Posted by tomverve:

Posted by fishmike:

So lets recap:
All his players
spends tons of money
team totally sucks

You left out the initial conditions out of your analysis. This team was not created last season out of a vacuum. Isiah inhereted Layden's totally sucky, highly overpaid team, and furthermore, the structure of the CBA severely limited what he could have done thus far to change things. If the CBA did not require you to trade dollar-for-dollar, or if it did not require you to keep a player's salary on your cap if you waive him, then yeah, Isiah should get an F. But given that that's not the case, an F is too much.

That's like coming off of reconstructive knee surgery, losing a race, and saying you're a failure. At this point, it's not about winning the race. It's about rehabilitating the roster, getting tradeable pieces, and generally moving in the right direction. You can argue how successful Isiah has been at all that, but he's hardly been a complete failure. We absolutely do have more talent on the roster and more tradeable assets than we did before Isiah, no matter how you cut it. Things could be better, but they could be a whole lot worse too. You don't get an F if you could have done a whole lot worse with respect to reasonable goals and expectations.

i'm really glad to have guys like you around. Its a breathe of freshair will all the gloom and doom attitude that some Knicks fans have no matter what.

I'm pretty frickin pissed off right now that ariza and butler aren't playing but I have a feeling there's a reason for it. Either Isiah doesn't want to lose them or he wants to give Herb what the media is always bitching about

Posted by fishmike:

Tom... its not and here's why.
rather than trying to fix Layden's mistakes Isiah has repeated them.

This whole retooling with overpriced veterans is Isiah's doing. If Isiah took a conservative approach, played young guys and stock piled picks I can guarantee you he wouldn't be criticized. People like Chad and the NY media would all be saying what you just said... that Isiah inherited a mess and its going to take him time to fix it. Instead he added a quarter billion in future salary and promised fans and media things like a fast exciting team, a team NYers could be proud of and a team that would compete for the division title. These were his words not mine. Those were his goals, thats what he sold to fans, and he used $250mm in Dolan's money to execute that plan.

Now based on what Isiah told us why is this unfair?

Then you realize that Dolan is the owner and to his this is New York and you deal with it and hope we have a great draft this year and get rid of the tradable contracts

[Edited by - gunsnewing on 04/19/2005 16:31:26]

Posted by fishmike:

but doesnt Chad know its only been 15 months? I mean how can anything happen in 15 months. Thats just not fair.

What is fair in your opinion, Fishmike?

I'm pretty frickin pissed off right now that ariza and butler aren't playing but I have a feeling there's a reason for it. Either Isiah doesn't want to lose them or he wants to give Herb what the media is always bitching about

Guns.. this is what I mean. The doom and gloom comes from Isiah and co, not from us. If we won 25 games but came out of the year with Sweetney having established himself as a starter and Ariza a core player and some kid namd Butler getting 15 minutes or so a game off the bench and having a nice moment here or there I would be PUMPED. Instead we lose 50 games with Marbury, KT and co playing 45 minutes a game and our young players riding pine the whole way. Whats changed? If we draft Gerald Green think he will get time over Crawford, MArbury, Penny, Houston when they are making their various comeback attempts? Houston's promised to make a come back... in all the papers. Whoever is coach will have so much pressure to win with our $120mm roster that he would rather see Penny and Houston limp then Gerald Green and Ariza make mistakes....

Dont worry.. after the draft I will spend the summer talking about how our young guys will dominate just as I did all summer w/ Riza and Sweets. Koolaid is just better in the summer anyhow

Posted by bigpimpin:

Posted by fishmike:

but doesnt Chad know its only been 15 months? I mean how can anything happen in 15 months. Thats just not fair.

What is fair in your opinion, Fishmike?

Tom.. your 100% right that the post-Layden era is a no win situation. But Isiah could have deflected the critcism by using that.

Big.. I think and F is totally fair. Now I didnt read the whole article, and its certainly not fair that we are the only F and teams like Min dont get Fs. Forget other teams though, and just focus on us.

Think about these questions:
What were our goals when we started the year. What were our expectations. If things went bad (injuries, poor play, etc) what was our backup plan. What did we want to accomplish.

I think we failed pretty much everything. We didnt compete. We had little to no internal growth. We had no backup plan. When our season sent to the crapper we failed to use that time to develop young players and either secure great draft postion or develop young guys.

