Knicks Defense

A recent article published by realgm’s Modi mentions that the roster Isiah Thomas signed on to revamp back in 2004 was basically a suicide mission.  No argument there, Scott Layden did a horrible job in the wake of the surprising 1999 NBA finals run with Jeff Van Gundy.  We should not have gotten rid of the architect of that team, Ernie Grunfeld, but we can thank James Dolan for that one too.

Yet, when Isiah assumed total power back in 2004, the first thing he did was make the big splash by acquiring Marbury and Penny from Phoenix.  That was followed with more acquisitions, the sum of which never resulted in improved play in four full seasons.  That’s a total of eight full years of our lives we will never get back.  I do not look fondly upon those years of watching Knick games, but I hope the not-so-distant future will bring more glory home to New York City.

Walsh, by contrast, has taken the opposite approach, an approach they said could never be done in New York City:  to get under the cap.  How long is it going to take from now?  The remainder of this season, which is not even at it’s midpoint, plus another full season.

Walsh made it clear from day one that he was going to let the expensive contracts expire (see ongoing Marbury divorce battle) and trade away the big contracts for little (both talent and salary) in return.  He wants to stay competitive in the meantime (hasn’t happened obviously since we are currently 12-19) but we are sacrificing the now for future.

Many people consider this approach to be foolish.  I’ve often read, “New York fans are stupid, what if LeBron does not come in 2010?”  Well that may be true, but there are at least 5 or 6 perennial all-stars that could impact the Knicks in the other direction BESIDES LeBron James.  The odds of ALL SIX not wanting to play for Mike D’Antoni in NYC for max contract money is slim to nil.

When you are tanking a season to get a high lottery pick, there is always that chance you end up getting #7, a Channing Frye, instead of a #11 Andrew Bynum.  At least with Walsh’s under-the-cap approach, I feel more confident we will get an all-star or two out of 2010 than risking another lottery bust (which could take until 2013 to realize the way rookies develop in this league) because we are talking about getting proven all-stars.  Ask Boston what it did for them overnight.

So for me, the 2010 approach is a safer bet.  It may anger some of the relative few that believed our group of players upon Isiah’ firing were headed for post-season glory, but for most of us we were dying for “Obama” level change.  When Isiah was removed twice by the organization in the span of one month, it signaled to most of us, that the roster was going to be systematically dismantled.  You could start with Marbury, you could start with Eddy Curry, or Zach Randolph or Jamal Crawford, but in the end you knew it was going to be an overhaul, so why act so surprised now?  Because we were going to the finals THIS YEAR with Zach and Crawford?

As far back as I can remember, the Knicks have always been over the cap.  The 2010 free agency market has been called by many NBA analysts the biggest, most talent-rich free agency pool in decades.

In four years time, you could have done things differently.  The Knicks had all kinds of on-the-fly visions of how they were going to play, first it was Phoenix east (yes, that was Isiah that wanted to play that way), then we had the inside-outside game with Eddy Curry as the focal point, we had some terms thrown around about some kind of high-post shuffle-cut offense that really looked more like pickup basketball at the Y to most Knicks fans (no plays, confusion on the faces of our Knicks).

All I’m saying is it didn’t have to go the way it did the past four years.  We could have slowly let those scrubs go but we bought more expensive, longer-term scrubs instead.  If Isiah felt pressure from the fans/media to do something immediately, he was not the GM he thought he was.  A real GM sometimes has to go against the grain to do what is best for the team.  Bottom line is this: Isiah was confident at the time that his decisions would produce a winner in the long run.

It never happened.

Ken Berger wrote about it when Walsh came aboard the Knicks this year.  He mentioned that there is a great temptation in New York to spend, because Dolan’s pockets are deep, probably deeper than 90% of the owners in the league.  Whoever gains control of the Knicks is constantly seduced by the big-name, big-salary players, and that, basically is how we got into the salary cap quagmire that finally seems to be coming to an end in 2010.

Of course much of this habitual spending has to do with the Ewing era.  When we had the big fella, we put a band-aid on our team every year by adding a mid-level exception player to our team every summer.  We were so focused on getting that one championship with Ewing that we didn’t see the more long-term repercussions of the annual quick fix.

That still does not excuse never winning more than 33 games during any of the past four seasons.  Even Layden won more games with his scrubs.  Do the math.