Mashburn's career might be over. Everything is wrong with him.....
He's an awesome talent. Sometimes your body fails you. From a fantasy standpoint he is awesome....He's also clutch and with a killer instinct.

So lets trade for him!!! Better to have him take up salary and not play then have Shandon and KT on the team, lol.

Far fetched.....
Still a sad story though.

He had unsuccessful microfracture knee surgery. I don't expect him to ever play again. Or if he does, it will probably be in extreme pain and for only a few games before he decides he can't go any longer.

I hope Mashburn never comes within a 1000 miles of playing for the Knicks. I'd rather make room for Sweetney by playing Kurt as his backup PF and at backup C. People are under the mistaken impression that we *have* to trade Kurt if Sweetney is to get minutes. But we know Isiah goes with the better, younger player every time he's forced to decide between two players (e.g., Harrington went to the IR so Sweetney could come off it; Frank Williams was on the playoff roster and Moochie was put on the IR).

Posted by nykfan4life:

Posted by Bonn1997:

I hope Mashburn never comes within a 1000 miles of playing for the Knicks. I'd rather make room for Sweetney by playing Kurt as his backup PF and at backup C. People are under the mistaken impression that we *have* to trade Kurt if Sweetney is to get minutes. But we know Isiah goes with the better, younger player every time he's forced to decide between two players (e.g., Harrington went to the IR so Sweetney could come off it; Frank Williams was on the playoff roster and Moochie was put on the IR).

Whatever you say, MR.Expert! NOT!

Dude, calm down a little.

I can actually see how this trade would make some sense. Mashburn's contract expires the same year as TT's and Penny's. Those contracts may be very valueable around the deadline and next offseason.
But I don't think it's worth it. We could probably get a decent player for Kurt who can contribute right away, and like Bonn said, we can always move him to the 5. He is not a bad player to have around.

Posted by Bonn1997:

Mashburn's contract expires the same year as TT's and Penny's.

Actually, Mash has 3 years at $10 mil per year left on his contract. He's owed more money than Kurt Thomas. If I owned the Knicks, I'd rather keep Kurt. He'll probably get more points, rebounds, blocks, steals and assists in the first week of November than Mashburn will get in the rest of his career.

Hmm...I think you're right. Realgm says he has 1 year left, Hoopshype is saying he has a player option after this year, and has 3 years left.
My bad.

I'd go for a Shandon for Mashburn deal, although we'd have to throw in another bit player. But I doubt NO would care to do this deal. If he is going to retire, does NO want to sit on the dead contract for a year or take on a contract with 3 years remaining.

I doubt if he sits out the year, he will pick up the option for the next two years, there will be a small buyout of some sort.

Trading for Mashburn = Layden like move. He was great with Miami, and at the beginning of his career with the Hornets. But all of these injuries have taken a toll on him.

Plus, we have about 50 million swingmen shooting guards/ small fowards on this team. No need to take a risk on Mashburn.

Posted by Bonn1997:

I doubt if he sits out the year, he will pick up the option for the next two years, there will be a small buyout of some sort.

The buyout would have to be huge because if he's not healthy, he knows no other team will pay him the difference. Mutombo accepted an buyout for about $4 mil less than his salary last summer because he expected that a team would pay him the difference ($4 mil per year). If Jamal can't play again, no team will offer him anything, though.

It's a weird rule to me, but a guaranteed contract is a guaranteed contract. I guess in the end it would be cheaper to buyout Shandon Anderson than trade for Mashburn and have him retire. What do I even care about what the Knicks or the Hornets pay?

I just would love to see Shandon elsewhere.

"I just would love to see Shandon elsewhere."

I cant see him being on this team, regardless of the money. He's not in our plans. He's got Crawford, Houston, TT, Penny (and probably Ariza) ahead of him for the 2/3 spots. I just see management releasing him if he refuses to go on IR, which he will.

One more setback -- the last? -- for unfulfilled Mashburn
Sept. 27, 2004
By Mike Kahn
SportsLine.com Executive Editor

http://cbs.sportsline.com/nba/story/7728322

If anyone was the total package coming into the NBA, it was Jamal Mashburn.


Jamal Mashburn parts ways with Hornets coach Byron Scott after talking about his latest setback.(AP)
At 6-feet-8, 250 pounds, he came into the NBA in 1993 as the fourth pick overall by the Dallas Mavericks following his junior year, when he was a first-team All-American for Rick Pitino at Kentucky. He could shoot from anywhere on the court, back down any small forward, handle the ball like a guard and grab eight rebounds a game.

