Sergio de Larrea. Shoulda been a Knick.

And that’s not on Dolan.

21 / 5 / 4 against the Spurs D in essentially his first NBA game (if not his first appearance). I suggested this would hurt us more than Mitch in the long term, and I’m pretty confident that’s going to pan out.

But I think it is on Dolan.

Sure, you can retroactively plug in the salary after all the business was done and determine we could have signed him and stayed under the SA.

But the mandate materialized out of thin air. And Begley reported that the front office had been expecting to exceed it and only learned this BS was real right before the draft.

At that moment, Landry, Jose, Clarkson, and Mitch were all unsigned. The front office didn’t know that De Larrea could fit. They just knew Dolan fucked them over out of nowhere and they needed maximum flexibility.

On the one hand, they have a long history of operating this way, and I think it’s reasonable to determine they might have done this regardless of the mandate.

But it was widely reported they loved this kid. It seems to me like they drafted him, tried to see if he’d do the Dadiet thing and take 80% of the rookie slot so they’d have flexibility, and traded him when they realized that wasn’t going to work. That would explain the delay between drafting him and trading him.

I just think it’s not fair to look at all the facts that they didn’t know at the time (like how much Landy and Jose would cost) and determine they could have done this. These guys had a long term plan and Dolan fucked it all up right before the start of the draft. How can you blame them for a mistake they might have made in the immediate aftermath of dealing with that uncertainty?

I also think Leon earned both the benefit of the doubt and a grace period from criticism. Whereas Dolan, who’s been stepping in shit since game 3 of the NBA finals, either has not or has blown through his already. So if it’s unclear who is to blame (and I think in this case it is), I think it’s safe to assume it’s him.