Donnie Walsh’s free-agency warning to Phil Jackson, Knicks fans
By Marc Berman
April 10, 2015 | 2:39am

Citing how the siren song of South Beach lured LeBron James to Miami in 2010, Pacers adviser Donnie Walsh warned Thursday that Knicks president Phil Jackson can only do so much to convince free agents they should want to play in New York.

Walsh, the former Knicks president, said New York City doesn’t have the same allure for everyone. Walsh signed Amar’e Stoudemire, who was damaged goods, to a max contract after his top four free-agent choices — James, Joe Johnson, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — all rejected the Knicks.

“That’s one of the most misunderstood things in the NBA, to be honest with you, that you can talk a veteran NBA player into coming to a city just by sitting down with him, talking to him and offering him the most money,” Walsh said on SiriusXM radio. “These guys know what they want to do. They have their own agendas, and they know whether they want to go to New York or they don’t want to go to New York. And there are a lot that want to go to New York, so it isn’t like there aren’t people out there.

“But if you pick out, let’s say, LeBron James, you don’t know like what he wants to do. If you think you can go up and talk to him for a while and he’s going to come flying down there, that’s not going to happen. They see their careers in certain ways and what they want to do, they want to do.

“I don’t think it’s really up to Phil Jackson to talk them into it. They know if they get the salary they want, they know what New York’s all about, if they want to get into that, a big city like New York and live in it and an exciting city with good fans, then they’re going to do it. If they don’t like that, and not everybody likes that, they’ll go somewhere else.”

fishmike wrote:based on what Phil has been saying about FA it would be hard to image he doesnt have a real set of guys willing to come here.

Well if you listened to the interviews with Mills and Phil, they were stumbling upon themselves trying not set off alarms about tampering..Phil used words like back channels with Agents..Mills said Melo was involved on a daily basis looking possible FA targets..Mills almost said Melo was calling people but stopped himself it seems like..

So I think they are making a push..

fishmike wrote:

holfresh wrote:

fishmike wrote:based on what Phil has been saying about FA it would be hard to image he doesnt have a real set of guys willing to come here.

Well if you listened to the interviews with Mills and Phil, they were stumbling upon themselves trying not set off alarms about tampering..Phil used words like back channels with Agents..Mills said Melo was involved on a daily basis looking possible FA targets..Mills almost said Melo was calling people but stopped himself it seems like..

So I think they are making a push..

I have read that Melo has agreed to be a big part of the recruiting process. Despite what some around here think of him he's got a massive amount of respect among the league's players.

Time will tell. Hopefully they hit it out of the park

This is what I have said about FA. Pay attention to the guys Melo likes. We know he likes Rondo. We know he's played summer ball with Tobias Harris. We shall see. I think Melo plays a huge role though.

crzymdups wrote:

fishmike wrote:

holfresh wrote:

fishmike wrote:based on what Phil has been saying about FA it would be hard to image he doesnt have a real set of guys willing to come here.

Well if you listened to the interviews with Mills and Phil, they were stumbling upon themselves trying not set off alarms about tampering..Phil used words like back channels with Agents..Mills said Melo was involved on a daily basis looking possible FA targets..Mills almost said Melo was calling people but stopped himself it seems like..

So I think they are making a push..

I have read that Melo has agreed to be a big part of the recruiting process. Despite what some around here think of him he's got a massive amount of respect among the league's players.

Time will tell. Hopefully they hit it out of the park

This is what I have said about FA. Pay attention to the guys Melo likes. We know he likes Rondo. We know he's played summer ball with Tobias Harris. We shall see. I think Melo plays a huge role though.

Rondo is the guy I least want playing for the Knicks out of all the talked about free agents. He's not a max player anymore even though a team will probably pay him max (please not us) and he doesn't get along with teammates and coaches which has been said of him in Boston and now Dallas and he's a absolutely horrible free throw shooter and a horrible shooter in general, so please tell me why we would want to give him a max contract to come play with us?.

fishmike wrote:based on what Phil has been saying about FA it would be hard to image he doesnt have a real set of guys willing to come here.

I agree with this. He also said "In When The Garden Was Eden" they used to draft guys who played well at MSG. When Coach K won his 1,000th, Okafor played extremely well. As a result, I think Okafor is very much in play as a draft option. He had a great game. Tyus Jones took over in the fourth but Okafor was there when they really needed him to step up. That was a big game at MSG with a lot of buzz.

Dagger wrote:I can see why he struck out when he was our GM. No **** if you go into FA negotiations with this defeatist attitude that you can't change people's minds you're not going to bring in the big fish.

Generally speaking, I think Walsh is right on the money here. Using the LeBron example, he was going to Miami and then back to Cleveland before he talked to anybody. Generally speaking, though, you have to be looking for free agents that have a situation where leaving is worth giving up the extra money in the case of a max player or a player that you might overpay in the case of everyone else. It's not very likely that New York is going to talk Aldrige or Gasol out of 30 million or so and a competitive team.

crzymdups wrote:I liked Donnie a lot - but really he did a freaking terrible job in hindsight.

You know what would have been a better team than the one he assembled in 2010 of

Felton
Fields
Gallo
Wilson
Amare?

the one he blew up that had David Lee, Zach Randolph, Jamal Crawford, Wilson Chandler.

two years of completely unwatchable tanking and all we got was Jordan Hill and Gallinari. Jordan Hill was given away to get rid of Jeffries. sigh ugh sigh.

Anyway, I like Donnie and he's probably right about the FAs already knowing basically what they're gonna do. Certainly in 2010, I think Bron, Wade and Bosh had made that plan years before it happened.

if he had kept those players the knicks would have remained an underachieving squad mired in sheer mediocrity and futility. that is a ghastly mishmash lineup that would have had no cure and no hope.

Think about ownership influence before painting Walshs work with a narrow brush