Yea i doubt lebron leaves cleaveland Wade i think stays in miami or goes to chicago Bosh either stays or ends up in a sign and trade ( to the rockets :grin: ) Even if new york ends up with a pretty good winning record by getting some good free agents morey has shown he can draft really good players with high draft picks so its a win win really
Its obviously a gamble with big potential for us but I think people are over-blowing the 2011 swap aspect of the trade. If we knew for a fact the Knicks would win the title that year I still think we make the deal.
Out of curiosity, is that 'right to swap picks' thing even something which CAN be traded formally? I mean, I know the Rockets could simply select the player the Raps want at that spot, and trade him to them during or after the draft, but is that a 'chip' which they can trade away to another team? It just seems to me that that particular deal could possibly be just between the Rox and Knicks and nobody else.. I mean, what is we traded that 'right to swap' deal to, say, the Lakers? Would the Knicks then be swapping with the Lakers? Or still just swapping with the Rockets' spot in the draft, or what? How does that work?
Has anyone thought about how this may all go down if Knicks do not end up getting either LBJ or Wade? Could lead to a domino reaction where we end up with 2 lottery picks!
Alternatively, if the Knicks don't land any major free agents and they get off to a rough start next year, it gives them even more incentive than usual to tank because of the protections on the pick swap. If the Knicks have a higher pick than the Rockets next year, the Rockets get that pick and the Knicks get the Rockets' pick. The Rockets can then trade that Knicks pick. I'm pretty sure they can't force the Knicks to swap picks with another team.
Knicks will get Rockets' pick; so we can't "trade" the right to swap w/ the Knicks to the Lakers. However, we can always let Lakers draft using the Knicks pick by activating the swap, while we draft using Laker's pick.
If we end up with a lower pick and we swap with NY, say if they have 10th and we have 15th, we could definitely trade 10th on draft day or after the lottery even?
I feel like the worst the Knicks will get will be Amare Stoudemire and Joe Johnson or Rudy Gay. Both Joe and Amare love playing in Mike Dantoni's system, so if they were to move on this summer I can definately see them both signing with New York. If you pair the two of them with a resigned Lee and maybe a semi healthy tmac. You could argue they are at least the 4th seed in the east and we will not get to swap picks with them next year. Since ATL minus Joe Johnson just won't be the same.
They can't resign Lee if they get 2 max free agents. If T-Mac is semi-healthy then he will command more money than they can afford too. Essentially, if they get 2 max free agents then it will be those 2 max free agents + 4 guys they already owe guaranteed contracts to next year (Eddie Curry, Wilson Chandler, Gallo, that other rookie guy) and 6 veteran minimums.
I think the importance of the 2011 swap is somewhere in between where you had it and where the article had it. It's not that they "clearly... don't think James is going to New York," it' really a matter of probability-- that they think there is a non-trivial chance (maybe something like 25%, maybe 50/50, maybe more) that NYK will be bad for one reason or another. Either they don't land good enough FAs to become good. Alternatively, maybe whatever FA they do land will have injuries and, given that, at best, they'll essentially go forward with the 2 FAs, Gallinari, Douglas, Chandler (i.e. what's left of their lotto team this year, minus Lee) and a bunch of minimum wagers, an injury to one of the main guys can be very costly. There is even a chance that if they don't end up with 2 max FA, they'll end up with none because the max FAs will go to one of the other teams with cap room and a better (or at least deeper) supporting cast. Anyhow, even if there is only, say, a 20% or 25% chance that NY will suck, this pick swap is still pretty significant. How often do you get even a 20% chance to land a good lotto pick? I think Morey probably wouldn't do the deal if he knew the swap would be worthless. He might have taken another deal from another team. But it's not true to say that Morey expects NY to suck. He's not expecting anything, just taking chances.
It would be so awesome if the Knicks fail to sign LBJ, Wade, Bosh, or Johnson, and end up getting the 2nd pick. At that point in time, Walsh might go down as THE worst Knicks GM.
Donnie Walsh must have something in writing saying 2 of the top free agents are going to New York. I just don’t see how he can go all in with no guarantee that he will land top free agents and jeopardize the franchise like that….it's just insane.
It's not neccesarily "insane." Like I said, things like this are probabilistic. Walsh doesn't need a "gurantee" from FAs to make this deal reasonable. For example: Let's consider this very simplied scenario: If Donne Walsh knows that (1) there is a 10% chance for him to land Lebron without the TMac trade and (2) there is a 50% chance for him to land Lebron with the TMac trade, does Walsh do the trade? I think the answer is yes. Lebron James is so good that a significant increase in odds of landing him is worth the gamble (of screwing yourself out of lotto pick) even without a "guarantee."
Don't think I've seen a clear answer in this thread to this question...but I would think that we could trade the rights to our 2011 first round pick with that stipulation attached. The right to swap would still be based on our record versus the Knicks record ... it would just be a new team that actually owned that pick if we traded it to them. It WOULDN'T mean that the team that we trade the pick to would compare their record to the Knicks and be able to swap from their position. ie if we trade the pick next February to the Blazers (or insert any other team), the Blazers would own our pick, but the swap would be based on where that pick ends up based on our record. The Blazers wouldn't be able to swap their original first rounder with the Knicks first rounder. I think that's what you were asking, anyway.
Well... it is not like they have anything to lose you know... If they fail to get any of the top FA, they can still sign other players next year or the following years. No matter what happens, it is still better than holding onto the mess Isaiah Thomas had left them.