Eleven years later, the numbers have come and gone, and evidently, so has Mashburn.

Monday afternoon, Mashburn sat at a New Orleans Hornets press conference with general manager Allan Bristow and coach Byron Scott, men he's unlikely to play for again in the wake of the latest issue with his right knee. They declared him out for this season and quite possibly for his career.

You see, Mashburn, soon to be 32, played in only 19 games last season because of this matter of no cartilage behind the patella in that right knee; many an athlete knows that bone-on-bone feeling.

It's a shame too, considering 2002-03 was the season Mashburn had finally broken through. He played 82 games for the first time in his career, was an All-Star for the first time and really was the best small forward in the game, averaging 21.6 points, 6.1 rebounds and 5.6 assists.

Gone was the memory of him deferring to Jason Kidd and Jimmy Jackson at Dallas. Fading were the many moments at Miami when he failed to take -- let alone make -- big shots for the Heat. Subsequently, he was dealt to the Hornets, then in Charlotte, in that whopper of a nine-man deal with the Heat in the summer of 2000.

Oh, that first year was special with the Hornets, too. They shockingly crushed the Heat in spectacular payback fashion for coach Paul Silas in the first round of the playoffs, and Mashburn averaged just a shade less than 25 points in the playoffs.

But other than that 2002-03 season, it has been nothing but one physical woe after another.

From a dislocated finger to positional vertigo to a problematic left knee, a strained abdominal muscle and bruised sternum, the list rambles on. If you include this season, he will have played in 141 out of a possible 328 games during a four-season stretch.

Even more upsetting for the franchise was his decision to rehab in Miami last season, ignore the team when it came to town to play the Heat and even blame them for misdiagnosis of his injury.

Calling it a mess would be an understatement.


It's tough," Mashburn said at the press conference. "Right now, it's a quality of life thing. It's difficult walking around for a long period of time. I'm hoping with rest and the lack of pounding that things will heal themselves, and maybe there's a chance of playing at the end of the year. It's frustrating mentally."

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That would include everybody close to the situation. The Monster Mash might as well be mashed potatoes. With All-Star guard Baron Davis pining for a trade and showing no signs of becoming the leader they need him to be, the return of Mashburn was their one morsel of hope that they could seriously compete in their new position in the Western Conference.

Certainly Scott, entering his first season as coach after getting fired last February by the New Jersey Nets, was hopeful.

"First of all, in talking to Jamal during the summer, you could hear in his voice that he has a serious passion to play basketball," Scott said. "Let's get that straight right now. He wants to play basketball, and at this particular time, he cannot. As far as how it's going to affect our team ... you're taking away one of the premier small forwards in basketball."

That would be a healthy and excited Mashburn. It would be logical to presume Bristow wanted to make this move as quickly as possible with hopes of getting an exception for the coming season that would be half of Mashburn's salary, in the vicinity of $4.6 million. It will give them much more flexibility having that exception to tack on if they were to make a trade for a combination of players exceeding the players they are moving.

Surprisingly, Bristow didn't say anything about applying for the exception, which would lead you to wonder if they're really convinced Mashburn is out for the season.

"I think we'll take the wait-and-see approach and see how things materialize until next summer," he said.

Nobody can be expecting much. In fact, most of this summer, the buzz around the league was they were trying to peddle the damaged goods. The animosity between Mashburn and the organization has subsided with the hiring of Bristow and Scott, but that doesn't mean he'll ever play for them. Unless doctors and Mashburn agree to go into the knee with hopes of creating some scar tissue to buffer the bone on bone problem, he very well could be finished.

"After taking MRIs earlier in the summer, I had some hope," Mashburn said. "But then these last couple of months sealed my fate pretty much because the healing hadn't progressed the way that I thought it would. There's a process for me in the way I prepare myself. I wasn't able to get to that process so that's when I knew it was pretty serious.

"I think the organization and I came to the conclusion that you don't want to leave any doors shut, just in case something does happen where you can come back. I think that was the smart thing to do. Obviously, it helps everybody. It leaves the window open for me if I'm capable of coming back and playing basketball. I'm thankful for that door to still be open."

Unfortunately, all he can do for now is hobble through it. A reminder that if Jamal Mashburn wasn't a lock to be a superstar in the NBA -- which he will never be -- then nobody is.