F Lebron! We are going to only have 22 million in cap space for 2010; so lets play it consevative and say Lebron comes over for 19 million, that leaves 3 million to build a team around him with! The point of sig is to stress there are other ways to build a contender than to just sit around hoping Lebron leaves the his home town team and the best team in The NBA for the rebuilding Knicks.
This is just like the C-Webb to NY thing a few years back that never came to pass. The NY media baits the fans into these stories and people run with it!
Lets Get Realistic about the possibility of Lebron ever being a Knick!
I understand the fact that we may not get Lebron. My thing is if its possible to get him why wouldn't you want to get him. Put Lebron on this team right now and were a championship contender thats how good he is. He makes everybody around him 10 fold better. His alone would win us games.
At this point we really have no building blocks on this team other then Gallinari and possibly Chandler. I'm not sold on either Lee or Nate at this point and at best case we are only retaining one of them. Hopefully we swing for the fences and hit a massive homerun with this years pick. Also with all of the expiring contracts we have and the ability to sign and trade either Lee or Nate we could land a potential superstar pre Lebron while keeping the money close to the same level.
Also to go with your point of us not having money if we sign Lebron it may be true but plenty of good vets would be more then willing to sign for less to play for Lebron and to play in NY.
With big Z retiring and the money it will take Cleveland to sign Lebron they also won't have the money to surround him with a great supporting cast. Guys like West, Gibson, Varejo, etc have thier stats inflated and production inflated to the point where they will stupidily seek money and move on. By the end of next season are roster should be pretty close to Clevelands overall roster. I mean if David Lee will command 10 + plus million i would have to assume Varejo would get right around that money.
In order to build a great team you need atleast one superstar to build around and guys like Tyson Chandler and Joe Johnson are nice players but are not gong to win championships.
To sum it up. Even if we don't get Lebron the key to the new age NBA is having cap flexibility and being smart with your money. If you enter salary cap hell your going to be in salary cap hell for years. Just look what happened to us with our bad trades and signings. Due to the salary cap and bad management we have been one of the worst teams this decade. The salary cap kills orginizations.
Philadelphia is a nice young team but due to the bad contract they gave AI and Elton Brand they will never be serious competitors. They won't be able to sign Young or Lou Williams because they won't have the money to do it.
The key overall is to get under the cap and go from there. With or without Lebron you can't win in this league without cap flexibility.
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