In terms of Felton, he’s an unrestricted free agent, so it’s not really up to MJ — it’s just a straight-up bidding war. Since Felton’s not a max player, it’s not like the home team even has a financial advantage. They could’ve signed him to a long-term deal last summer, but Larry Brown’s supposedly had mixed feelings about him. Although that may have changed ‘cuz they traded away DJ Augustin and thus no longer even have a true backup PG, so now I imagine they’ll be forced to pay him more than they wanted to last year.

Also, I’m not sure there are any point guards in this free-agency season that have a considerably greater upside than Douglas. Simply put, none of them represent such a significant upgrade that would worth 5-6 mill a year.

I rather stick with Douglas (and his rookie contract), and either keep Duhon on the dirt-chip or get another point guard in the draft. I have my sight set on Gonzaga’s Matt Boulding for three years now, I think he could be a really good point guard for us (though, admittedly, I think i’m very much in a minority based on the mock drafts I’ve been reading).

Regarding Felton, I find it hard to believe MJ will let his starting Tar Hill point guard go. They made the playoffs with him, why wouldn’t they offer him at least the 6 mill he’s currently making?

And yeah, though Lebron 2013 is not out of the question, the idea should indeed be that if we don’t hit a home-run this summer we still leave ourselves the option to hit a home run sometimes in the future. I’ve been a Knicks fan since 1985, I’m not going anywhere.

However, if you go for a Ray Allen, you have to at least partly/occasionally focus your O on having him run around & free himself up on picks for open shots. I’d rather those opportunities go to Gallo or Chandler. Maybe Ray Ray would give us 10 extra wins, but does he help us create a better foundation? You could argue that we need a winning mentality, and that if he brought that alone, it’d be huge, but I want more.

If we can’t get the big guns, I’d rather us go for smaller contracts where we can try out younger less established players like Ray Felton and Brendan Haywood. If they can add say only 5 wins, but remain part of the future, I think it sets us up better. And perhaps could make us a more appealing free agency destination for ‘Melo next year, or I believe the year after CP3 becomes available. Hell, in three years LeBron might become a free agent again, and if we’ve got a decent non-aging core, maybe THEN he’d come.

Yup, you heard it here first, start the campaign: LeBron in 2013. He’ll still only be 28 then.

I recently read that Joe’s a small town guy so he ain’t a big fan of coming to New York. That said, even if he’s not a feasible part of NY’s future, the question still remains for Atlanta/Miami/whoever as to how much he’s worth. Two other potentially intriguing factors:
1. Tons of teams have cap space, so on one hand that could drive UP his price because teams won’t want to end up empty-handed.
However, on the other hand:
2. Teams know that there will be a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) after this season which should be much more favorable to management. Will they hesitate to overspend now, knowing that they’ll get much better deals from here on out?