god shammgod wrote:cgmw wrote:We had to mortgage so much to get to the point where we had cap space for Amar'e that other (read: better) free agents wouldn't sign. Then, while still working from a deficit, we mortgaged even more to get Carmelo.
The Rockets have a clean slate, draft picks, and young assets like we haven't had since God knows when. For people asking "who would we get" I'm pretty sure the answer this year would be at least Deron Williams and Dwight Howard, probably. If we had it in 2010, I wouldn't be surprised if we got LeBron. If we had it in 2011, we could have traded for Carmelo and STILL had room to maneuver for somebody better than Amar'e to join him -- CP3 comes to mind.
I dont' understand anybody who bad mouths cap flexibility, young assets, and a ton of draft picks. Sorry, makes no sense to me. Knicks franchise would be way better off building this way even if it meant 5 years of mediocrity and playing 90s highlights on the jumbotron (oh wait, we've already had that for 13 years).
lebron rejected us because we weren't competitive enough, not because we didn't have flexibility. he went to play with the best player available for him to play with. dwayne wade or draft picks, who should i choose ? hmmmm.
Houston has the flexibility to sign multiple max players. That's why they call it flexibility. My opinion is that LeBron rejected NY because psychologically, he's a weakling. But in theory, given true flexibility (as opposed to the mortgage-the-future, dig-ourselves-out-of-Isiah flexibility that Walsh was working with), the Knicks could have offered LeBron a lot more than the pieces we had in 2010.
The fact is New York is a destination players want, and that matters. Flexibility doesn't mean sh*t if you can't recruit. New York recruits. If we had true flexibility and loaded draft picks, we would be in the running for every star player in the league when they came available. Not many franchises have that as an asset. We do, yet we don't use it.
Hence I'm a little jealous of what Morey is doing down in Houston (even though they can't recruit like we can.) Put that same roster in NY, and every headline right now would be about Dwight & Deron in MSG. Two years ago, and it would be CP3 & Melo. Yes, we got Melo. But because of our LACK OF FLEXIBILITY the rest of our roster suffered and is still suffering.