Comments on: Wanted: Basketball IQ. Please Inquire Within.

By: Caleb

Caleb — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:52:28 +0000

re: salary cap mess – all the crap Isaiah gets is somewhat unfair, but not totally.

The unfair part is that many critics ignore that once you’re a fair way over the cap – say, high enough that dumping two mid-size salaries won’t help – it doesn’t matter if you go sky-high. Isaiah should get credit, not blame, for using this competitive advantage. For example, in the Jalen Rose trade, he essentially paid $32 million for an extra draft pick. Most teams couldn’t afford it, but he can, so I’m glad he did. In MOST cases – as in Malik Rose – he added to payroll but did NOT extend the years in which the Knicks are over the cap.

On the other hand, the Eddy Curry deal is problematic.The same holds true – to a lesser extent – for Jerome James and – and to a lesser extent, Jerome James and Jamal Crawford (who may be an actual player but is obviously overpaid). Without those contracts, the Knicks would be totally flexible in two years. With them – not so easy.

Isaiah basically bet the house on Curry, same as he did when he traded for Marbury, betting that he could be the cornerstone of a contender. If that trade hadn’t happened (and of course the others which followed, once Marbury had put them way over the cap), the full rebuilding could start right now. Oops.

of course, hindsight is 20-20… most people at the time liked the odds on Marbury becoming a superstar, though there were dissenters.

Let’s hope the next big gamble works out better..

By: Dan Panorama

Dan Panorama — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:16:55 +0000

I stand corrected, I just checked out the info on HoopsHype and it is a pretty dramatic drop in salary once our legion of retirees and waivers comes off the books next year.

By: Marc R

Marc R — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 03:40:09 +0000

Exactly. By the time that the young players are out of their relatively cheap initial contracts, both Marbury and Francis will be off the books and the only current contracts will be QRich, Crawford, Curry and James, with QRich and James in their final years of their deals.

Pretty small elephant, if you ask me.

By: Mel

Mel — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:38:29 +0000

we hold onto talent with money obviously , this is the knicks not the jazz or hornets they have the money to keep every1 and also the cap # for the knicks goes down over 60 mil. after the season with houston’s shandon anderson’s jerome williams’ jalen rose’s and mo taylor’s salaries come off the books… and malik rose’s comes off after next year ..there is no excuse not to keep the young guys.

By: Dan Panorama

Dan Panorama — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:04:02 +0000

By the way, I’ve never seen an article about one more elephant in the room regarding the Knicks’ salary cap situation. How are we going to hold onto our best and most promising players – who right now are in ultra-cheap rookie deals – if we still have a 120 million dollar payroll when they get out of them? If David Lee is putting up a double double next year he could easily command Nene money or better. Frye will get something huge on potential alone, even if he hasn’t proven himself as much as Lee. Speedy guards are more replaceable so Nate may be a little cheaper unless he absolutely blows up in the next year, but still these guys are going to cost a bunch.

By: Nixluva

Nixluva — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 18:23:17 +0000

I think Isiah will in the end be proved to have been a much better GM and Coach than people think. Right now we STILL haven’t seen his plan in full effect, but we will soon. The bench will be back to it’s potent best and the SL will be what he intended but haven’t seen due to injury. It remains that his worst move was adding Francis, since it’s just mucking up the rotations, but no one is perfect and we all know Isiah is as far from that as you can get :) Still his moves haven’t been as bad as the record might indicate. This team has some good pieces and it will be even clearer what we need as this season move along.

By: Hudson River

Hudson River — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:16:36 +0000

All those “good” deals were merely good deals because of the draft picks they resulted in. Isiah is a great drafter, one of the best. The Knicks could be demoted to NBDL if it wasnt for Isiah’s drafting ability. Each deal doesnt sound so bad individually, but collectively they were terrible. Why would he trade high picks which he works so well with for anybody regardless of their “potential” if he can get a player with potential who isnt out of shape and has heart problems? At least the sixers are gonna hold last place in the worst conference in pro sports ever. Victory.

By: Marc R

Marc R — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:34:08 +0000

I agree with you about Francis and, to a lesser extent, about Marbury, but taking on Malik Rose’s salary and two number one picks allowed the team to rebuild better than just letting Keith Van Horn’s deal expire.

By: Dan Panorama

Dan Panorama — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 02:20:33 +0000

The trouble is that EVERY bad salary can be justified as “well we were in salary cap hell already.” Taken together however, we are in greater depths than we were three years ago and FAR worse than we could have been at this point had a responsible GM committed to rebuilding taken over. Malik Rose is just one symbol of this. Francis and Marbury are obviously the bigger ones, but nonetheless, we have some serious problems with our long term contract addiction.

By: Marc R

Marc R — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:46:38 +0000

The team actually played better after Van Horn was traded and Tim Thomas played well until he was mugged by Jason Collins in the playoffs. He then basically gave up on basketball until he made it to Phoenix.

Considering the Tim Thomas and Antonio Davis salaries matched, you could actually say that trading Keith Van Horn got the Knicks: Malik Rose, David Lee, Renaldo Balkman, and Mardy Collins.

I’ll admit that Malik’s salary is an albatross, but the team would be way way way over the cap even without him this year and over the cap without him next year (his final year, finally).

Plus, his contract isn’t too bad as a trading chip next year. That doesn’t work for an $18MM player like Jalen Rose because all you can get back is one or two high-priced players, but it should work for a trade to a team that’s looking to dump a solid, albeit overpaid, player making roughly $8MM.