so robinson is a luxury at anything over 3 million [a price he probably could get elsewhere] so lets save that money and find some low priced rookie free agent who can shoot from the outside and possibly handle the ball when duhon is “resting”.

lee is another matter. a true fan fav but i doubt he can obtain 9 million in free agency. and he might just give us a home town discount if he thinks/knows that lebron is coming.

overwise the effects of isaiah will be felt well into 2011. so lets keep the lebron all or nothing in focus. he comes and we will at least fill the seats. he doesn’t and there is no way the franchise will recover anytime soon

therefore moving jeffries at a minimum [or curry if there is someone as insane as dolan out there] would make the world a brighter place for our long suffering faithful.

so donnie boy make us proud and separate the chaff from the wheat [if we have any].

I think I would agree that Marbury/Fisher is an extreme example, and would side with Marbury. If for no other reason than he was traded for a good PG and a very good PG (Brandon who got hurt, and Kidd): take the guy with the higher value and then trade him while he’s still on his rookie deal and still has more upside/ can be excused for not doing x, y, or z because he’s still young.
Jennings/Lawson seems like a close call to me, though.

If I were running a team, I wouldn’t put much stock in those workouts at all. It seems funny to read about how so-and-so is going to decide their pick, based on the latest workout.

I suspect there are a few unsuccessful teams that do just that, whereas the well-run teams rely on game scouting and numbers — a bit on measurements – with workouts as a small, small part of the puzzle.

re: Marbury and Fisher, this is the first step on the slippery slope to, “Is there such a thing as addition by subtraction?” (!) I’ll just say – we probably agree that every player has a certain value, and whether you want them on your team, depends on the opportunity cost — if you sign a guy for $20 million, he better be very, very good.

I was just making the point that a smart GM would value Marbury over Fisher — at his peak, IMO, you’d be happy to have Steph on a 5-year, $30 million contract, whereas you’d be bummed to see your team give that deal to Fisher. But it’s moot, because as you say, in reality Steph never would have signed a 5-year, $30 million deal. The only way to get him was by wildly overpaying him. Smart teams stayed away.

Frank: Evans is definitely an intriguing prospect and I’ve said several times I think he enjoys a long, productive, financially rewarding NBA career. Efficiency is definitely important though. In the NCAA and in Conference USA especially, sure Evans can dominate the opposition one-on-one with his size, athleticism, and skill. The NBA is a difference ballgame. He’s going against similarly gifted athletes and may be asked to run a team at the point.
Scoring efficiency is especially important, to me, if you’re a high-volume scorer. Evans is someone whose defense, rebounding, and playmaking ability could allow him to be very valuable without scoring at a high volume, but his high-volume college season and once he ends up on a high lottery team with little talent I think there’s a better chance he develops into a high volume scorer than not. Of course, if you’re actually an NBA team drafting him you have some say in his development.

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That’s exactly the type of situation where Jennings and Evans will thrive, though. Jennings and Evans are perfect players for a playground game, but as a Knicks fan I’ve learned the hard way that the NBA is not a rec league. That’s not to say they cannot thrive in the NBA, just that there are serious red flags for both.

The questions about Evans and Jennings have nothing to do with their one-on-one ability, but with their ability to understand and play basketball as a team game at the highest level in the world. It’s hard to judge Evan’s shot selection and scoring efficiency in a pick-up game or one-on-one drill, same goes for Jennings’ ability to run a team and score efficiently.

The fact that they can dominate in that setting at least establishes their tremendous upside, but for me it would take seriously scouting them all season and sitting down one-on-one multiple times to feel comfortable taking that risk high in the draft. If you put Marbury against Nash one-on-one before the ’96 draft I have to guess Marbury would have eaten Nash’s lunch. (Maybe Nash could go on a run hitting some deep jumpers…) No doubt who went on to be the better NBA PG, though.

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-41-116/Minnesota-s-Massive-Point-Guard-Workout.html

The group was Jonny Flynn, Brandon Jennings, Ty Lawson, Jrue Holiday, Tyreke Evans and Jeff Teague out of Wake Forest. I was most looking forward to seeing Jennings as I’ve been following him closely (on TrueHoop, among others) and was eager to measure his progress in person.

…

Things got exponentially more interesting in the one-on-one competition (taking turns playing D, staying on if you scored, etc). It was here that Evans established himself as the class of the group. Probably somewhat unfair to pit him against smaller, true point guards as he had at least three inches and twenty pounds on everyone, but I suppose those guys are going to have to get used to that type of matchup at the next level.

Anyway, Tyreke was dominant.
…

I was nearly ready to write [Jennings] off and admit that perhaps his critics had him pegged, a year or two at Arizona would’ve done him some good … and then they started scrimmaging. Three on three — more or less a twenty-minute fast break with those guys.

Suddenly Jennings remembered who he was and started moving with the type of swagger that I’d read about. On the first possession of the scrimmage he cleanly picked off a pass and beat Flynn in a footrace for an emphatic two-hander. A few possessions later he took an outlet from Holiday and sprinted down the left side. After beating Lawson with a stutter step, he picked up the ball and put it behind his back to avoid Evans’ help defense. Then he flicked a no-look over his shoulder to Jrue for the easy dunk.

Onlookers collectively gasped.

Two of the next four possessions ended with Jennings freezing his man and hitting 18-footers.

I’m not comfortable saying Jennings should be the player Minnesota takes sixth, especially if Evans is available (I’m seriously impressed). But I can’t think of a player in the draft with more upside than Brandon Jennings.