The Knicks are Old
Assuming Juwan Howard retires, the Knicks would have three of the five oldest players in the NBA after acquiring Jason Kidd, Marcus Camby, and Kurt Thomas. They are also rumored to be in the Grant Hill running, which would give them everyone in the top five execpt for Steve Nash (who as we all know they also pursued). Lin won’t be 24 until August and other than Iman Shumpert no other player on the roster is under 26. We probably can’t hope for a summer league invite making the final roster because David Thorpe tweeted that the Knicks roster is the second worst he has ever seen in summer league.

Some more

The Money Situation Isn’t That Bad
Last week I detailed the Knicks luxury tax situation if they matched Fields’ offer. You can read that here, so I won’t bore you with the details. What’s important to the Lin situation is that I estimated the Knicks payroll to be about $95 mil with Lin’s salary at $9.8 mil. That would put the Knicks about $20 mil over the luxury tax. The extra $5 mil that Lin is now set to earn in the third year would cost the Knicks an additional $19 mil in luxury tax payments.

That’s $19 mil just for the extra $5 mil in salary, not $19 mil total for Lin. If the Knicks somehow don’t match on Lin it’s not like they wouldn’t be over the luxury tax anyway. That’s the price you pay with a starting frontcourt set to make $65 mil in 2014-15. Realistically the Knicks wouldn’t take the money earmarked for Lin and pay it to minimum salary players, so let’s say Lin costs the Knicks an extra $8 mil that year. Between salary and luxury tax, Lin likely would cost Dolan another $35 mil.

Pricey for sure, but Lin should be worth that much to the Knicks as he would increase the team’s visibility in China and throughout the world. For a publicly traded company like Cablevision, that has to be real nice for the stock price. In the worst case scenario if Lin does not justify the enormous salary, the Knicks could use the CBA’s stretch provision and avoid paying all that money in 2014-15.

If a player has one year left on his contract, the stretch provision allows the team to spread (“stretch”) the costs over three years. Two years remaining can be spread out over five years. Lin’s $15 mil balloon payment could be spread out to $5 mil in 2014-15 and the following two seasons. The salaries of Melo, STAT, and Chandler are set to come off the books in 2014-15 so the Knicks should easily be under the luxury tax even with potentially $5 mil in dead money for 2015-16 and 2016-17. The stretch provision makes the financial investment a lot less risky.

Jeremy Lin is Actually Pretty F’ing Good
Sour grapes from JR Smith and possibly Carmelo Anthony aside (it’s a little ambiguous as to whether “ridiculous” is referring to Lin’s worth or the Gilbert Arenas rule), Jeremy Lin is a pretty good player. I don’t agree with either comment, but I sort of understand (in best Chris Rock voice). Lin will probably lead the league in media coverage next year and should knock Dwayne Wade (or Chris Paul) out of a starting All Star spot. He isn’t the best player in the NBA or even top 25, but he does have the ability to earn some All Star berths.

Lost on the Stephen A. Smiths of the world is that Lin’s PER of 20 was significantly higher than Kidd’s 13.1 and Felton’s 13.5. Yes his defense needs work but according to 82games.com point guard opponents put up a 16.9 PER compared to 16 for Felton and 15.3 for Kidd. The other guys are better on defense, but Lin’s offensive contribution makes him the superior player. It’s also not unreasonable to see Lin’s D improve enough to be better than Kidd and his 39 yr old legs. And as ESPN’s research department points out, anyone thinking Felton is better than Lin is linsane.

Conclusion
This situation got a lot messier than it needed to be and much messier than I predicted earlier this month or back in May. I still think the Knicks will match the contract, because it would be a little foolish if they didn’t