Daily News: Isiah's expiring talk growing old
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islesfan
Posts: 9999 Alba Posts: 37 Joined: 7/19/2004 Member: #712 |
1/30/2005 11:27 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/story/276082p-236486c.html
Tim Thomas and Penny Hardaway will be entering the final year of their respective mega-deals - badly-bloated contracts, incidentally, that Isiah Thomas had no trouble acquiring in trades - next season. Those deals are worth nearly a combined $30 million before the players enter free agency in July, 2006. Throw in a couple of other deals that also expire after the 2005-06 season, and this is what the Knicks' president is talking about when he says he has about $40 million in expiring contracts with which to work. In stating his case this past week to multiple media outlets, Isiah said more than once that the $40 million is "at the end of this year." That's simply not true. The $40 million becomes available at the end of next season. But here's where Thomas was even more misleading: "I have options," he said, referring to the expiring deals. "You can use them to shave payroll, or you can use them as assets. Now you're in position where you can have options. Before, you didn't have options. You had to grin and bear it." Isiah's contention that he has not yet been able to work with expiring contracts during his tenure running the Knicks is as untruthful as the team's assertion that Lenny Wilkens quit. How do you think he got Stephon Marbury? How do you think he was able to do a sign-and-trade for Jamal Crawford? In both cases, Thomas shipped off players with expiring deals. Six of them, to be exact. Are we surprised by Isiah's false assertions? Not in the least. He bends the truth as often as he smiles. It's never malicious, but ... In the Marbury trade with the Suns, Thomas traded Antonio McDyess and Charlie Ward, both of whom were entering the final years of their deals. Those two contracts totalled almost $20 million, which the Suns were only too happy to use to turn into cap room. With those trades, and a couple others, Phoenix shed almost $30 million of their $67 million payroll. That cap maneuvering allowed them to get far enough under the cap so that they could make free-agent deals for Steve Nash and Quentin Richardson. In the Crawford signing, Thomas sent Chicago four players - Dikembe Mutombo, Othella Harrington, Frank Williams and Cezary Trybanski - all of whom were entering the final years of their deals. They added up to about $10 million in salaries. Let's remember some other things about the expiring contracts "solution." It really isn't one, unless teams do what Phoenix did and use them to get under the cap. But the Knicks aren't going to take that route, Thomas says. Here, unfortunately, he's being truthful. The Knicks don't believe in tearing their team down, getting under the cap, "going all the way down into the lottery, losing for the next four, five years," Thomas stated the day Wilkens made his farewell address. In that case, they're never going to be able to land a marquee free agent superstar, as Kobe Bryant was last summer. Too bad, because the one good thing about Jim Dolan is that he is willing to spend zillions on players. But doing business this way is the reason the Knicks are at a dead-end, in terms of hanging a championship banner, for a long time to come. Using the expiring contracts the way he intends, Thomas will have to take back players making equal money. But more importantly, he's not going to get a true difference-maker in any deal, but something along the lines of a player who is deemed damaged goods or expendable by his current team. The Suns had had it with Marbury's selfish, non-winning ways. The Bulls had given up trying to convince Crawford not to shoot all the time and abandoned their efforts to get him to play defense. Now we come to the real danger: When Isiah uses expiring contracts to make personnel moves, he'll probably wind up taking back longer contracts. That's just what he did with Marbury, who has four more years at $73 million, and by signing Crawford to a seven-year deal worth $55.2 million. Trading expiring contracts for longer contracts will only send the Knicks deeper into salary-cap purgatory. But there is a plus to all of this. Those of us who contend they've got to blow it up and start all over will have that much more ammunition at our disposal. [Edited by - islesfan on 01/30/2005 23:32:02] If it didn’t work in Phoenix with Nash and Stoutamire... it’s just not a winning formula. It’s an entertaining formula, but not a winning one. - Derek Harper talking about D'Antoni's System
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Daily News: Isiah's expiring talk growing old