The reality is even though we did have some better seasons recently, had we stayed the course and not dumped picks/salary to free up the space, we might be looking at a team where 75% of these players might be on the roster: David Lee, Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Jamal Crawford, Zach Randolph, Jordan Hill, Timofey Mozgov etc. And we'd have more picks. The reality is some of our draft picks started hitting (Lee, gallo, chandler, eventually hill - even though others didn't work out as well), and the some of the younger guys we made trades for (Crawford, Randolph) - eventually became better players (some young guys didn't like Curry).

Phil Jax may purge way everyone except Melo, but without enough draft picks, how are we gonna fill all the spots on the roster inexpensive talent we can control? Maybe you add a Rondo or Gasol, but what else?

The way I wait out a bad roster is let contracts run off, make trades for picks and keep developing picks. Make trades to upgrade talent when you can, but don't trade away premium picks. Eventually while you're bad, you'll draft and develop enough talent. It can take a while, but its still a faster rebuild than this perpetual binge/purge roster we've had for 15 years.

It's not like you won't have some agreeing with you, yet there are those in the grey zone who hedge their criticism of personnel management with qualifications like "NYC can't wait on a true rebuild, so what do you expect Dolan to do?" and other such twaddle.

My response to those middling, wholly compromised, market logic, kow towing answers is: YOU ARE THE FANS. You have a say. Stop settling for middling solutions. If you want a true rebuild, stop being weak and stand up for your beliefs.

But many people like to sigh and shrug and basically say that's the way it is, so be glad we got an overpaid, one-dimensional gun-slinger and we can go on pretending he is the foundation for a real franchise resurrection.

As If.

But people make all kinds of excuses for mediocrity in the name of LOYALTY.

Perhaps some dissenters think loyalty comes with a price of honesty. If we're going to be loyal, we're not going to roll over and accept the false bill of goods offered based on market logic that Melo is a good signing and we're going to speak our minds.

Yes, a true rebuild is what I wish for. I wish more fans had the guts to stop settling for mediocre solutions and put their weight behind real change.

Viva La Revolucion!!!!

Splat wrote:Preach.

It's not like you won't have some agreeing with you, yet there are those in the grey zone who hedge their criticism of personnel management with qualifications like "NYC can't wait on a true rebuild, so what do you expect Dolan to do?" and other such twaddle.

My response to those middling, wholly compromised, market logic, kow towing answers is: YOU ARE THE FANS. You have a say. Stop settling for middling solutions. If you want a true rebuild, stop being weak and stand up for your beliefs.

But many people like to sigh and shrug and basically say that's the way it is, so be glad we got an overpaid, one-dimensional gun-slinger and we can go on pretending he is the foundation for a real franchise resurrection.

As If.

But people make all kinds of excuses for mediocrity in the name of LOYALTY.

Perhaps some dissenters think loyalty comes with a price of honesty. If we're going to be loyal, we're not going to roll over and accept the false bill of goods offered based on market logic that Melo is a good signing and we're going to speak our minds.

Yes, a true rebuild is what I wish for. I wish more fans had the guts to stop settling for mediocre solutions and put their weight behind real change.

Viva La Revolucion!!!!

Just like real life--only a few make decisions for millions. Hiring Phil Jackson and resigning Melo is enough to appease the basic fan, the top paying fans who may not even like basketball that much etc.. No matter what anyone says Jimmy D seems to have his say on our team and the only vision he has in his head is the Boston Celtic s and Miami Heat--despite the fact those tams also drafted their own stars and role players. Jimmy D saw us in 1999 from the 8th seed and 54 wins. In between he gave up a lot of money and time to Isiah Thomas who lead him in 7 directions. I think Phil might be another version of Isiah--just with different height and hair.