To me this is a totally lost season. Ariza is the only bright spot. So we found out a guy we drafted in round 2 is good enough to play at the NBA level.

All this is magnified by the money and long term deals we took on. If this year just helped us get one year closer to losing Layden's fodder then so be it, but we added more fodder so thats a wash also.

Now it comes down to the draft. If Isiah gets the next TMac we can say we were bad enough to draft franchise talent and Isiah did that. I hope like hell he does and we do. I'm a little tired of hoping for that year after year though.

Tom... opening day roster next year:
What are your expectations? Will we be younger? More of the same? What kind of team do you think we will have?

The only thing that really bothers me is that it seems that like Layden, Isiah has no plan on what to do with the Knicks. Without a plan, how can you build a good team?

Posted by Knicksfan:

The only thing that really bothers me is that it seems that like Layden, Isiah has no plan on what to do with the Knicks. Without a plan, how can you build a good team?

what bothers me is that that is very unlike Isiah which proves to me that Dolan is the biggest problem and until he sells the team, if ever, we need to take it for what it is. Hope we become a playoff team again and maybe get lucky like Detroit did by drafting and trading. We got close at least 3 times in 93, 94, 95 & 99 with the exact same Dolan Philosophy!

Posted by BRIGGS:

I think it's fair that Isiah gets this next year as a reasonable, full evaluation.

If we see something along the lines of trading pick 7 for Al harrington pick 30 and SA pick for Larry brown and signing a Ronald Murray, then we can get out the barf bags.

If he comes in and has an exciting draft, he adds a piece or two that makes a ton of sense and he DOESNT waste assets on a coach like Larry Brown--who is going to be 66 and has had serious health problems


there are a lot of avenues i can go to war with, I just outlined the one I wont endorse.

I dont want to comeback somehow with jalen Rose Al harrington and Larry brown as our offseason.

If thats what it is, then there will be a lot of fire Isiah chants very quickly.

Im scared too. Im scared because he ALLOWED trevor to have his minutes cut, he allowed Herb not to play Butler when he couldve MANDATED that they get X-time, especially since we were done. the fact that they have been playing M and JC almost 45 minutes a game scares me. if they are not willing to play ariza and butler when we are OUT of it, what is a draft pick to us? understand ?

If Isiah's 2nd round draft pick who's teenager is getting 18 mpg, then I don't think you'll need to worry about Isiah's lottery pick getting no playing time.

Posted by Bonn1997:

Posted by BRIGGS:

I think it's fair that Isiah gets this next year as a reasonable, full evaluation.

If we see something along the lines of trading pick 7 for Al harrington pick 30 and SA pick for Larry brown and signing a Ronald Murray, then we can get out the barf bags.

If he comes in and has an exciting draft, he adds a piece or two that makes a ton of sense and he DOESNT waste assets on a coach like Larry Brown--who is going to be 66 and has had serious health problems


there are a lot of avenues i can go to war with, I just outlined the one I wont endorse.

I dont want to comeback somehow with jalen Rose Al harrington and Larry brown as our offseason.

If thats what it is, then there will be a lot of fire Isiah chants very quickly.

Im scared too. Im scared because he ALLOWED trevor to have his minutes cut, he allowed Herb not to play Butler when he couldve MANDATED that they get X-time, especially since we were done. the fact that they have been playing M and JC almost 45 minutes a game scares me. if they are not willing to play ariza and butler when we are OUT of it, what is a draft pick to us? understand ?

If Isiah's 2nd round draft pick who's teenager is getting 18 mpg, then I don't think you'll need to worry about Isiah's lottery pick getting no playing time.

exactly!

Ariza was getting more minutes than anyone expected out of the 43rd overall pick. Which further proves to me that something is going on that they all of a sudden started giving Ariza DNPs and 3-5min outings.

which is why im leaning more towards Isiah staying out of the way and just letting Herb run the team like the media wanted him to do combined with the fact that if they play them for big minutes he might lose them

Posted by fishmike:

Tom... opening day roster next year:
What are your expectations? Will we be younger? More of the same? What kind of team do you think we will have?

Who can say? I don't really know. I expect we'll have at least two rookies on the roster, and I expect one of the PFs (probably KT) to be traded. Maybe TT or Penny, but we might hold onto them until the deadline. I'm not stressing out about it... I trust Isiah will do the right thing in the draft.