FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples Of Clyde NBA Podcast

Who likes sausage?  Well, you won’t after i reveal how they make it, kids.  Let me walk you through this delightful scenario:

• Last year the Knicks decline Sacramento’s insanely stupid offer to take Jared Jeffries for Kenny Thomas if the Knicks also sent Nate Robinson because the Knicks need Robinson for their “playoff run” that ends up netting 33 wins.
• Meanwhile, the Knicks fail to sign David Lee to a reasonable contract extension over the previous two years in hopes of landing a second “marquee” free agent to pair with, ya know, Lebron or Wade . . . because signing one of those two was always a given.
• So . . . the Knicks miss ample opportunities to pay David Lee something like 7-9 million dollars a year even as they watch him constantly improve his jump shot and post game to the point that he is going to average 21 and 12 if he ever plays with a decent point guard, making him worth something like 12-13 million dollars to one of the dozen teams that will have cap space this summer.
• In anticipation of this conundrum, they draft a raw but promising but raw power forward to build up their frontcourt depth and possibly replace Lee if he signs elsewhere.
• They never play the raw but promising power forward and instead give his minutes to Al Harrington and Jonathan Bender’s corpse. Nobody has any idea how good the raw but promising power forward is even though it looks like he can shoot and rebound at a very good per minute clip.
• The Knicks are so happy that they held on to Nate Robinson that they celebrate by benching his ass for 14 games during a period of sustained success and then re-inserting Robinson into the lineup just before they [coincidentally] start losing lots of games again.
• Then they dump Nate Robinson to Boston for  . . . stuff.
• Still in posession of Jared Jeffries thanks to turning down the Sacramento offer, the team must include the raw but promising rookie power forward and draft picks as incentive for the Rockets to take Jaffries.  Why not include  Eddy Curry, since this is all about salary anyway and Jeffries could actually contribute next year to a stripped roster?  Shut up, that’s why not.
• In theory, the Knicks are in a good position because, without Jeffries’ salary they can “slide two max contracts across the table to Wade and Lebron” this summer.  Or one of those two and Chris Bosh.  And then all the planning will have worked to perfection if  . . . two of those players decide to leave their teams.  Because the one thing that both Wade and Lebron have learned throughout the years is that you don’t need point guards, depth or big men to win in the playoffs.
• Humble podcaster Ken Drews wonders aloud to nobody if the fact that Darryl Morey, the stat-geek GM  who finds undervalued players that contribute insane value, likes Jordan Hill means that Jordan Hill might just be MUCH BETTER than Mike D’Antoni thought.
• Of course, wIth nobody on the team to replace him, the Knicks have to take it up the ass from Lee’s agent this summer if the other free agents decide not to come to NY, leaving them with a 9 million dollar a year player who is signed for five years and 65 million.

So there you have it.  If you don’t care how the sausage is made then this is a good day to be a Knick fan.  They have lots of cap space for a deep free agent class, Eddy Curry’s expiring contract (for next year) to trade, two young quality rotation players (Chandler, Gallo), threetalented young wild cards (Sergio Rodriguez, Toney Douglas, Bill Walker), and a top tier coach (Mr. Pringles). For the first time in a decade, the Knicks are in good (if precarious) shape.

Hey, I’d feel even worse if I was Sacto fan (sorry, Ziller).  They get a little cap relief for a major NBA talent, yet somehow Franscisco Garcia and Nocioni are still on their team until the next ice age.  Lovely.

And I’d be tripping balls right now if the Knicks had a GM like Morey.  Jeez, he played Walsh and Geoff Petrie like hand puppets.  Talk about making something out of nothing.  He turns the franchise-killing McGrady injury last year into one of the most efficient perimeter scorers in the NBA, and all it cost him was former second round pick Carl Landry (which is a tough loss mitigated by the fact that they just got Jordan freaking Hill). Not only that, kids, but the salary albatross that he absorbed for all his trouble is a decent player who will contribute to Houston for the next year and a half with his good defense and unselfish play, making him a valuable expiring contract next year.

I will now light Dan Filowitz on fire.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Author: Kenneth Paul Drews, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.