craw, ariza, and sweets.

good, young players with potential and on the upswing of their careers. two are real cheap and one will be making about $8 mil when he reaches his prime.

DESPITE the PF logjam, sweetney will be here 8-10 years after this glut is gone in 2 years. and he'll still be cheap (not more than $5-6 a year). ariza is 19. craw is signed to a reasonable deal (if he improves).

good pieces for cheap is what we have to do. we have 3 more picks this summer. that's 6 players 25 and younger with 5 of them making <$3 mil. that's how we rebuild. NO MORE adding longer deals. let TIM and PENNY expire...please.

i am so with you on those 3. but i put marbs there too. i still believe. You surround him right and he's the difference on a team. back in the day when we were 16-13 (HA!) he was playing amazing ball. He seems to be picking it up now too. Hold on to the Starbury!

You take out that 3-18 stretch and the Knicks are a solid 22-16.

Posted by Rich:

I would trade anyone on the team if the deal made sense.

easier said then done

at some point, a team needs to ACCUMULATE young good players. we just started doing that. getting a player that's better than ariza, sweetney or crawford means we have to give back picks as well. i'm not willing to do that.

i say keep these 3.
keep the 3 draft picks

that gives us 6 players under the age of 25 and 5 of them making <$5 mil. combine that with two more picks next summer and any MLE signings like gadz or hunter, we're looking at 8-10 players under the age of 26. that's what i want to do.

i want to get out of the brand, toine, SAR, and all of those sweepstakes. kwame, dalembert, curry, chandler, etc. would mean giving up sweetney AND a high pick. i don't want to do that either. i think we should be done making contract deals and just start accumulating as many picks as possible.

it's a broken record. it's a philosophy that i didn't want to consider before this season. but after the events that have transpired this season, after another year of giving them my $$$'s as a season ticket holder, and after this past trading deadline, my philosophy changed.

would i like to see us run off 17-3 and make the playoffs, hell yeah. i would cheer my ass off everygame. but i also would like to see us USE the draft and stop getting players like malik rose and mo taylor - not the talent of the players, but the contracts and years associated with them. ONE player can change this whole thing around like it did with detroit in 01/02. but it's tough to bank on that and i think it's better for us in the long term doing what i outlined above.

[Edited by - djsunyc on 03/08/2005 15:46:36]