Posted by islesfan:

The lengths that this egomaniac will go to make it look like he's doing a great job is scary. But not as scary as the prospect of another 5 years of Isiah. First he said wanted to win right away and that you couldn't rebuild in NY. Now he says it'll take 5 years to rebuild this team and fans are deluding themselves if they thought any differently. What will his excuse be after 7 years? I'll bet everything I have that he's still blaming Layden at that point.

Hey man, if you are fool enough to believe every literal thing that Isiah says, so be it. The dude is a salesman. Know it and believe it. In fact, he is as slick as oil, but that doesn't mean his a bad GM. You gotta read between the lines.

islesfan, still believe in WMD?

Posted by martin:

Posted by islesfan:

The lengths that this egomaniac will go to make it look like he's doing a great job is scary. But not as scary as the prospect of another 5 years of Isiah. First he said wanted to win right away and that you couldn't rebuild in NY. Now he says it'll take 5 years to rebuild this team and fans are deluding themselves if they thought any differently. What will his excuse be after 7 years? I'll bet everything I have that he's still blaming Layden at that point.

Hey man, if you are fool enough to believe every literal thing that Isiah says, so be it. The dude is a salesman. Know it and believe it. In fact, he is as slick as oil, but that doesn't mean his a bad GM. You gotta read between the lines.

islesfan, still believe in WMD?

priceless

Look here geniuses, there is no plan that is not altered...Nothing ever come out the way it is planed...

Actually I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth. But when he tells Knicks fans his general plan and then comes back a year later and does a complete 180 while telling the same diehard and long suffering Knicks fans that they'd be fools to think it could have been any other way, I take offense to that. I would think any Knick fan would. Or maybe you enjoy being treated like an idiot child.

I originally posted this in the New York Times Knicks forum for the benefit of a Celtics fan who wandered in and started blasting Isiah. It might be helpful for those of us who have short memories.

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One cannot understand what Isiah is doing here without a proper understanding of what Layden did to this franchise, and the hamstrung glut it left us in. Layden was the one who blew NY's cap to pieces by giving large, long salaries to unathletic, unskilled, marginal role players such as-- wait for it-- Clarence Weatherspoon, Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley.

By the time Layden was fired, there were two distinct courses that could have been taken to rehabilitate the franchise.

Course 1 was to put the franchise in a state of hibernation and suffer through 4 or 5 years of terrible basketball as we waited for each debilitating contract to fall by the wayside. On this plan of action, NY would still be well in the midst of its self-imposed torpor-- Houston's and Anderson's contracts alone account for over half the cap, and both do not expire until the summer of 2007. (To help you realize the severity of this, consider that even expantionist Charlotte's skeletal roster would be over the cap if it had to bear the weight of Houston's and Anderson's contracts. Shocking, but true.) MLE signings during this time would be prohibitive, so the only possible source of substantial improvement in the meantime would be via the draft. (It would have been a practical impossibility to have traded our high priced, low valued players for a package of better players without taking on longer contracts.)

Course 2 was to roll with the incessant punches and blows of the Layden era. Rather than wait half a decade just to return to the point of breaking even, this plan involves actively seeking to upgrade the roster in both the short term and long term, even if it means having to work under the restrictions of operating above the cap. This is the path Isiah chose, and he's been doing a good job of it thus far, considering the material he's had to work with. The roster now is far more talented than the one Isiah inherited, which translates into a more competetive team and greater trade assets. NY's salary has escalated under Isiah's watch, but so has the talent-to-dollar ratio of the roster. Where once we had guys that were virtually untradeable, now we have players such as Crawford and Marbury who, despite their flaws, bring some good play to the court and could be traded for a quite valuable return if the right scenario presented itself.

As for the latest trades, it sounds as though your tangential contact with the NBA of late has left you in the dark about the nature of the players acquired and what they have meant for the team. You cast Rose as bad apple for some reason, when in actuality he is as solid a locker room citizen as the Knicks have right now. There were a couple of articles out of San Antonio chronicling how the Spurs mourned the loss of Rose. (You also overlooked Jerome Williams as a 'quality guy.') Taylor has not caused any waves since coming here, aside from the ones he's produced on the court. His stats will not impress you, but you are wrong to assume that any SF with similar numbers could bring the same value to these Knicks. Taylor's post game has been an invaluable go-to weapon in the halfcourt set thus far for a team that spent much of the season living and (mostly) dying on streaky jump shooters.

All in all, there has been an obvious qualitative and quantitative leap in terms of NY's efficacy since acquiring Rose and Taylor. The contributions these players are making to NY's play has the added bonus of elevating their trade value in future trades.

Is Isiah perfect? No, no GM is perfect. Have most of his moves come with their share of negatives along with the positives? Undoubtedly, but a realist will tell you that this is an unavoidable consequence of following Course 2. Isiah has been operating from a position of weakness ever since he got here, so one cannot reasonably expect for him to have made lights-out trades that did not arrive with their various caveats. However, given that he is slowly raising the team's talent-to-dollar ratio, there is reason to believe that Isiah is gradually bootstrapping himself out of this unfortunate situation rather than blindly perpetuating it.

