Miami snagged this trio over the summer. I'd say that's a pretty good off-season, wouldn't you? But how good...? (Source: Yardbarker.com)

In part III of this series, we’ll be looking at off-season moves of the teams that make up the Southeast Division: the Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Bobcats, Miami Heat, Orlando Magic & Washington Wizards. If you wanna check out the first two parts, we covered the Atlantic Division and the Central Division.  The upcoming parts will look at the Pacific Division, Southwest Division and Northwest Division.The rules, as previously stated:

1. Rather than a standard A through F grade or going for a scale of 1-10, we shall use a system that my friend Noriko loves: -5 through +5.  It helps differentiate things a bit more, ‘cuz like if a team gets a C-, it’s better than an F, but is it good?  With this scale, you can instead give the team a +1, which shows that they improved the team, but only marginally.  Or maybe they get a zero ‘cuz they didn’t hurt the team or help it.

2. These grades are not, I repeat, NOT, about how good teams will be.  It’s purely about how good their summer moves were.  For instance, the Sacramento Kings may get a higher grade than say the Orlando Magic, but that doesn’t mean I’m insane and think the Kings will be better than the Magic.  It simply means I like the Kings’ draft of DeMarcus Cousins more than the Magic’s signings of Quentin Richardson and Chris Duhon (although I haven’t fully examined those teams yet, so I dunno what grades they’ll get).

3. The grades are not just based on how good the players are, but also their contracts.  Joe Johnson is definitely a top 30 player, but with Atlanta giving him $120 million/6 yrs, the largest contract of anyone this summer, his signing turns into a negative.

4. Grades will be scaled based on what each team could have done.  Meaning the Lakers, a team over the salary cap, get major kudos for snagging Steve Blake, Matt Barnes, Theo Ratliff and bringing back Shannon Brown with their limited financial flexibility, but if say the Knicks, with all their cap space, had only made those moves, I’d pan ‘em.

5. Fit matters.  I like Kirk Hinrich a ton, and had he gone to the Pacers (a team that desperately needed a point guard before the Collison trade), I would’ve raved about the move.  However, Washington acquiring him is a bit odd considering they already have PGs in John Wall and Gilbert Arenas.

And now…

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Chris Paul would love to come to NYC to play with Amar'e & Melo plus hang at the Garden with people like rapper Common (source: Yardbarker.com)

Amar’e Stoudemire passed on the info that at Carmelo Anthony’s wedding this past weekend, Chris Paul made a toast that he and ‘Melo would team-up with Amar’e on the Knicks to form their own Big Three. The NY Post humorously reports:

Attendee Spike Lee nearly passed out at the suggestion.

Could it actually happen? Well… (more…)

In fact, LeBron’s decision can conceivably help us eliminate another team that outperformed us: the Charlotte Bobcats. Since LeBron didn’t take our money, we can now address one of our weaknesses (point guard) by going after the Bobcats’ Ray Felton. Should we get him, we not only improve ourselves, we weaken Charlotte. That would leave only 6 definite playoff teams (Boston, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago and Milwaukee). With us being perhaps the only team in the bottom half of the east to improve, we would be one of the favorites to land one of the remaining two spots.

Sure, it’s a huge drop to go from LeBron making us potential contenders to being happy just to make the playoffs, but hey, let’s not kid ourselves, we haven’t even made it to the second season in a long time.

Baby steps.

Then next off-season we add a Tony Parker or Carmelo Anthony and can jump to being a top four team in the east.

Amar'e, already acting like a regular New Yawker, caught a Yankee Game on July 4th. Can he draw other stars here? Or will we end up not even giving him an offer? (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Amar’e Stoudemire, out on the town catching a musical, revealed that he’s already trying to recruit players to join him in New York:

“I’ve talked to Carmelo Anthony that he needs to come out here,” Stoudemire said. “I’ve talked to Tony Parker. Both guys are ready to join me if I decide to come here. So we will see if we can work it out.”

Discussing that possibility, ESPN’s Chris Sheridan wrongly reports:

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Duhon may shoot the ball like a blind paraplegic, but he's one of the few Knicks to play some defense. Is that enough to warrant keeping him? (Source: Yardbarker.com)

For those of you who are new to the neighborhood, no, the title of the post isn’t a stab at Chris Bosh’s recent Twitter post — it’s a Clash homage.  We introduced the idea to this series a couple of weeks ago: an analysis of the 10 Knicks who we don’t have under contract for next year.  Going alphabetically, we already examined Earl Barron and Jonathan Bender.  Skipping over definite returnees Wilson Chandler, Eddy Curry & Toney Douglas, we now arrive at the man who was our starting point guard for the majority of the last two seasons: Christopher Riley Duhon.  Okay, I made up the Riley part, but it sounds right, don’t it?

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Joe Johnson – Atlanta Hawks

As we discussed after the recent Knicks/Hawks game, JJ has a nice relationship with Coach Mike D’Antoni from their time together in Phoenix, plus the Knicks have somehow managed to look competitive this year in the three games he played against us.  When JJ was on those D’Antoni Suns teams, although he was huge for them, at the time he was considered to be at best their fourth most important player (after Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudamire & Shawn Marion).  Joe rightly felt he could be more, a centerpiece, and he wanted to be paid accordingly.  Having achieved all that with the Hawks, he now has reached the point most vets get to: the main thing he wants now is the chance to play for a championship.  He is even one of the few stars who has literally put his money where his mouth is and has stated he’d be willing to take a bunch less money to be on such a team.

