Isn't the idea to do the BEST that you can to improve this summer? Why does it have to be a
Title Team in One Summer or BUST? That's not the gauge of whether this summer is successful or not. Who set that as the sole goal for this summer? For some reason if you talk about this summer being successful naysayers automatically jump to saying we can't build a contender this summer. Let's just see what we can get in this draft and then go into Free Agency with hopefully another core piece in place.
If we ended up with an OK4 or KAT and then added a Robin Lopez and Danny Green that would be a good start. The process would continue from there, not end.
I would LOVE for Phil to find a way to add another pick in this draft, but teams aren't so ready to give up picks so i'm not counting on that. We've got the one pick and no picks next year. Phil is going to have to look at FA as the major part of his process to improve the team.
While the tongue-in-cheek remark drew a laugh, Jackson faces a tough task in rebuilding the Knicks now that he has torn them down. The team is the favorite now to grab the top pick in the NBA Draft, and Jackson has already begun making stops to scout the top players in person - checking in Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein; Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell.But the Knicks also have just five players with any contractual commitment for next season and figure to have approximately $30 million in salary cap space for free agents, the path he believes will really determine the team’s immediate future.
“In our present day in the NBA, when we have 19- and 20-year-old players coming into the league, and the majority of No.1 draft picks are that age right now, it’s really hard to project what that player is going to be like three years in the first contract situation,” Jackson said. “So what we’re trying to do is look at what advancement can be made in the short-term, how quickly we can recover and get back in the hunt in chasing what we consider the right way to go, and that’s the championship. So we know what the first-round pick is going to mean for us, but we also know we’re going to build our team on free agents. And that’s where we have to go.
“We have 190 players or so that will be free agents," he added. "Not half the league, but like a third of the league is going to be free agents next year. That’s where are priority stands. Although I think you get movers or franchise players from a draft.”
3/12/2015 1:49 PM
