I am down with the idea of cutting Bibby to get a stopgap forward for the next 10 days.

I’ve been trying to read Larry Coon’s FAQ re: Lin’s status. Even though on twitter he said that Lin would be an early bird free agent, I think he’s actually a non-bird free agent since he hasn’t played more than 1 year with the same team. From reading the rest of the FAQ it seems like he IS restricted in that the NYK have right of first refusal, and he can sign either a single year contract and then become an early bird FA the next year, or sign a multi-year contract. But it appears he is restricted to the MLE-amount — and if we give him a salary above the minimum (which we’ll be required to – must be 20% greater than his current salary) then that will cut into our total MLE amount. So I had previously thought we could sign him with some sort of exception AND use the full MLE on someone like Nash — but it seems that isn’t the case.

But he IS restricted to us for next year at least – and after that we will have Bird rights. So he could become Steve Nash 2.0 and we could still sign him regardless of our cap situation.

I thought that that was the situation under the old cap but that they had fixed that rule because it, in effect, punishes teams for finding hidden gems. But I guess they didn’t. Well, that sucks.

Gideon Zaga:
I’ll bookmark this, just in case you’re wrong.

look, I HOPE I’m wrong, I just don’t see that happening.

and I think you guys are really underrating Batum, he can be a little too passive, yes, but when he has played well, he has been awesome.

he’s a really good defender, can hit the corner 3, drive, finish strongly… there’s no reason at all he can’t be like Gallo if he becomes a starter, which won’t happen while Wallace is there.

that’s a huge bargain for 2 million a year, one that would free 16 million to be used on a good PG in case Lin is not the solution and backup players.

Frank:
I love how Lin has played, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves handing him the keys to the Corvette and dumping Melo overboard for a complementary player.There will be plenty of times this season where Melo’s scoring ability will be the difference between a W and an L.

Bruno Almeida: and our team, as constructed right now, with Carmelo, will win how many titles?

that’s right, 0.

with Batum’s 1.8 million contract in place of Carmelo’s 20 million albatross, we’d have enough money to actually build a team, instead of having to make do with spare parts.

Gideon Zaga:
I know who does better than that Luol Deng, Shane Battier, Nicholas Batum. Trade Melo for any of those and I’m sure you will become the Nuggets. Isn’t that what you want.

I have actually been quite happy with Melo since coming back from his injury, he has been trying to play more within the offense and is not holding the ball as much, with that said though I too would probably trade Melo for Batum and the cap space that comes with him.

As for Deng he has actually been less efficient than Melo and is not that great of a defender, kind of an overrated and overpaid player so I would prefer Melo by far. Battier is old and on the decline but Battier at 25-26 or Melo and I go with Battier, he is the kind of player that makes teams better, the best glue guy in the NBA over the last 10+ years.

However, there’s another path… and it is to fill the rest of the roster… we just saw what a replacement level player can do with the team. We have the mini-MLE this year and the MLE the next one, and we might have found a PG for 15 mpg in Lin. Let’s build around this core. The contracts of our stars are well structured… in 3 1/2 years we can scrap all this if it doesn’t work (and in 3 1/2 years, we will have draft picks again, if we don’t screw it up)