What do the Knicks look like after this season?

Assuming the Knicks sign Nate and David Lee to one year deals and are completely unable to get rid of Jefferies and Curry, all the Knicks can do is hope that everything that comes with being the King of The Greatest City On Earth will be enough to attract King James here with this squad:

PG:Toney Douglas $1,071,000
SG:
SF:Danilo Gallinari $3,304,560
PF:Wilson Chandler $2,130,481
F: Jordan Hill $2,669,520 Jared Jefferies $6,883,400
C: Eddy Curry $11,276,863

Miscellaneous crap or “other”:
Joe Crawford $1,209,389 (Qualifying Offer)
Chris Hunter $1,029,389 (Qualifying Offer)

That would be a total of $21,900,783 on the books. The cap is estimated to drop to somewhere between $50.4 million and $53.6 million for the 2010-11 season. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4312837

How much money is there left after LeBron or whoever the consolation prize is?

Maximum Player Salaries

As under the prior CBA, in the first year of a new contract a player may receive the greater of 105% of the player’s prior salary, or:

0-6 years of service: 25% of Salary Cap ($12 million this year).
7-9 years of service: 30% of Salary Cap ($14.4 million this year).
10 or more years of service: 35% of Salary Cap ($16.8 million this year).

Which means the Knicks can offer Lebron, with 7 years of service:

A) 30% of $50 M = $15 Million starting
B) 30% of $53.6 = $16,080,000 Million starting
C) 105% of his 2009-2010 Salary of $17,149,243 = $18,006,705

Assuming $50 M Cap

A) Puts Knicks at $42,477,602: $7,522,398 Remaining
B) Puts Knicks at $43,557,602: $6,442,398 Remaining
C) Puts Knicks at $45,484,307: $4,515,693 Remaining

Assuming $53 M Cap

A) Puts Knicks at $42,477,602 $10,522,398 Remaining
B) Puts Knicks at $43,557,602 $9,442,398 Remaining
C) Puts Knicks at $45,484,307 $7,515,693 Remaining

If Donnie’s gamble pays off and the Knicks get Lebron or any of the other 2010 guys. The team has anywhere from 5-10 Mill left to fill out the roster for the 2010/2011 season.

Ok, great. We got one good/great player. Now what?

Plan A 2010 offseason:
1. Sign ONE marquee FA to a long term deal
2. Use remaining cap space to fill out roster with 1 year deals.

Plan B 2010 offseason:

1. Sign one marquee FA to a long term deal
2. Use remaining cap space to secure 1 solid 2nd banana

Plan C 2010 offseason:

1. Sign one marquee FA to a long term deal
2. Use remaining cap space to secure 2 solid role players to medium term deals and hope Gallo and/or Chandler can become solid 2nd or 3rd bananas…

PG:Toney Douglas $1,071,000
SG:Lebron James $15-18,000,000
SF:Danilo Gallinari $3,304,560
PF:Wilson Chandler $2,130,481
F: Jordan Hill $2,669,520 Jared Jefferies $6,883,400
C: Eddy Curry $11,276,863

Other: 5-10 million left to fill out roster.

LOOONG list of restricted, unrestricted guys for 2010.

Here's what looks like the super bright side. Either way come 2011, assuming the Knicks just get stuck waiting out Curry and JJ’s contracts to die quietly a whopping $18,160,263 of the dollars formerly known has Eddy Curry and JJ’s money is available to sign guys available summer of 2011.

If the Knicks don’t sign Lebron or Wade, all is not lost. There is no need to overpay anyone or give them any more years than other teams are willing to offer. The list of guys available over the next 2 years is ridiculous and what the Knicks have done over the past few years is cripple themselves by overpaying guys and giving them too many years. Therefore when quality guys are available at reasonable prices they can't be players. This is how you end up with the Knicks spending the same amount or more than any other team in the NBA this season and fielding a team that may not make the playoffs.

Ex: Signing Ramon Sessions at $4 M per was certainly reasonable. However because space is already committed to Curry and Jefferies, signing Sessions could NOT have been done without jeapordizing any chance of getting a max FA in The Summer.

Things to do while the Knicks develop their youngs and try not to embarrass themselves this season:

As a fun game, we can all use hoopsype.com’s salary page (http://hoopshype.com/salaries.htm) to play GM.

Summer of 2010:

If you’re Donnie Walsh (or just a die hard fan who wishes he could be) what do you do with the 10-16 million left to fill out the roster?

Summer of 2011:

A) What would you do with the 18 million you have coming off the books after 2010/11 season.

B) If you prefer signing a few players to 1 year contracts after signing a max FA in the summer of 2010, most or some of that 5-10 million is also free after 2010/2011 you now have 23-28 million free. Now what do you do?

Isn’t this fun?!

