knicks1248 wrote:We pick jordan hill at 8, do you really have faith in DW and his scouts.

As a matter of fact, the only thing DW has showed us, is that he knows how to tear down a team and clear it's cap.
DW has not drafted well consistantly at all to say the least...he's made one very good trade( bringing in oneal) as far as i could remember, when he decided to break up the pacers he got crap for Jackson, Al Artest, and (he's once strong trade) oneal, the pacers haven't recoup yet.

I'm not sue he's respnosible for Granger, but nothing seems to excite me about DW these days. Im almost sure we'll be grabing a couple of international players who's main attribute will be shooting mid range jumper and blocking a shot or 2 ala Ricky smits.

Our better picks have come later

should be alot of fun, since as you said the difference between 18/19 and 38/39 is really negligible.

- A 2nd round pick has the minimum salary value so it will not matter one iota for the capspace. If we have a caphold or a 2nd round pick has no difference.

- These 2nd round picks are likely to be more talented then players we can sign for the minimum, especially with a lot of teams having capspace and free agents worried about next year with the CBA.

- In the offchance we do a sign and trade, salaries don't have to match with all the capspace we have but we do need assets another team might want. Spending money on a draft pick has no salary cap ramifications (up to 3 million per transaction, as many times as you want, got us Douglas last draft) but gaining options.

- And yes, a lot of talent in the draft, having more 2nd round picks would be a blessing.

That said, with the 1.9 million wiggle room we have left if we were to sign two max free agents with our capspace, I would like a first round pick for Larry Sanders or Solomon Abi.

nixluva wrote:Gallo n TD are great picks. Hill was sacrificed for cap space and is still a good prospect. I trust DW now that he's a bit more focused after this last draft. I think he got some good young guys off Boston's bench.
I don't think DW is a great drafter but I respect his team building.

I dont know about Gallo and TD being great picks just yet, but I agree with this.

NYKBocker wrote:Jarvis Varnado is the pick I want made. We need a defensive pressence.

He might get exposed as too small. I think in terms of defense I like Whiteside long term #1 in the draft and Blakely #2. I think Blakely is dramatically undervalued

BRIGGS wrote:

NYKBocker wrote:BRIGGS - Do you still think Jeremy Lin will go undrafted or do you think we should use a 2nd round pick on him?

He's not projected to get drafted but I would love to see us put him on our SL team if he falls through. The guy I like Marqus Blakely. I don't know about 2 but like knicksbaby said--I wouldnt mind grabbing a third 2nd round pick. It's much cheaper and I don't see such a a variance in talent.

Maybe something like grab Miami's 42 for 500k

38--Craig Brackins
39--Willie Warren
42- Marqus Blakely

I also think we need to take a very strong look at Jerome Jordan and that other C. You could put several different name sinto those slots and be happy about it. This is just an example because you can never project who will take what back here.

The only two guys I really really like projected from 14-24 are Whiteside and Babbitt and were not getting either[I think they will both go higher than that]. I wonder if Elliot Williams might be a guy who will fall---lots of possibilities--we should walk away nice.

Brackins and Warren won't be there at 38 & 39. No way. Warren has a world of talent and is easily the 2nd best PG talent in this draft (contrary to what's being said about him, he actually does have legit PG skills that just need to be honed) and reports are already coming in that Brackins looks great working out in Vegas where he's actually proving he's a much better athlete than people realize (the man just shocked everyone by showing he's actually got a 40 inch vertical leap). We already knew the guy was a dynamite scorer at 6'10"...I like both guys a lot. Now if the Knicks do (or even if they have their sights on a couple of completely different players), I wanna see them do what they have to do to move up a good 10-15 spots or so to leapfrog other interested teams. I won't tolerate anything but the utmost in aggressiveness come draft night. Pull out all the stops and use all available resources within reason to get the players you want. Don't settle and pray the guys you want fall into your lap. That's not how you go about this imo..It's too important an off-season to not be aggressive...Sitting around on our hands hoping the players we want drop to us is not the mindset I wanna see. Guys like Brackins & Warren may not even be there between 25-30 but at least we'll be giving ourselves much more of a chance. Regardless, we will be getting better players no matter who they are than if we stood pat at 38 & 39..

I also like Whiteside & Babbitt a lot and I agree they both wind up going much higher than what we're hearing right now. Where I disagree is that I think we could actually have a shot at either if we're open to dealing Gallinari and/or Chandler for high enough 1st round picks...It's up to the Knicks to decide if that's feasible and something that makes sense for them. It would for me...

On another front, our "inability" to add lower 1s because of cap holds having some negative effect on our budget is a myth btw. Just looking at some cap math real quick:

Curry, Gallo, Chandler, TD & Walker = $18,637,239 million in salary for next year. Those are the 5 guys we'll be moving forward with here. With a projected cap of $56.1 mil. that'll leave almost $37.5 mil. bucks to spend. Even if we succeeded in getting two max FAs at say $17 & $17 for $34M, that'll still leave us with almost $3.5 million to use on the draft (now if we go max FA and Lee we should have even more money at our disposal). Lower 1st round picks in the 25-30 range last year went from $1.075 mil. to approx. $990,000. We have the cap room to add a good 3 players in this range plus even a 2nd rounder as well with absolutely no problem. That's another 4 good players we could add from this draft potentially, moving up several slots to get the guys we actually want. Point is I'm not afraid of the cap holds for lower 1st rounders -- we have the room. I say go for it. We can get good players there. Here's hoping we're aggressive and go get the players we want.