Do you think of this as “buying championships” or “buying your way back to relevancy”? Because as a Knicks fan I don’t see it this way being GM’s Scott Layden & Isiah Thomas are the ones that put NY in bad situations over the years in being way over the cap through mismanagement and terrible decisions. And it is current GM & P.B.O Walsh that has fixed all these problems and put NY in good position.
I mean look at this over the years:
Layden/Thomas:
Layden:
- Trades Patrick Ewing for 2 over the top players in Glen Rice and Vernon Maxwell. Along with receiving scrubs, like Luc Longley, Travis Knight, Vladimir Stepania, and Lazaro Borrell.
- Traded away Latrell Sprewell for Keith Van Horn
- Drafted Frederic Weis instead of Ron Artest
- Traded away Marcus Camby & draft pick Nene for Antonio McDyess
- Let things get so bad that a very good coach Jeff Van Gundy re-signed.
Thomas:
- Traded away Antonio McDyess and Charlie Ward for Stephon Marbury and Penny Hardaway
- Traded for Eddy Curry and gave him a bloated contract extension even though he was aware of Curry’s heart problem and inability to get in shape or the fact that he can’t rebound or play d for his life.
- Trades Kurt Thomas for Quentin Richardson
- Signs Jerome James to a 5 year $30 million contract
- Signs Jared Jeffries to a 5 year $5.8 million contract
- Signs Crawford (good signing), but gave him an overpriced contract
- Trades away promising young talent in Trevor Ariza for over the top Steve Francis. Then does the same trading away Channing Frye and Steve Francis for Zach Randolph. Randolph like Crawford is a really good player but once again Thomas overpays for him. In lieu of just molding guys like Ariza and Frye.
- Thomas left Don Cheaney (worst coach in Knicks history) on as coach for far too long and his feud with HOF NY coaches resulted in bad publicity for NY. Like Lenny Wilkens who was fired even after overachieving with a bad bunch and an uncoachable Marbury or signing Larry Brown to the largest contract as a coach getting into disputes with him and then firing him after only 1 season as coach. Then having to pay him for a full 5 seasons later on further putting NY over the cap.
The truth is that Donnie Walsh has cleaned up some serious messes:
- Donnie Walsh and Mike D bought out Marbury and ran him out of town saving up cap space & rid NY out of a cancerous player.
- Did the unthinkable and traded away thought to be untradeable players/contracts in Jamal Crawford/Zach Randolph and got a pretty damn good player and expiring contract in Al Harrington. Also got a slew of expiring contracts out of that like Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobley. Walsh even turned an expiring contract in Thomas into more expiring contracts by trading him for Hughes and Wilcox. And now he even traded the untradeable Jared Jeffries along with Hughes and Jordan Hill for T-MAC, who not only is an expiring contract but his $23 million contract will put NY even lower in the books now that it expires this off-season. Not only that but we got a relatively cheap expiring contract in Sergio Rodriguez who is an exciting player that is a great passer and can shoot the ball and can stay here relatively cheap.
- Was able to sucker LA and BOS into giving us Toney Douglas (promising young PG who played great in 2nd half of season) and into taking our 1 dimensional and overrated junk in Nate Robinson for 2 expiring contracts in Bill Walker and Eddie House. Walker is a relatively cheap option to keep around and he is highly promising full of talent.
- Traded away unneccessary Q.Rich’s expiring contract for an expiring contract in Darko Milicic. Then traded Darko Milicic’s contract for Brian Cardinal’s expiring contract. Then bought out Cardinal to save up even more cap space.
- Brought in unknown Earl Barron who produced for 11.7 PPG/ 11. RPG this season and is relatively cheap to keep around.
