Official David Lee Thread.

Who'd you prefer to keep on board?


  • Total voters
    31

Crazy⑧s

Evacuee
So far, all suitors seem to have feigned interest in Lee's availability.

He's had a miriad of calls apparently, but other names have taken priority in the free agent whirlwind.

I've said trade trade trade, but only because of the poor defense and lack of offensive range.

As much as I've proposed deals and whined about the afore mentioned, and involved Lee in s&t scenarios, I can't deny how happy I'd be to keep him here under $9-10m/year.

Do you think he'll hang around?


I feel sorry for him considering players like Troy Murphy and Dampier have huge contracts they don't deserve, and he's not getting the monetary respect he does deserve.

Regardless, if it's sub $9m, welcome back with open arms next season for the Double Double Bubble of Trouble. Or the No D Lee Inflated by Mike D.

However you wanna put it, put it here.

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TunerAddict

Starter
Resign him. Do it for 10 mil or more. We can trade him next season anyway and get something out of it. Better then letting him walk.
 

Kiyaman

Legend
Lee & Nate are not going to accept any offersheet from a non playoff team unless it is a big payday contract. Now if Lee & Nate were unrestricted FA the two would have already accepted the MLE from one of the top contenders in the league.
 

Toons

is the Bo$$
ron is playing for a contender....the champs actually....he took a big paycut for this
 

Toons

is the Bo$$
im upset that we didnt target birdman....5 years 26 mil for denver...he would have been a big hit in NYC. Instead of offering old ass grant hill 5 mil, we should have at least looked at birdman. Also, dallas is trying to sign Gortat to a similar deal. Gortat only wants minutes. It was good to get rid of q.rich, but birdman and gortat are waay bette than bust pick darko.
 

metrocard

Legend
im upset that we didnt target birdman....5 years 26 mil for denver...he would have been a big hit in NYC. Instead of offering old ass grant hill 5 mil, we should have at least looked at birdman. Also, dallas is trying to sign Gortat to a similar deal. Gortat only wants minutes. It was good to get rid of q.rich, but birdman and gortat are waay bette than bust pick darko.

I agree with this
Except Darko could end up being good, don't give up yet.
 
This from the NY Post...

"The Knicks are in the driver's seat with David Lee. Only Portland is far enough under the cap to sign Lee and is hesitant to offer him $10 million a year. Walsh can match any offer. Agent Mark Bartelstein is talking to several teams about sign-and-trades, but the Knicks aren't that interested. "We haven't gotten to a workable place," Walsh said. "We wanted to see if an offer was coming in and I don't know if there will be." Robinson could be in the same boat despite drawing interest from the Lakers, Magic, Bulls, Trail Blazers and Kings. -- NY Post"
 

dre48ny

Rotation player
Yeah Lee deserves this cash. He has worked endlessly since joining this league. I think the NYK will match any offer and a sign and trade for who? The only reason they don't sign Lee is to go under the cap space.
 

paris401

Starter
I feel sorry for him considering players like Troy Murphy and Dampier have huge contracts they don't deserve, and he's not getting the monetary respect he does deserve.
images

dampier/murphy/others were signed a few years ago... its a new world out there... owners are not throwing stupid $$$ at marginal players... and while i like lee/his work ethic, he is def a marginal player...
 

nyk_nyk

All Star
Lee is NOT worth 8, 9 or 10 mil per/yr. Yes he puts up double doubles, but on a team that is terrible in rebounding. If he were in Portland he would struggle to get those numbers since they have more than capable rebounders. Lee plays ZERO defense and you will see his numbers decrease significantly on a better team.
 

SSj4Wingzero

All Star
Granted Ron Artest is taking a paycut to play for a good team, but there's still the fact that we shouldn't be offering David Lee anything more than like a MLE-level salary. Especially at this point when it seems nobody in the league is interested in him.
 

