I still miss Balkman, though.

Frank: hey ruru – i love basketball and am learning slowly about the intricacies of it – but clearly i don’t have any of the real basketball knowledge you and some others here have.do you know of any good websites where i could learn about the prominent offensive systems (the spread PNR is pretty clear to me by this point, but things like the princeton offense, flex, triangle, etc.) and how and why they are theoretically supposed to work? i’m a layman, never played real organized basketball, so even that level of knowledge would be useful to me.

Frank, if you’d like the flex broken down in video form, I recommend this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRoDi2ECVtw

And the triangle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALeAu_dBjds

nicos: Felton is a very good- I’d say top ten- pnr point.You can find a lot of guys whose all all-around game is as good or better but finding a guy who fits this team’s needs as well as he does? Not that easy.

No real argument there–he’s surely top 10 or 12 at pnr, and at the time we needed him, he was available at a price we could pay…thus, great value and smart move under the circumstances. Only wish we had a backup guard who could also initiate the pnr semi-competently, but I guess few teams have that luxury.

Carmelo Anthony
Renaldo Balkman
Chauncey Billups
Derrick Brown
Anthony Carter
Toney Douglas
Landry Fields
Jared Jeffries
Roger Mason
Andy Rautins
Amar’e Stoudemire
Ronny Turiaf
Bill Walker
Shawne Williams
Shelden Williams

Look at that roster and just try to comprehend how, with only 1 single 1st round pick in the following 2 drafts and no cap space, how Grunwald turned THAT roster into the one we have now:

1 Amar’e Stoudemire
2 Raymond Felton
4 James White
5 Jason Kidd
6 Tyson Chandler
7 Carmelo Anthony
8 J.R. Smith
9 Pablo Prigioni
11 Ronnie Brewer
14 Chris Copeland
16 Steve Novak
21 Iman Shumpert
23 Marcus Camby
36 Rasheed Wallace
40 Kurt Thomas

1) Amnesty Billups to sign Tyson – no one saw that coming
2) Signed Jeremy Lin and Steve Novak to bargain basement deals
3) Convinced JR Smith to come to NYC when arguably he had a better chance to win in LA with Chris Paul
4) Convinced JR to sign for bargain basement deal for this year (I really don’t buy that he couldn’t get more than a $3M one year deal this year)
5) Traded roster filler/crap (including some innovative 2nd year nonguaranteed deals like Gadzuric) for Marcus Camby, Raymond Felton, Kurt Thomas
6) Signed Novak to a reasonable deal that decreases in value each year (probably could have signed him for less, but still, has minimal impact in the later years)
7) Signed Kidd to mini-MLE
8) Unearthed Prigioni, James White, and Copeland for vet’s minimum
9) Signed Ronnie Brewer to vet’s minimum (I remain convinced Ronnie will be useful at some point this season, even if just for defensive assignments)

And maybe most importantly – had a hand in hiring Woodson to be D-coordinator for D’Antoni, then hired him rather than chasing Phil to be the full-time HC.

Basically – he was stuck with the 3 max-ish deals of Amare/Melo/Billups. He turned Billups’s contract and bunch of crap into a team that is 31-15 right now. This isn’t luck. This is hard work and inspired genius IMHO.

nyk8806: Come on, that wouldn’t be difficult, unless we’re talking bang for the buck and/or availability in the the window we needed to sign somebody.

Felton is a very good- I’d say top ten- pnr point. You can find a lot of guys whose all all-around game is as good or better but finding a guy who fits this team’s needs as well as he does? Not that easy.

Here is a list of PGs not on rookie contracts making around or less than Felton this year:

Kirk Hinrich $3,941,000
Chris Duhon $3,500,000
D.J. Augustin $3,500,000
Raymond Felton $3,480,453
Will Bynum $3,250,000
Aaron Brooks $3,250,000
Jason Kidd $3,090,000
Jerryd Bayless $3,000,000
Randy Foye $2,500,000
Earl Watson $2,000,000
Shaun Livingston $1,773,976
Eric Bledsoe $1,707,720
Jordan Farmar $1,500,000
John Lucas $1,500,000
Royal Ivey $1,223,166
Ronnie Price $1,146,337
CJ Watson $992,680
Ishmael Smith $910,491
A.J. Price $885,120
Will Conroy $854,389
Derek Fisher $644,005
Tyshawn Taylor $473,604
Pablo Prigioni $473,604
Scott Machado

Uh… I’d say we did about as well as we could with Felton. In fact, you’d do well to find more than a handful of PGs making double (<$7M) what Felton is that I'd take over Felton right now:

John Wall probably (only because he's still young)
Kyle Lowry for sure
Jarrett Jack probably
Sessions maybe but is making $5MM

And that's it.

Grunwald did great with a buy-low deal for Felton. Donnie traded him away at $7.5M, Glen brought him back at <50% the price when the team was ready for him.