This season will probably be ugly. But I haven’t been this excited about the Knicks for a loooooong time. We will be major players in the FA market for the next 2 season. I am praying to the basketball gods that Donnie Walsh and co. do not blow the cash on 2nd rate non franchise guys or guys who have clearly peaked. There are a million ways to screw this up. Orlando signed what looked like 2 future HOFers in Grant Hill and T-Mac going into their peaks after patiently freeing up cap space. They ended up with just 1 healthy star who had back issues. T-Mac alone almost singlehandedly took down Detroit but imagine what he could have done with Grant Hill in his prime. But I digress…

Guys available summer of 2011:

PGS:
- Tony Parker
- Rajon Rondo (slight upgrade over having Sessions here, no??)
- Raymond Felton (maybe he’ll improve his jump shot with time?)
- Rodney Stuckey (Restricted)
- Delonte The Knicksst
- Aaron Brooks (Restricted)
- Nate Robinson
- Mike Conely (restricted)

Wings:
- Mello (player option)
- Kevin Durant (pipe dream.restricted.loves his team. Presti will lock him up)
- Jason Richardson
- JR Smith (developing nicely)
- Tayshaun Prince
- Richard Jefferson
- Mike Dunleavy
- Thaddeus Young (restricted)
- Jeff Green (restricted)
- Paul Pierce (short deal in case the Knicks end up getting a 2010 Big instead of a wing player. Obviously a long shot as he will probably retire a Celtic)
- John Salmons (again in case the Knicks get a big instead of a wing in 2010)
- Raja Bell (cheap veteran grit who can do ok in D’antoni’s system)
- Al Thornton (restricted)
- Ronnie Brethe Knicksr
- Some guy named Kobe something or other
- Mickael Pietrus

Bigs:
- Pau Gasol
- Marc Gasol
- Mehmet Okur
- Tyson Chandler (shotblocking center anyone?)
- Tyrus Thomas (looked good in last years Celtic series, developing a jump shot)
- Nene (better late than never..player option)
- Spencer Hathe Knickss (restricted but under the radar promising young big)
- David Lee
- Troy Murphy
- Yao Ming (doubt he ever leaves Houston unless he retires)
- Ronny Turiaf (dude can block shots..look it up! Player option)
- Samuel Dalembert


Pupu Platter:

-AK-47
-Zach Randolph
-JJ Barea
-Leon Pothe Knicks
- Shaquille O’Neal (yes, I said it)
-Brad Miller (probably fishing/hunting in the wilderness by now)
- Anthony Parker, Zydrunas Ilgauskas
-Vladimir Radmanovic (meh)
-Nazr Mohammed (good ol’ stone hands “key to this trade”!)
- Jerome James (after an epiphany DW realizes he just has to sign him to a series of 10 day contracts to bring the beast out)


Relevant salary cap question:

After a player comes off his 3 year rookie contract does a team can make a qualifying offer for 125% of their salary in season 3.

- Does a team HAVE to make this offer or is 125% just the minimum raise they have to offer?
- Does the player have to take it?

From what I understand as a restricted FA (Like DLee and Nate currently) any other team can make an offer as long as they’re willing to wait in salary purgatory for 10 days and the Knicks can match.




[Edited by - godsavetheknicks on 09-11-2009 11:20 AM]

wait, you need to check your math.

That would be a total of $21,900,783 on the books.

It should be more like $27M. (Curry, JJ, Hill, Douglas, Chandler, Gallo).

Also any unused roster slot is like a vet min: $400K or something; those would count against the cap too.

Nice analysis.

Also, just to add, the contracts of JJ and EC become trade fodder in a Sign and Trade scenario, especially if EC has a decent year.

I have faith that DW will deal one or both of them this season, though and that will open up the world to NY next year!

[Edited by - gonygonygo on 09-11-2009 11:42 AM]

Posted by eViL:

people don't like to respond in these threads because there's too many facts (that is, if you got your numbers right ). we need rumors and stuff to go wild about.

Couldn't agree more dude.

Posted by nyk4ever:

Posted by eViL:

people don't like to respond in these threads because there's too many facts (that is, if you got your numbers right ). we need rumors and stuff to go wild about.

Couldn't agree more dude.

it's disappointing because GSTK is not the first and won't be the last to put in the time and effort to organize all this information. i'm pretty sure ewingsglass did one and there was definitely one more (poster slips my mind at the moment).

to respond to the premise of this thread. i think this illustrates just how many options there are out there. and that's a good thing. nothing is certain but the fact that we have flexibility. that flexibility, however, is paramount to building a franchise in the NBA.

this summer has been a tough one because of the lack of moves, but i've said it once, and i'll say it again -- Walsh could do way more harm to the Knicks future this year with a bad signing or trade, than he could have done good by making the right signing. there were no homeruns to be had. and face it, we need a grand slam. so instead, he took a walk to set up the bases loaded at bat next summer.

I think people will respond to this. But if they started reading at 10:30 they are probably still reading.