Now don’t misunderstand: he knows he has a very good thing going with the Hawks and that they are a really, really good team.  He’s not gonna just leave them to play on a mid-level Knick team.  So ignore this quote in the NY Daily News:

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New Yorkers, rightfully, are worried that this is an all-or-nothing proposition.  Basically, unless we get LeBron James or Dwayne Wade, we’ll just be a slightly above average team.  Kinda like how we looked with Crawford & Randolph.  While there are other studs available this summer like A’mare Stoudamire, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Carlos Boozer, none of ‘em are mega-stars who ensure you’ll have a legit shot at winning a championship.  Those second-tier guys just assure that you’ll make the playoffs.  Even if you do get two of ‘em.

So if we don’t get Plan A, does that mean Plan B is doomed to fail?  Not necessarily.  Most Knicks fans are worried about Plan B, but that’s ‘cuz they assume it means not just that we sign two lesser talents, but that we sign them to more than they’re worth.  The fear is that we do something like the Pistons did this summer, when they had a bunch of cash and felt compelled to spend it, thus overpaying for Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, both of whom are currently coming off the bench for Detroit.  Likewise, several years ago a few teams cleared cap space to sign Tim Duncan and Grant Hill.  After Duncan stayed with the Spurs and Hill went with Tracy McGrady to Orlando, Chicago paid a bunch of money to some scrubs just to say they got someone.

Now if Isiah was still in charge, sure, we all know he would definitely follow that path, but doesn’t Donnie Walsh deserve the benefit of the doubt?  Besides the remarkable salary dumping job he did for us, he had quite a run with the Indiana Pacers.  Not only did he assemble enough talent for them to constantly be in the top of the east during the late 1990s, but he even got that team to Finals against the Lakers in… what was it, 2000?  And after that within a year or two he had completely rejuvenated that team, getting rid of Rick Smits, Mark Jackson, Dale Davis, Antonio Davis, Jalen Rose, and turning them into a young Eastern Conference contender around Jermaine O’Neal, Brad Miller, Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson, Jamaal Tinsley, and the still effective Grandpa Reggie Miller.  This was a team that seemed poised to make it to the finals for the next few years until the unfortunate Malice At The Palace, players-and-fans-scuffle.  Has a team ever been turned around that quickly with a completely new cast?  The Lakers new team is still built around Kobe, one of their two supernova stars from their earlier three-peat.  The old-time Celtics won like 11 championships with various supporting stars, but they all centered around Bill Russell.

Fine, you say, we’ll give Walsh a chance.  But if he doesn’t get LeBron or Wade, what can he reasonably do to get the rest of the cream of the crop?  The key is getting some supporting parts at reasonable prices.  Houston has been excellent at that, getting solid unflashy guys like Shane Battier, Trevor Ariza, Luis Scola, and Carl Landry on the (relative) cheap.  Get Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson to agree to slightly less than the max, and then try to snag Ray Felton, Brendan Haywood, Josh Childress, Shannon Brown, Rudy Gay, Manu Ginobili, Kyle Korver, or Mike Miller on the cheap.  Maybe David Lee or TMac will agree to a lesser deal.  It would be pretty solid to have a line-up of Bosh, Lee, Gallo, Chandler, and Felton with Childress, Brown, Miller & TMac coming off the bench.

Yes, that’d still probably only get us to 4th or 5th in the East, but here’s the thing: it also would keep us out of the tax.  Since you personally don’t have to pay the tax as a fan, you probably don’t care, but it matters a bunch.  Why?  It means that the following summer, 2011, when Eddy Curry’s $11.3 million salary comes off the books, we can use that full amount to sign someone else.  If we give out excessive contracts this summer, we’ll go over the cap and won’t be able to add anyone new after we get rid of Curry.

With that $11+ mill, we could have a real shot at such 2011 free agents as Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Greg Oden, Jason Richardson, Samuel Dalembert, Jeff Green, David West, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Shane Battier, Aaron Brooks, Tayshaun Prince, Rodney Stuckey, J.R.Smith, Nene, Caron Butler, Joakim Noah, Boris Diaw, Kendrick Perkins, Jamal Crawford, Al Horford, and some guy named Carmelo Anthony.  Adding just one of those guys to the above roster would probably elevate the team to one of the East’s elite.  Adding Melo would bring a very real possibility of winning multiple championships.

By having a few reasonable, desirable smaller contracts, we could also trade Curry’s expiring contract in the middle of next season, so we wouldn’t even have to wait for 2011.  Like by next year the Celtics will finally have to accept that Kevin Garnett is so half-dead he’s practically a zombie.  They realize they need to blow up the team, so they decide to get rid of Paul Pierce for an expiring contract.  He makes more than Curry, but we throw in Mike Miller to make things work.  Using those contracts would also help if say someone like Melo wants more than that $11 mill.  We basically give a Mike Miller to a team for free (like only getting a second round pick in return), and then we have like another $3 mill available to pay Anthony.

The point is that it’s not LeBron/Wade or mediocrity.  It’s about not returning to the ways of Scott Layden & Isiah Thomas (& honestly lots of other GMs), and overpaying mid-level players.