Continue to match offers for Jeremy Lin

According to Adrian Wojnarowski/Yahoo! Sports, ”They will match any offer on Lin up to one billion dollars,” said one source to Marc Stein. A very wise move by the Knicks because even with the talents displayed by Lin last season, we still don’t know how good this kid can really be. We only had a truncated sample size that didn’t see him play a single playoff game or withstand the rigors of a full season of great fanfare he garnered in his historic “Linsanity” run.

Bottom line the Knicks need Lin for next season, not only for their immediate success but future success as well. If Lin plays as well as he did at the peak of “Linsanity” he will be great trade bait for the Knicks’ real aspiration at the point guard position: Chris Paul. Indeed I would love to see Lin be a Knicks for a long time but Chris Paul is a rare talent and too good to pass up on. And the fact that he didn’t sign extension with the Clippers this offseason means he may still want to play at Basketball’s Mecca in the future.

Find a Shooting Guard replacement for Landry Fields if he leaves

Mar. 27, 2012; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Phoenix Suns guard Shannon Brown during game against the San Antonio Spurs at the US Airways Center. The Spurs defeated the Suns 107-100. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

When Landry Fields was drafted two years ago by the Knicks, I was one of many who scratched their heads by  the acquisition because we didn’t know much about the Stanford graduate. But in his first season he surprised everyone by breaking out with 9.7 points and 6.4 rebounds in his rookies season. Showing a knack to put the ball in the hoop as well as rebound extremely well for a guard because of his size (6’7).

Fast forward to this season playing alongside Carmelo Anthony, Fields saw his numbers dip and struggle at times. Still this offseason Fields has gotten strong interest from the Phoenix Suns in a potential trade for Steve Nash and now he has agreed to a 19 million dollar offer sheet with the Toronto Raptors.  I’m a fan of Field’s attitude and game on this team but matching this offer is on the steep side especially since they’re still other attractive (cheaper)  options the Knicks can make to replace Fields.

The Knicks would first have to decide on either promoting  J.R. Smith or Iman Shumpert to the starting lineup to fill in Fields’ spot. Next they should consider adding another shooting guard to come off the bench and stretch the floor alongside Novak. Some  options the Knicks should consider are Raja Bell, Shannon Brown, and Michael Redd. Both Raja Bell are in their twilight years and are looking to compete for a championship. Bell is reliable shooter and also exceptional defender–although he has definitely lost a step or two. While Redd is still on his comeback trail and produced a solid season with the Phoenix Suns last season and could still shoot from anywhere on the court. But I like Shannon Brown because he’s a younger and extremely athletic option. He could be amazing sparkplug for the Knicks and bring a lot of what Randy Foye–another interest of the Knicks–would bring as well.

There’s a pretty good reason we’ve lost Fields in the shuffle: nobody around the Knicks believe he’s a $20 million player at this point in his career.

In his brief two-year career, Fields has played in 148 games, starting in all of them except five. He’s averaged exactly 30 minutes a night. He’s put up 9.3 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists each night while playing the shooting guard position. After a surprising and stellar rookie season, Fields’ production dropped to 8.8 points, 4.2 reboudns and saw his shooting percentage drop from 49.7% to 46.0%. Not to mention, from the free throw line, he tumbled from a 76.9% in his rookie year all the way to 56.2% as a sophomore.

Every Knicks fan loved the intangibles Fields brought to the floor each night. He hustled, he grabbed important rebounds and he even had energetic sideline dunks that got fans out of their seats. However, of all the numbers I’ve listed above, do any signal to you that he’s worth $20 million over the next three seasons?

The reason the Raptors gave Fields this large of a contract was in part to keep the Knicks further out of the Steve Nash sweepstakes. Toronto believed that the Knicks best shot at snagging Nash, a player the Raptors front office circled at the top of their off-season agenda, was including Fields in a sign-and-trade offer to Phoenix. So, the Raptors brass offered Fields a “poison pill” contract that, if the Knicks matched, would be almost undesirable. That plan backfired in three crucial steps for Toronto.

The first, the Knicks came out almost immediately and said they wouldn’t match that offer. Second, the Knicks surprised a lot of people by showing their willingness to include promising guard Iman Shumpert in a sign-and-trade deal if it meant acquiring Nash. And, most importantly, the Suns eventually agreed to trade Nash to Los Angeles, making all of these efforts null and void. Yikes.

As for the Knicks, there has been a lot of talk recently that losing Fields hurts the Knicks depth off the bench. I don’t agree with that sentiment. Yes, obviously losing Fields doesn’t immediately make the Knicks bench any better than last season, that much is true. But, its important to remember that swingmen in the NBA are a dime a dozen. Every year, it seems at least one team finds a hybrid two-guard off the scrap heep that not only makes the team out of training camp, but then plays a strong role either off the bench or in the starting line-up. We’ve seen it with Willie Green in Atlanta, Gerald Green in New Jersey Brooklyn, or looking even further back to players like Shannon Brown, Jared Dudley, Lou Williams, or, you know, Landry Fields.

I’m not saying James White is going to be the next Landry Fields. I am, however, saying one is out there that the Knicks can find either on the waiver wire or at a veteran minimum. They exist.

So, let me ask you one very important question. Would you pay $20 million to a player you can replace with 1/20th the amount of money?

Once again, Shannon Brown has leapt into the air without knowing what he'll do or where he'll land. Could it be in New York? Although I'm a fan of him, below I explain why I hope not. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

According to CBS Sports.com’s Ken Berger, the Knicks have made an offer to Laker free agent Shannon Brown.  The Lakers have said they’d like to keep Brown, but because they’re far over the luxury cap, whatever they offer him they’ll have to pay exactly the same amount in luxury taxes.  Their projected salary for next year is more than $92.5 million, which’d leave them having to pay $22 million additional dollars in taxes for a total of over $114.5 million.  Them’s a lot of bones.

That of course doesn’t even count however much the new deal with coach Phil Jackson is (somewhere between $5-12 million).  Brown would’ve made $2.15 million this year if he hadn’t opted out of his contract, so presumably he wants a bump up to at least $2.5 million, which’d translate into $5 million for the Lakers.  Their hesitancy is understandable.  To save money (and thus feel okay about resigning Brown), the Lakers are trying to get rid of the $5.5 million contract of Sasha Vujacic.

How much the Knicks offered Brown are unknown, but according to the Berger article it seems like one of their selling points is that he could vie for the starting shooting guard spot (presumably having to beat out Wilson Chandler and newcomer Kelenna Azubuike).

Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about the signing.  Brown’s a good player, but do we need another supporting piece?  My issues:

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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.