Phyr

Some of you are really understanding our situation. Our team is in fact going to be better then last year. If even a quarter of the Larry Brown/Isiah Thomas/James Dolan rumors are true, then the organziational infrastructure is severly poor. As long as people like Isiah Thomas, Steve Mills, and Dolan are making decisions then selfish benefit is the only underlying motive in all the Knick's decision making. Mills and Dolan have shown that they just need a marginal successful season to fill the luxary boxes, build a new arena, and squeeze the fans for every single dime that they can. Are ticket prices and blocking the Jets West Side staidum benefiting the fan? No. All Isiah has to do is get as many washed up all stars to fill all the seats by sacrificing flexibility and chemistry. The lack of salary cap flexibility is going to hand cuff the knicks into mediocrity for the next couple of years. The Knicks have an awesome youth core and probably in the next 2-3 years might become an 7-8 seed team. But what is going to happen when we need to resign our youth core but are handcuffed by Jerome James, Mo Taylor, and the other myriad of contracts that we have. This is already happening today. Jackie Bulter is 21 and arguably our best center last year. We couldn't afford a 21 year old center with great potential because of Jerome James' contract. Even look at the draft this year. We lost a potential franchise point guard because Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury are gluttoning our background. Not only are there contracts huge but they are the same exact player. "6'0-6'2, can drive and have an above average outside shot, don't really play defense, need the ball to put up numbers". Even 6'4-6'5 shooting guards tower over our backcourt especially if you add Nate Robinson in the mix. Isiah however made the selfish pick. He knows that he isn't going to be around to see Marcus Williams as the starting point guard. He needs to win now. Instead of trading down and getting say a second round pick this year and a first next year, he picks a short SF who can just jump and duck and can't shoot at all. Putting the ball in the basket is probably the most universal skill in the NBA. It is just insane that you picked a player that can't do that in the first round. Unforunately, Zeke picked Balkman just because he can jump around and make Sportscenter when he could have traded out of the first round grabbed the best point guard in the draft and still got Balkman.

You can see a clear line of progression from the Ladyen era to the Zeke era. When we all look back on it the Patrick Ewing trade, Steve Francis trade, Howard Eisley, Shandon Anderson, Jerome James, Allan Houston trades are all going to muttered under the same breath. Don't you remember the Ernie Grunfeld era? He got fired because he traded away our all-stars (Oakley and Starks) for a new youthly core (Camby and Spreewell) and he got fired for it. It took part of the season for the trades to jell but the team made the finals. Wouldn'tve you continued that trend? I guess not if you are Dolan.

You can just see the line of continued progression from the Patrick Ewing trade to the Allan Houston signing.