NYKnuniversity
Benchwarmer
Now that I can agree with. I do believe we could have been better off building through the draft, and keeping a lot of the players we had under contract until 2011. Even though we probably wont land a player like Melo, we still could have added some nice pieces that would have been more likely to come for more money (ala our cap space).Great points. Walsh made the mistake of doing whatever the coach Dyke M'Anphony wanted him to do, instead of trying to get the best available players(Brook Lopez, Brandon Jennings, Andre Miller, etc). The Knicks did not need a 2010 plan. All they had to do was draft the right players and wait until 2011, when all of the Knicks' large contracts would have expired, and the Knicks would have been a playoff team. This summer, it's all or nothing for Walsh. And it was his lack of a backbone that got him into this make or break situation.
However, the situation we are in now is not a bad route either. Having cap flexibility is always nice, especially in a loaded free agency class. It's very ballsy to go all out for 2 max contract players, and compromise the current talent of the team, but I hope it works out for the best. I guess this way works as well because even if we strike out this year, we'll have cap flexibility moving forward which will allow us to make free agency moves in the future, and make trades in which the salaries don't have to match. Who knows...maybe Donnie's backup plan is to wait until 2013 when LeBron's three year contract with Cleveland runs out, and get complementary players like Carlos Boozer, or another.
That would be really disappointing initially, but at the same time landing LeBron at any point would be the grand prize. We just wouldn't know it at the time, and it would be annoying...