2010-11 Mavs
Rk	Player	            Age	G	
1	Jason Kidd	    37	80
2	Jason Terry	    33	82
3	Dirk Nowitzki	    32	73
4	Shawn Marion	    32	80
5	Tyson Chandler	    28	74
6	Jose Barea	    26	81
7	Brendan Haywood	    31	72
8	DeShawn Stevenson   29	72
9	Caron Butler	    30	29
10	Brian Cardinal	    33	56
11	Peja Stojakovic	    33	25
12	Rodrigue Beaubois   22	28
13	Ian Mahinmi	    24	56
14	Sasha Pavlovic	    27	10
15	Corey Brewer	    24	13
16	Dominique Jones	    22	18	
17	Alexis Ajinca	    22	10
18	Steve Novak	    27	7

Splat wrote:Triple Threat, Killer of Dreams by Neil Gaiman

I'm sure he's irate Phil traded

2 picks to dump Bo Outlaw

Splat wrote:

F500ONE wrote:

Splat wrote:Triple Threat, Killer of Dreams by Neil Gaiman

I'm sure he's irate Phil traded

2 picks to dump Bo Outlaw

Could be a reason for irritation actually, but my personal stance at this time is mild support for a not yet discredited regime.

Fatal flaw was not dialing up Reinsdorf

And Phil go Monty Hall or Wayne Brady on him

Take your pick(s)[pun intended], he owed that to us and himself

newyorknewyork wrote:
I wish we did stick with the Crawford, Randolph, Gallo, Chandler team and drafted a PG like Holiday instead of Hill and just continued to build rather then go all out for Lebron when he never expressed ANY interest in coming here. Then when we missed on Lebron I wish that we never signed Amare(Everyone knew with the Knicks luck and history that Amare was going to get injured at some point during his contract) and used the cap space to add more assets. But that was a different regime.

Other then pure speculation. Nobody knows what course of action Phil is going to take this coming off season. I love the foundation of installing the triangle and bringing in a rookie head coach like Fisher. The foundation of a young coach and a specific system that the Prez is fully supportive of is completely different then what has been going on with this franchise over the yrs.

There are no players on this team other then Hardaway jr & maybe Shump now that he is playing better, who are going to net us draft picks. Real simple to me, we use our 20mil in cap space and our first round draft pick to add as many quality players as we can while keeping us at the salary cap for next yr. Then next yr Jr Smith and Pablo will come off the cap and the salary cap will increase giving us possibly another 10mil+ in cap space. Which we should use again to add more quality players keeping the salaries at salary cap level. Then the next off season Calderon will come off the books freeing up another 7.7mil in cap space as well as having our draft pick again. We need to find gems like grabbing a young cast offs like Austin Rivers & Thomas Robinson(just examples) for cheap and turn them into products of the triangle.

That's a constructive viewpoint; making hay out of what we can make hay of.

I'd add that the Westchester experiment is the extra element to your recipe. If we can cook and ripen 2-3 real contributors there who can step in and play REAL BB, then hooray for the regime change!

nixluva wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

nixluva wrote:I personally don't really think the draft is such a high % path to success.

Why don't we put an end to this happy horse **** right now? Yes, let's do that.

Golden State Warriors

Steph Curry - drafted
Klay Thompson - drafted
Andrew Bogut - via trade, but acquired by giving up Monta Ellis, meaning a great job of mining the 2nd round of the draft for a high value asset at the time
Igoudala - Only able to get to the Warriors because they gave up draft picks for Utah to eat contracts. Utah's valuation of those picks (i.e. their view that the draft would lead them to better success) allowed that trade to happen.
Draymond Green - drafted

Chicago Bulls

Joachim Noah - drafted
Derrick Rose - drafted
Taj Gibson - drafted
Jimmy Butler - drafted and a gem of a late first round pick
Nice young talent in Mirotic and McBuckets ( the Knicks would KILL to have guys like this on the roster) - drafted

OKC Thunder
Kevin Durant - drafted
Russell Westbrook - drafted
Serge Ibaka - drafted
Steven Adams - drafted
Perry Jones ( doing a nice job filling in with injuries) - drafted
Reggie Jackson - drafted ( a nice late first round value)

LA Clippers

Blake Griffin - drafted
DeAndre Jordan - drafted
Chris Paul - In trade, but trade was leveraged with biggest piece, Eric Gordon, then a high value shooting guard at the time, was a drafted player

