Frank O.: But to act as if Dolan forced these two very experienced, accomplished men to do something they didn’t want to do is ridiculous. Neither Walsh nor D’Antoni need this job per se. Each would be coveted should they leave NYC. Each would find a job quickly. If they didn’t agree with this move, they would have walked. This is my firm belief.
To think otherwise is to somehow imply that you are privy to the inner thoughts of these men, which is patently ridiculous.
So please, hate the move. Stop trying to make it a Dolan/Isiah thing. There is no bogey man in the closet. It’s your imagination.

It’s not a question of Dolan “forcing” them. Once he gets involved in the deal, what’s Walsh going to do? Speak out publicly and disagree with the trade being proffered by their boss? Walking out would have been great, but that would have caused a LOT of waves. I don’t see many GM’s doing that. But nevertheless, you’re right, it’s Walsh’s responsibility too and as a result of this trade I simply do not trust him the same way I did before. He laid out a very clear strategy of not blowing up our team just to get a big star and then blatantly violated this strategy. And Isaiah doesn’t need to be at all involved for this deal to smell bad. It’s got Dolan’s fingerprints all over it, Walsh admitted as much in his intervies, and Dolan is jackass enough. I’ll concede that if anything great comes of this team it will take some games for that to emerge. But even so, they just lost to the worst team in the nba. Jelling aside, that seems worrying.

My perfect draft would be:

1. PG Brandon Knight/Jimmer Fredette/Josh Selby
2. C Lucas Nogeira/Markieff Morris

NateRobinson: When two 6’9? guys get double digit offensive boards combined you my friend are in trouble. This is what I have been preaching all year long. MDA sacrifices rebounding and defense for more offense. Which makes no sense at all when you have Stat and Melo as well as Chauncey. Now we will reap the ‘benefits’ of having a horrible MDA roster.We need to sign Barron and a hit-man to make MDA play a rebounder for once at gunpoint. Fact is we will never be good rebounding unless we find Arvidas Sabonis out there so he can take 3s as well.Amare plays his heart out only to get beaten by the Cavs of all people. This is going to be a sad, and long season…  

if the knicks were going to trade chandler and felton, they should have looked for mc gee and hinrich or something like that. unless they think jerome jordan can actually play, how do they ever get an athletic 5 to complement the one way offensive, no rebounding , no defensive players they have up front.

We need to sign Barron and a hit-man to make MDA play a rebounder for once at gunpoint. Fact is we will never be good rebounding unless we find Arvidas Sabonis out there so he can take 3s as well.

Amare plays his heart out only to get beaten by the Cavs of all people. This is going to be a sad, and long season…

Now you can like that or not. I’m not here to judge that. (I was troubled by the trade, but am trying to be realistic about expectations after two games.)
But to act as if Dolan forced these two very experienced, accomplished men to do something they didn’t want to do is ridiculous. Neither Walsh nor D’Antoni need this job per se. Each would be coveted should they leave NYC. Each would find a job quickly. If they didn’t agree with this move, they would have walked. This is my firm belief.
To think otherwise is to somehow imply that you are privy to the inner thoughts of these men, which is patently ridiculous.
So please, hate the move. Stop trying to make it a Dolan/Isiah thing. There is no bogey man in the closet. It’s your imagination.
And if some day, either one of these guys comes out and says Dolan made me do it, as implausible as that may seem, I will think very, very little of them.
Each man is responsible for himself.

Z-man: “The Knicks have gotten killed on the boards all year. The trade didnt affect that at all.”Actually, we used to have lots of marketable young pieces and tons of cap room to get a tough interior presence.Now we don’t.  

Well I dont think thats what I said at all now was it

outoftowner: Hello KB’ers, I’ve been reading this blog for a while now, have to thank you all for getting me through some years with this franchise.Unfortunately I’m a New York ex-pat, so I’ve been watching the games on league pass broadband this year.I wanted to comment on something that struck me last night while watching the game.It seemed like at some point in the 4th quarter, STAT went into there’s-no-way-we’re-losing-to-these-guys mode and started playing his heart out.I remember 3 offensive rebound-putbacks, which is usually a month’s worth for him, one defensive rebound in traffic, and one monster block on Hickson.The Cavs commenters even noticed it and said he looked like Superman out there.This made me wonder, could Amare always play like that, if he wanted to? If so, that says something pretty awful about the effort he gave us on those 3-rebound nights.Maybe last night was just a fluke though.Anyway, just wanted to see if anyone else noticed something different about Amare last night.  

I noticed it, too, and you know what happened?
Amare started to dominate and then Melo tried to take over the game. He took several bad shots. The Knicks lost momentum and then Melo was out and Amare out of sorts.
These guys don’t know how to play with each other yet and so they revert to form.
Amare still needs someone to give him the ball. Melo doesn’t really. As I said last night, Melo broke several offensive sets simply by not giving the ball to the point guard and letting him run the offense. Think about it, the two guys with the ball the most both don’t yet know the offense.
He needs to learn the offense, as does Billups. Until that happens they are not going to use Amare as he needs to be used.

Peter87: It’s official: the Isaiah Thomas era has returned.The Knicks suck, and will suck for a long time.This has gone down just as the statistics predicted.Melo scores a lot, inefficiently.The mediocre defense has gotten worse.No money/assets to improve in the years to come.We lost 3 good players and 4 likeable players for an egotistic “superstar”.Second coming of Marbury.I am completely disgusted.Somebody call me when they “gel”.  

Wow. You sound like THCJ.

Actually, we used to have lots of marketable young pieces and tons of cap room to get a tough interior presence. Now we don’t.

Z-man: I still strongly feel that it was Dolan that made the deal, not Walsh or D’Antoni.

i must also admit that when we were 3-8 and Amar’e was stinkin’ up the joint, I didn’t feel all that good either. I guess we have to be patient, but for some reason I just find this team is not as super-fun to root for as the one we had last week.

I still have the same feeling. Walsh made me feel better hearing him talk about it in some of the interviews, but he doesn’t really contradict that Dolan was the one who ultimately worked out the final package–Walsh just says that Dolan went to him before giving the go-ahead. We’ll really never know.

CapB: Give it time. If the team is winning you will feel much better. Right now they just traded away 4 guys you were looking forward to see developing and the team is 1-1 since then and played poorly.

Winning cures alot.

Agreed. Time will help in terms of rooting for the Knicks. But they have to play decently and, frankly, they have to be BETTER than the team we had previously. We could have won more with the team we had if we focused on getting Raymond some real help at point and legitimate banger inside who could man the 5 spot respectably for 20-25 min a night. We could STILL win more with the team we have now if we filled those simple holes. I’m not sure the things that we gained are enough to mitigate the gaping holes we had to begin with which still remain unfilled. You know you’re in trouble when you start hoping the addition of Jared Jeffries will make a significant difference. But let’s see what happens in Miami.