xduckshoex:
“Take the Heat and the Knicks. Miami cleared the cap room to catch the big free-agent prize, and got him. The Knicks missed out, but instead of staying patient and developing “home-grown” talent, they made moves to scramble for the second tier-stars.”

Time hit the nail on the head.

i think he hit the nail “pretty much” on the head.

the strategy of clearing cap room was executed as well as possible. they tried for lebron and wade and whiffed. here is wher i disagree a bit.

there was nothing wrong with signing amar’e in the context of the team walsh assembled with a fairly priced , competent point and young improving players like gallo, chandler, etc.

jimmy d forcing walsh away from his plan screwed everything. look how beautifully walsh had it set up. he had an above .500 young team with many options moving forward.

he wanted to play hardball with melo and get him at his price (for nothing as a fa). say melo forced his way out to nj. so what? they could have kept gallo, chandler, mozgov, randolph, felton and thier 3 picks. could they have made a deal for d. will? maybe, maybe not.

had they done nothing and whiffed on melo, d-will and even cp3 via trade this fall, they would have lost 14 million off the cap with curry and azu expiring.

they could have just signed one of the fa bigs this year (chandler, m gasol or deandre jordan) and had a pretty formidable team of amar’e ,chandler/gasol/jordan, gallo, shumpert and felton with a bench of wilson chandler’s rights, a. randolph, turiaf, mosgov, fields, toney douglas, jorts and baron davis while retaining 3 #2 picks and the 2014 #1. and all the players would fit with each other.

i’d go to war with that group for the next 5 years.

Also, it’s disingenuous to attempt to connect the Knicks’ struggles with Gallo’s play in Denver. The price has been paid already and while the “look what you’re missing” angle makes part of the narrative, it’s not relevant to any analysis of our team as currently constructed. If every player we gave up for Melo played worse in their new home, does that make this current Knicks team any better?

I’ve been loitering on this site since the Isiah years and you guys have been my trusted source for Knicks news for all that time. Living on the other side of the world makes it harder to keep up, especially without being able to see many games, so I thank you. I’m also glad to finally have League Pass and see a few games for myself.

Nick C.:
I wish you didn’t just paste that about the ISOs though it is pretty damning about the style of play. I anxiously await the their ISOs are tougher becuase the rest of the team sucks so bad they don’t need to be guarded.

Anyway the article has a section saying trading Gallo for Melo was a mistake.Which much to my surprise yesterday Stephen A. Smith on with Michael Kay when asked if they would be better with Deron or Melo said Deron and that you need a guard and center.That being said why was he “do whatever it takes” Sorry I know its naive to expect better but still its on the one hand smirkworthy to hear him essentially reverse all his points but on the other that he gets away with it.

He gets paid a lot of money for those contradictory hypocritical statements.