Isiah's Advocate 33
Benchwarmer
I was thinking about the whole Ron Artest trade rumor situation, and how he may or may not be headed to the Knicks. Then I was reading on ESPN.com how a couple of trade proposals the Lakers shot down due to not wanting to part with Bynum,Odom, or a package containing both. Then I began to understand Kobe's frustration a little, see I think we're in a similar boat as the Lakers. We need Ron like the Lakers need a complimentary player to Kobe, but we have players tagged "untradable". Again I think David Lee is to our team as Bynum is to the Lakers, a very talanted Big with a huge upside, but both teams management won't part with these players for the good of the future, so they remain mediocore with the hope of being dominent one day.Too many GM's in the League run their rosters like college teams who pick up a great freshman class in the hopes that they will grow together and be a force come their Junior and Senior seasons, the problem is I can't think of one team in recent years that started out young together, all stuck together and won a championship contender. So focusing on just the Knicks now I have to say that we are not good enough a team to have "untradables'". If there is a player out there who can make us into a championship contender that we have to persue it, and yes we may have to sacrafice a player who actually plays well, and doesn't just have a tradable contract. Aside from the Q Rich trade for Kurt Thomas, all of our moves have been pretty lopsided in our advatage from a talent standpoint. I mean if Steve Francis had worked out as expected, he too wouldv'e been another example of our lopsided trades. Look Dany Ainge got Garnett because of Mchale and his relationship, but even still he had to give up some significant peices to pull it off. So the word is we only part with D.Lee if we can land a player like Kobe Garnett etc. further reiterating our "something for nothing" trade thinking. Bottom line David Lee can't be the centerpeice to our trade proposal for a superstar. I've said this before what is the point of having David Lee if you really are expecting Zach to be your future PF? We are not a bad rebounding team even without Lee, we are a bad perimeter D team! If we can sacrafice a rebounder who can't play the perimeter, for a player who can play the perimeter and is a decent rebounder, then I would gladly pull the trigger on this deal. Not to just pick on Lee, I like his game, but he won't land us Kobe I don't care who we package him with, he is as one dementional as any of our combo guards (really think about it), Balkman won't ever grab as many boards as D.Lee, but he is indeed more versitile. Plus if we put David Lee in a package we can ship out one of our garbage contracts ie. Jerome James or Jared Jefferies and still could wind up with a pick from Sac. Not to mention David Lee's minutes will go down next season, so why not trade him somewhere where he can start? Look to wrap this up we need to stop trying to squeeze a home run out of a bunt, lets make the neccessary changes to make us legit again.