Hahaha!! I'm slow?!? That's funny because I look at you all as typical fickle and emotional fans that don't know sh*t about basketall and ony analyze it through emotions.
I said months ago...MONTHS AGO...trading for Melo was not needed and one of the worst things we could do. That it would fail miserably but the fans would be dazzled by the amount of points Melo scored and ultimately D'Antoni would be fired because of it.
I was right two years ago about how we didn't have enough cap space for two max free agents. Nobody believed me (and Oldtimer). It wasn't until the rumors of us trading Jeffries to Houston surfaced before anybody caught on.
Hopefully I'm wrong about the new CBA. Hopefully all the reports of a more restrictive CBA are false. Hopefully I'm wrong about gutting the team for Melo would leave us with no cap space, no assets and no ability to build around Melo and Amare.
But if I'm right again....Melo will have done something much worse than "spitting in my cereal or fondling my girlfriend".
No matter what they do in the new CBA they're not going to make every one dollar of a current contract = 2 dollars of cap space...so Billups' contract coming off the books, next season, gives us some spending money. And if there's a more restrictive CBA, ie: lower cap, possibly a hard cap, then the $14M coming off the books could be slightly more valuable in terms of what kind of value it could bring in. Players don't get more expensive if the CBA gets more restrictive in terms of what players can make. The only immediate major concern is whether or not we'll get a MLE mechanism in the new CBA, which we could use to get some size on the team this summer. You just said a whole lot of "hopefully" and really nothing else.
I wasn't here for your apparent convos about our cap situation two years ago...but...congratulations? I dunno what that was supposed to prove, the numbers said we didn't have enough for two max deals in 2010 where the first year of a max contract would be about $16M. That info was out there, if you brought it to someone's attention...more power to you.
All of your assumptions that we don't need Melo was based on your desire to build a team around a superstar, and complimentary players. That's a fine vision...but it hasn't worked in quite some time. The league has headed in a direction where you need multiple players on the offensive end who can legitimately run the offense through them. When it's one guy, and the rest of them, you can take away one or the other and have success against the team. Don't know how many superstar, HOF caliber players have to not be able to win a ring as the only legit #1 option on their team before you realize that having a single focal point, while your opponents have 2 and sometimes even 3 focal points, isn't good enough. That's not my opinion, that's Kobe not winning without Pau or Shaq, Wade not winning without Shaq (albeit it a slower, but still effective enough to cause problems down low,) KG, Pierce, and Allen all winning their first one together, Mike not doing much in terms of rings until the Bulls draft Mr. Pippen, The Twin Towers, and then Duncan later on with Manu and Tony, the list goes on. Why subject STAT to a fate where he would be on a team bucking the trend and trying to win a ring with Danilo and Wilson as his running mates? As solid a pro as they are, they're the Trevor Ariza and James Posey's of championship teams, but you still need your Pau, Pierce, Shaq, etc. So I can't help but feel like you vision of how to build a championship team in 2011 is a little flawed.
And then you love to use the Lakers as an example as if they didn't trade Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, the rights to Marc, a ham sammich, and a couple of paper clips to get a max-contract, superstar eligible player in Pau to go along with Kobe, and Odom....who's replicating that anytime soon? They have two legit max players, who both have max deals in Kobe and Pau, and then Odom is a starting PF for 22-24 of the teams in the NBA, coming off the bench for LA...come on dude....
Plus, none of that has anything to do with why you said "13 total assists. SMH. Thanks Melo. I hope you and your wife are happy with all your millions." as if Melo hasn't been moving the ball more than STAT has in the past few games. It makes it look like you're less objective and a little biased against one dude. On Wednesday, Melo went against the typical offensive sets and "flow" and created for his teammates to the point where he led the team in assists...what are you saying? He shouldn't have touched the ball at all on those plays? 6-12 FG, 2-3 from behind the arc, 10-11 FT, and 9 assists...he had almost as many assists as he did field goals that counted against his tally.
If trading for Melo causes us to lose a coach that hasn't shown the proper adjustments to close out games where we have a lead, in 2 years, that's certainly a win-win. On monday I sat in the Garden and watched the Knicks put up early shots in the 4th, with a 7 point lead, not get the rebounds, not get back in transition, and let Boston chip away at the lead until they claimed it for themselves. Then once they had it, they bogged down the game, ate the clock, and forced the Knicks into even more frantic, low percentage, shots....only to lose the game. And you're telling me this is because of Melo's acquisition? Melo being here made MDA not make an adjustment to the way we played the 4th? Really?
The Knicks have lost in that fashion since MDA's first season here, even with our weak rosters. Even sub-par to straight bad teams can hold onto a lead in the 4th or at least keep it close to give themselves a chance (Philly against Miami last night, and Charlotte beating Boston) but the fundamental things that are needed to accomplish that, aren't the things MDA preaches and implements late in games, based on what he's shown the past 2+ seasons. I think that's a large enough sample size to evaluate the dude.