I mean, Lin can still choose to sign with another team if he wants, no?

No. As noted, he is a restricted free agent, so he can only sign an offer sheet from another team. And since the offer sheet is restricted to being at the most the MLE, then the Knicks will be able to match no matter what (same with Fields).

You said: “So the good news is that the Knicks are guaranteed to be able to keep both Fields and Lin if they want to.”

But just because the Knicks can match any offer sheet doesn’t guarantee they can keep Lin, does it? Doesn’t this only guarantee the Knicks’ ability to be financially competitive for Lin?

I mean, Lin can still choose to sign with another team if he wants, no?

It’s amazing how the play of one unexpected guy has completely changed how I feel about this team. It really is as if we just won the lottery. And if you think about it, pretty much every team that has won a championship (except maybe Dallas I guess) had something unbelievably fortuitous happen – Lakers with Gasol, Boston with that ridiculous KG trade, Spurs with the Duncan lottery.

I absolutely agree. Stumbling into what has been, in effect, an All-Star level point guard has been amazing.

As for the breaks stuff, even Dallas had two lucky breaks (three if you count getting Kidd for basically nothing). The first was the Chandler to OKC deal falling apart. Had he been dealt to OKC, I think there’s no chance OKC would not re-sign him so he would not have ended up in Dallas (even if they did not re-sign him, Dallas would not have been able to sign him). The second was Charlotte being sooooooo cheap that they literally gave up Chandler just for cap room. Can you even imagine that? Tyson Chandler was traded for cap room!!!

Re: Aaron Brooks – I’m pretty sure he’s a restricted FA so little chance that PHX would let him walk for a room-exception type of deal.

Yeah, you’re likely correct. That is probably why we haven’t heard anything about him.

Brian Cronin:
Something else to remember is that if the Knicks go over the luxury tax during the 2012 offseason (which seems likely if they re-sign Lin and Fields and also pick up someone with the Bi-Annual Exception), they will not have the MLE or the Bi-Annual Exception for the 2013 offseason (well, if they use it in 2012, they wouldn’t have the Bi-Annual Exception anyways, seeing as how it is, you know, Bi-Annual). They would only have the mini-MLE (the $3 million one).

So there is a very, very good chance that the Knicks will be unable to use the full MLE to sign someone new until….geez, 2015, I would guess. That’s the problem when your top two guys make sooooooooooo much money.

That’s true, but the good news is that barring injury, we will already have the top 6 guys in our rotation locked up for a while between Chandler, Amare, Melo, Fields, Lin, and Shumpert. And who knows, maybe Jerome Jordan turns out to be something useful, who would be restricted also. We will also have Bird rights with Toney Douglas, FWIW (I still think Toney will come back and be a valuable contributor at some point). In any case, depending on how much noise we make in the playoffs going forward, it seems likely that the Shane Battier types might be willing to take the biannual exception or the mini-MLE to be part of this team too.

It’s amazing how the play of one unexpected guy has completely changed how I feel about this team. It really is as if we just won the lottery. And if you think about it, pretty much every team that has won a championship (except maybe Dallas I guess) had something unbelievably fortuitous happen – Lakers with Gasol, Boston with that ridiculous KG trade, Spurs with the Duncan lottery.

Re: Aaron Brooks – I’m pretty sure he’s a restricted FA so little chance that PHX would let him walk for a room-exception type of deal.

Aaron Brooks might not be a bad idea…he’s got to be better than TD at this point (no pun intended…)

But would Aaron Brooks really want to come and play behind Lin and possibly Davis?

So there is a very, very good chance that the Knicks will be unable to use the full MLE to sign someone new until….geez, 2015, I would guess. That’s the problem when your top two guys make sooooooooooo much money.

If we sign JR Smith for this year at the mini-MLE, do we have any Bird rights for him next year? Doubt he signs for more than this year, right? He’s got to be worth more than $2.5 mil per.

No, they’d have no Bird Rights, so they’d be limited to just 120% of his salary, whatever that would be. So, in other words, yeah, he’d pretty much be a rental. But a really good rental!