Posted by djsunyc:

it depends what you mean by "free pass".

i think we all have to look at it in terms of the big picture. we should look at what the situation was when he got here. what the owner's agenda is and what steps isiah has done to fix our problems.

he inherited a team with a bloated payroll, old, very unathletic, pretty much unmoveable players and didn't really have a franchise/star player. closest was spree or houston.

when you are presented with this situation, there are two roads to go by. one is let the contracts expire, blow it up, build through the draft and give the rookies minutes. (which were frank, lampe and sweetney when isiah started). the other is to try to rebuild the roster on the fly with what moveable, if any, pieces we had (expiring deals, picks, or our youngn's).

isiah chose the latter. or it could have been on dolan's instructions. we'll never know. but isiah saw what was available. rumored were sheed, reef, and marbury. he chose marbury and moved expiring deals, old washed up players, and young players and picks to get him and take on alot more $$$ with penny. he took sweetney off IR and he got minutes. he got rid of the coaches, i'm assuming b/c he wanted to get rid of anything layden related. or maybe he just didn't like what he saw in practices. we'll never know.

then he made another deal to get rid of kvh and doleac. both were playing well but neither were athletic. so he brought in a career underachiever and nazr ("the key to the deal"). tim was solid for us last year but we clearly now know that nazr was the better player.

he had a point guard, h20 was shut down with knee problems so he went after crawford. he got him and more $$$ with jyd in exchange for expiring deals. no player of value. strict money deal that dolan can absorb. he also drafted ariza in the 2nd round. so in his first trade deadline and first offseason, he acquired his starting backcourt for the next 6 years, a nice young prospect at SF, and a decent C. all upgrades talent wise from their predecessors. took on a boatload of $$$'s to do it, but that's the route he chose.

now looking back on it, marbury is still a very very good player and like shaq said, on any night can be the best in the nba. crawford is a young athletic player, very streaky, but has the skillset and potential to become a star and is only 24. ariza looks to be a nice piece and sweetney has continued to improve. nazr has turned out to be better than anybody thought. h20 is still hurt so the crawford signing was good. from rumors, isiah tried to move kurt but to no avail. he and nazr are having career years. their stocks are high and i look/hope that isiah moves them to get a real frontcourt in here.

now we have a #1 and a #2 pick this year. we have ALOT more expiring deals so we can make some moves. it seems like isiah targeted backcourt as his number 1 upgrade. now he needs to address the frontcourt. so by the end of next season, this will pretty much tell us what he did for our franchise.

some people don't like isiah. some people don't like marbury. so they don't like what's going on. some people don't like lenny either. that's fine. just like isiah, there's two ways to go as a fan. one is to wait and see and the other is to criticize everything as they are right now. i am in the wait and see approach. isiah has done alot of good things (mainly, the talent he's brought in so far). and he's also done bad things (the useless talent at the end of the bench - moochie, vin, bruno, brewer).

what were your questions again?

oh yeah, h20 is playing pretty gimpy. can't really move around. he can't go around screens on the offense and is pretty useless on the defensive end. tim is not playing well. it's really pretty bad. marbury pretty much has to do everything himself. nobody else on the team can really do anything themselves without marbury setting it up for them. that's why we miss crawford and his ability to create so much.

Posted by fishmike:

Houston was terrible tonight.