Crazy⑧s

Evacuee
LAS VEGAS -- David Lee sounded a lot Thursday like a player who expects to be playing somewhere other than New York next season.
Speaking publicly for the first time since becoming a free agent on July 1, a clearly frustrated Lee gave a strong indication that he expects to be dealt to another team before the start of the 2009-10 season.
"At the start of this process I was really excited to be in New York, I thought it wouldn't be too difficult to work something out, but now we're forced to start looking at different options with sign-and trades and stuff like that," Lee told ESPN.com. "I'm sure it's going to be something we're not expecting, it's going to be something that's very complicated. But my gut would be that it's going to be difficult at this point to get a long-term deal done with New York, that's my gut."
"But my gut changes about every three hours, so I really have no idea."
Lee, who is sitting out Team USA's minicamp because of his unresolved contract status, said he had spoken to Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni for five minutes after bumping into him near the hotel elevator where the USA Basketball contingent is staying. He said the two did not delve too deeply into any discussions regarding Lee's free agency, but he said D'Antoni reiterated to him how he wants to have him back next season.
Lee is seeking a five- or six-year contract in the range of $50-60 million, with New York willing to spend something more in the area of $8 million per season.
The Knicks were expected to tender an offer sheet to Bucks restricted free agent Ramon Sessions earlier this week, but the lack of any developments on that front seemed to be a signal that New York was working to get the Lee situation resolved before moving forward on any other financial commitments past the summer of 2010.
With the NBA's salary cap expected to shrink again next summer, the Knicks -- if they use their full mid-level exception this summer -- would be positioned to have enough cap space to make a maximum offer to only one major free agent next summer (and it is no secret that their No. 1 target is Cleveland's LeBron James.)
"He has an agenda with his agent, and rightly so, and [Knicks president] Donnie [Walsh] has an agenda that I think everybody knows, and right now they're not coinciding -- and until somebody kind of changes that format, it's going to be a little bit apart," D'Antoni said. "Hopefully we can get it changed. We're exploring everything, and we're trying to stick to our guns a little bit, and that's about it. We love David, we'd love to have him back, but I don't think we can do it at any cost. That's what's being defined right now: What's that cost? And so far they haven't been able to agree on it."
Lee is one of 22 players attending Team USA's minicamp. One team insider said Lee appeared especially peeved that he would not be able to practice following a dinner Wednesday night for the Team USA hopefuls competing for a handful of spots on next summer's squad that will compete for the World Championship in Turkey.
Lee had declined comment throughout this month, but he finally opened up Thursday.
"I've learned a lot about the process, that's for sure. It's been frustrating. I worked hard in New York for four years. And it's one of those things where on paper it should be a great fit, where you turn around July 1 and say 'OK, what are we going to do to make it fair on both sides?' But it's not that easy -- especially with restricted free agency, so it's been very, very frustrating."
Lee thought the process would be complete by now because the Knicks had shed so much post-2010 salary last season in the Zach Randolph trade. But with Eddy Curry and Jared Jeffries under contract for that season for almost $20 million in combined salary, Lee is getting squeezed.
"Going forward I thought I could still be a big piece of the puzzle -- and it's not as though I'm looking at a max contract, or talking about either me OR LeBron. I thought it was something where we could get something done and they'd still have more than enough left over for what they wanted in the future, but apparently there's some disagreement on that -- just on how the Knicks want to move forward. And I think at this point they're not completely sure what they're going to do and how they want to proceed," Lee said.
Given the torrent of trade rumors he's hearing, Lee expects something to happen over the next two months that will keep him from having to accept the Knicks' qualifying offer of slightly less than $3 million, which would allow him to become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010.
"I know there's a lot of teams that are interested, and a lot of the teams in sign-and-trades interested in me weren't teams that had cap space going into this summer. But there's still Portland with cap space, and there's still teams very interested in sign-and-trades, and there's still New York figuring out what they want to do."
Is the "frustration" he spoke of at least a dozen times Thursday causing him to take things personally?
"I'm not going to go with angry or disrespected, that's not the way we feel," Lee said. "I understand the Knicks have a lot of different factors they're considering. At this point they're looking toward the future and trying to figure out exactly what they want to do, and possibly even confused about what they want to do. I don't know that they're 100 percent sure right now, just from what Donnie is saying, that they 100 percent know what direction they want to go in. You've seen that with the different guys [Jason Kidd and Grant Hill] they've been trying to get, and they haven't gotten them.
"It's no fun right now because it's the next five to six years of my life, but it should be fun to see what does come out of this."

This is all I can find on Lee that's recent.

Anyone else?
 

nykway24

Rookie
I love David Lee as much as the next Knicks fan but

I'm really getting tired of hearing how "disrespected" he feels that he doesn't have the offer that HEEEEE wants yet. Now i understand that as a player you want to make as much money as you can and i can respect that, but i feel that David's ability is really being overrated to the point where its just sounding rediculous. Yes the man averaged a double double, a rather weak one but a double double is a double double. But lets take into account the type of offense he's in. D'Antoni's style of play is designed to have alot of extra oppertunities at scoring, thus inflating his numbers. Lets also consider the fact that HE DOESN'T PLAYYY DEFENSE, allowing him a good amount of time to set up for one of his many rebounds, plus i personally think its easier getting rebounds in todays NBA as opposed to 10 years ago when people actually boxed out, but thats just my opinion. His jumpshot is still a work in progress and he is nowhere near the leader we need. He led the league in double doubles and also help led the Knicks to a 32-50 record. Other teams see that also and that would explain why teams havent been pouncing at the oppurtunity to sign him.I believe Donnie was being very fair by offering him 7-8 million a year. What i would really like to see David do is take the one year deal thats being offered, play his ass off this upcomming season and show improvements at his weaknesses and prove he is worth what he and his agent says he is. Then because we retain is bird rights that would put alot of pressure on the knicks front office to offer him what he wants, or he can leave being that he would be URFA. but right now DLEE isnt anywhere near the value that hes asking for, he needs to keep dreaming.

I also think that the Knicks are underrating Nate's ability to run the point. Yeah hes a two, but when giving the oppertunity when he is under control i thought he was our best "point gaurd" last season.
 
dampier/murphy/others were signed a few years ago... its a new world out there... owners are not throwing stupid $$$ at marginal players... and while i like lee/his work ethic, he is def a marginal player...

I dont get it

Dampier plays twice as good defense than LEe and got that big contract coming off of a 12 reb per game season

Murphy like lee similar stats all on losing teams, but can hit the three.

So explain to me why if these guys make the money they made, and are equal if not better than Lee and you consider being over paid, why should we or any one else over pay LEe ?
 

SSj4Wingzero

All Star
Yeah, that's a great article. Fact is any GM with a brain knows Lee is barely worth half of what he's seeking. Nobody's paying 12 million a year for a player who's good only for rebounds and layups and has no offensive game from more than 5 feet away from the basket. That's not even taking into account his pathetic defense.
 
no GM will offer Lee want he wants,it looks like he wants to get overpaid.
he should settle for the mid level before it gets too late.
with the bad economy,no team wants overpay anymore and specially with a player like David who ain't got no defense and is limited offensively.
 
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