RealGM

In this league, it has always been known that you have to give some to get some. The Wiz traded Rip Hamilton to Detroit for J. Stackhouse and that trade helped both teams. Detroit went on to win a championship and appeared in the finals twice since, while Washington has also been able to contend. Why can't we trade a couple of our young players to further our development the next 2 seasons? Lee is nice, but he shouln't be untradeable. Same goes for Crawford, Curry, Randolph, Nate, etc.

When your team has not seen the playoffs or not have a .500 records in more than 6 seasons, you really can't afford to label anyone as a franchise player, especially if that player is very incomplete. We need to move some players around to get to where we really want to get.

Two way players should be our target from this point on. Guys who are hard workers and guys who are competitors.

There is a very simple problem.

If the playing field were somewhat equal and the Knicks were playing decent ball - their players would retain a fairly reasonable trade value.

As the franchise plummits - so does the value of its players. When you go to trade one of your players - other GMs see the blood in the water and the value offered in return for our "great stars" plummits even further. Throw in the fact that our guys carry contracts paying them 50% more than other teams would likely pay them and trade value nears "0".

It's hard to just give guys away -- that's why all the cry's for us to keep losing so that we can get one young rookie may not be the right course of action.

You need to win, to play competitively to create value or perceived value for the rest of the roster.

Fine - we can go 21 and 61 and get a top 3-4 pick.

But - than we have all the same guys that gave got us that pick in the 1st place and nobody will want them because they are stamped LOSERS.

Every rival GM knows that his local fan base will toast him if he picks up a loser from Knicks and exchanges any type of reasonable talent.

Its a bad cycle - but we are experts at living thru it.