Cleveland Cavaliers

LeBron James - originally drafted, came back ( cap space cleared was only possible using draft assets to dump contracts)
Kevin Love - trade, but only after using high value drafted assets in Wiggins and Bennett to get him
Kyrie Irving - drafted
Dion Waiters - drafted
Tristan Thompson - drafted
Anderson Varejo - drafted ( despite injurie, a hell of a value for a 2nd rounder)

SA Spurs

Tim Duncan - drafted
Tony Parker - drafted ( high value grab not at the top of the draft)
Manu Ginobili - drafted
Tiago Splitter - drafted ( late first rounder)
Kawhi Leonard - draft day trade for George Hill ( Hill was a developed late first rounder)

Some super high draft picks, but a lot of these teams, much of their core was digging for value in the draft even outside the top of the draft. Guys like Reggie Jackson, Varejao, DeAndre Jordan, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green. All guys who would be STARTERS for the Knicks today.

In almost every case, these teams, current contenders, are build around the draft or gotten key assets through trades from high value draft assets or developed draft assets. Almost all have a player who was a high value grab later in the draft.

Even if the Knicks didn't have super high draft picks and just did the heavy mining in the late first round and 2nd that some of these teams did, they'd be in an infinitely better position.

The draft doesn't work for you if YOU ARE A BAD ORGANIZATION AND HAVE A BAD FRONT OFFICE. Yet you keep clamoring how amazing Zen Master is, how he's a leader of men, how he's changing the entire Knicks landscape, yet you seem to think a roster he tried to almost entirely dump this past offseason is full of hidden gold.

The Knicks have coughed up so many draft assets in the last decade that they don't EVEN GIVE THEMSELVES A CHANCE TO SEE IF IT MIGHT WORK FOR THEM.

I'm not trying to say you can't build thru the draft. I said high % meaning that most teams that try to do it that way aren't as successful as the few you're posting. It's the reason I said what I said. It's not a high % success rate. How many teams are there in the NBA and you point to a precious few that were able to build thru the draft and become contenders. If I listed the teams that have tried and failed over the years it's a longer list. So it's not "happy horse..." It's reality.

Now I'm not saying it made sense to surrender assets as badly as this franchise has. The thing is that the basic premise most are suggesting is to lose badly and hope a great player is there and we actually get lucky bounces of lottery balls. It has to be recognized that this may not work as expected and you could be in the lottery for many years without success.

I'm being totally fair here, but what did you just refute?

Pretty much the best current or recent long-standing best franchises are what TT cited.

In other words, they have the weight of success supporting their basic assertion that committing to the draft is the route to success.

Are you countering that there is a proven better way? No, you are not. All you are trying to infer is they have no statistical weight to their assertions, yet how is it that the teams they cited are the winners of the bulk of recent NBA championships?

Yeah, you're just wrong.

Cant draft a great player if you dont draft players.
Cant sign a great FA if you dont have cap space (Chauncy Billups for the MLE is the ultimate luck grab)
Cant find a diamond in the rough if you dont invest in your D league or take a real look at UFAs out of college

I dont know if this is long or short term for PJax. My hope is this is a long term plan, and the short term plan is field a good team with Melo, a couple pricey FAs and some blue collar triangle guys for the next 3-4 years, WHILE managing a healthy cap, working the draft, investing in the Dleague and filling the end of the bench with guys who have upside as rotation player. Wear might be a guy like that. Who knows. But hopefully we are able to add pieces every year. Thats how the good teams stay perpetually good.

fishmike wrote:the best orgs do it all, and that means balance.

Cant draft a great player if you dont draft players.
Cant sign a great FA if you dont have cap space (Chauncy Billups for the MLE is the ultimate luck grab)
Cant find a diamond in the rough if you dont invest in your D league or take a real look at UFAs out of college

I dont know if this is long or short term for PJax. My hope is this is a long term plan, and the short term plan is field a good team with Melo, a couple pricey FAs and some blue collar triangle guys for the next 3-4 years, WHILE managing a healthy cap, working the draft, investing in the Dleague and filling the end of the bench with guys who have upside as rotation player. Wear might be a guy like that. Who knows. But hopefully we are able to add pieces every year. Thats how the good teams stay perpetually good.