma.

* - The Knicks only have nine players under contract in 09-10 for a total of $69,225,446. This doesn't include restricted free agents David Lee and Nate Robinson, of course. The Knicks will still be well over the cap and once they give Lee a contract they'll be paying some luxury tax, but it's most likely they'll have the lowest payroll total they've had in years.

* - So far the payroll in 2010-11 has commitments to just four players -- Eddy Curry, Jared Jeffries, Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler -- for $24.4 million. Now, again, whatever David Lee gets will count against it and you have to consider Duhon as a potential signee, as well, but be assured Walsh's mission over the next 365 days is to dump the Curry and Jeffries contracts. And, as we said above, DO NOT get fixated, Fixers, on the free agency sweepstakes. The Knicks have just set themselves up to be major players in trade scenarios because of the assets and cap space they have collected.

Just bloggin.

I do think the parts that I bolded are true. We will have the flexibility to do a number of moves come this time next year and I think we as Knick fans just have to be really patient. Look at what the Hornets are trying to do. They tried to give Chandler away for nothing - you think Paul is happy about that? A year from now we might be able to trade for him.

It's all about flexibility.

the Celtic plan is exactly what i've been talking about all this time... we need to amass cap space, young assets & draft picks & then we'll have the ammo to make a blockbuster type deal like the one they got KG with... we need to keep the cap flexibility for 2010 but signing Lebron isn't the only way to do this thing right... the point is to have options.

Last year's draft and this years were vital to any rebuilding plan that Walsh was going to put in place. So far his lottery pick looks like he belongs as a set shooter in the 1950's, he declined buying another pick for chump change that was used by another to draft Mario Chalmers and instead of worrying about 2010, he spent this trade deadline trying to improve the current team and lowering their draft pick in the process. What exactly is going on here?

Posted by islesfan:

Posted by TMS:

D Lee & Nate are valuable assets IMO... but obviously Donnie chose to hold onto those guys for whatever reason... i still say we coulda gotten teams interested in those 2 if we'd packaged them w/our lottery pick this year & gotten a very, very good player... or if we'd dealt them for draft picks like i was saying we should we woulda had 3 lottery picks w/which to make moves with on draft night... don't tell me teams won't be looking to make deals w/us if we had that kind of ammo.

When they had $28M in expiring contracts, Lee and Nate and the full financial backing of Cablevision in a sport where many teams are looking for financial relief, it's amazing that all they came away with was Larry Hughes and Chris Wilcox.

well when u consider that $21 mil of that was Stephon Marbury then it's not so surprising... no one wants any part of him, expiring contract or no... they'll wait for him to be bought out... anyway there aren't many huge contracts like that we would want on our books anyways in a trade for him other than guys like Vince Carter, who doesn't fit the 2010 plan regardless... i don't think there were any fits for Marbs' expiring that would have appealed to us.