One of the big problems everyone has is adding, player after player, he says this bull **** about Peter and Paul, and then makes these deal....

Malik and Jerome are character guys and I like what they bring to the team but they are here for a while at almost 15-16 between them and while you can't put a price on hustle u can put a price on flexibility.....

I had no problem with deal #2 because it had to be done, NY needed Marbury even if he doesn't make the difference we need, but after that every deal he has made has been very questionable.......

He is a constant, tune changer...and everything he says has some form of deception....He says Naz was the Key to the Van Horn deal, yet he then says Naz clogged up the middle and didn;t allow the team to play the game.....

I just think that he didn't have to add extra throw ins in the phoneix deal, shouldn't have made the van horn trade, no way should have made the taylor deal, rose i think we can live with, and he gave crawford money on his potential, which is ok if you are fighting with one other team for his services, but no one wanted him.....

SO when discussing Isiah keep in mind:

There isn't a person on this board that couldn't have done a better job as GM of the Knicks

Isiah: isn't really doing things with any sort of plan he is flying by the seat of his pants.

Could it work and prove many of us wrong, the possibility remains with expiring deals, but payroll with have to go up and ticket prices will go up, but we are already an inch away from the roof, and Isiah seems to be in the dark

Thats a good question....

Layden made every bad move, and then did one worse with every deal he constructed I will take it to the grave that one one gives Anderson 42 million, or trades for Eisley....and no one wanted Spoon but Layden who signed him right away like he was a hot comodity

The Ewing Deal, why take on Luc Longly and Travis Night and Add a third swing man, i think everyone had some questions there

The Mark Jackson deal, a draft pick and a pg that we had been waiting for his contract to end for an agin pg whose best years were behind him

Everyone knows the story.......Please tell me you believe that you could upgrade better than that man...

Isiah can have one thing that will shield him from his own mistakes, and that will be executing in the draft. I dont expect every move that Isiah makes to be great or work out. At one point I went so far as to compare him to Jerry West. West is considered the best GM in the NBA, yet all he really did in Memphis was hire good coaches. Not only did he NOT work any magic grading the next Kobe or trading for Shaq but half of his personel moves have been weak. If Gasol doesnt mature into a top 10 NBA player I would West has been a failure thus far.

You cant convince me either the Taylor or Rose trades are good, because I am 100% convinced we overpaid on Taylor and if we waited we could have done better than Rose and last #1 in the draft.

what Isiah can and must do is execute in the draft. To me he MUST come away with 2 core players in this draft, even if they arent ready this year. With the MSG assets there is NO excuse not to draft and extra player every year and buy an extra late #1 or #2.

Hey kam, I've known mister.earl did his thing here for a while, but I never knew you were here too. Good stuff. What really surprised me recently is I saw a post from Kevin Dolorico, who I recognize from the usenet group alt.sport.basketball.pro.ny-knicks (or something like that) waaay back in like the mid 90s. We're just internet vagabonds making the rounds and following the unbeaten trails that lead to Knickdom.

Anyway, back to the discussion at hand. If I had to give Isiah a grade thus far, it'd be somewhere around a B-. Isiah's biggest mistake by far has been the hiring of Lenny Wilkens, but he's done a good job with the roster. Other than coaching, much of this team's struggles this season can be traced to injuries on a team without great depth and, most particularly, TT's long grieving period. (Allan's no show hasn't helped either, but by now that's more of a given than an unexpected loss.) If we start the season with Herb coaching (something Isiah could have enacted) and a mentally fresh TT (something well beyond Isiah's control), I believe we'd be atop the Atlantic division today.

To Mister Earl:

I give Herb Williams a C so far and an incomplete even at year's end because he needs a full season to implement his vision and impose his will on this team. Also, he has to work two new guys into the lineup when at least one probably won't be here when the season starts next year.
Rod Thorn? Over his career as GM of the Nets or this year only? Over his career with the Nets I would give him an A-. The guy knows talent and knows how to blend chemistry. Pairing Kidd with Martin was a great move as was drafting Jefferson. And even with a cheap new owner this year who wouldn't ante up for Martin, he went the trade route and got Vince Carter to salvage the season and keep Kidd quiet for at least a little while longer. So even for this year I would give Thorn a B. Granted the Alonzo Mourning thing looked bad this year but Kidd made him do that last year. And the Eldon Campbell signing didn't work out. But he even landed Cliff Robinson at the trade deadline to help out his young team. Lastly, I didn't like the way he handled Byron Scott and his firing but player decisions overall seem to be his strength.

Posted by martin:

Posted by tomverve:

Isiah has been operating from a position of weakness ever since he got here, so one cannot reasonably expect for him to have made lights-out trades that did not arrive with their various caveats. However, given that he is slowly raising the team's talent-to-dollar ratio, there is reason to believe that Isiah is gradually bootstrapping himself out of this unfortunate situation rather than blindly perpetuating it.

I like that part the best. Thanks.

if you really believe this talent to dollar ratio has any correlation
in producing a winning season...please state your case. otherwise you may want to benchmark detroit's 4 year plan to a championship run

That's Too Cold

rojasmas - you gave the creative, respectful, team-builder Herb a C?

Sheesh