Did Morey Rig the Lin "Renegotiation" and Punk the Knicks

Intuition is on point. Repped.

 

I agree with you, Morey probably mislead them by playing it low with the first offer and then lowered the Ace when the Knicks never saw it coming. Now they are hating cause Morey played them just right and they might be looking at a loosing situation no matter which way they go.

 

I have to eat crow...I was bashing Morey for such a dumb deal...on July the 5th

and now...

I think he pulled a fast one on the Knicks... but I think they will be looking for payback...

 

Here is a NY video I posted on one of the other Lin threads. It looks at the Nets/Knicks battle for NY, by examining the owners. It sheds a little light on just who Dolan is, in case anyone is curious.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17523470" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/17523470">Battle of the Boroughs: Dolan vs. Prokhorov fight!</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/thejones">The Basketball Jones</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

 

Hell of a read

 

My money is on Prokhorov. I've heard some real bad things about that dude and would not want him pissed at me. Not your typical billionaire.

 

NY shouldn't be mad. If Morey was really trying to screw the Knicks and changed the contract based on New York's comment that they would match up to a billion dollars, then Morey took a huge risk in offering such a contract based on a rumor that could have been a bluff(appears to have been a bluff). NY fans have no right to be mad if Morey said he would offer less money if their team management said they would match up to a billion - you can't call Morey a liar without calling yourself one.

 

Then why trade for Felton? That guy can't even fit into his old NY jersey from a few years ago.

 

Harvard and MIT guys have a lot of respect for one another.

 

Great post, RD. I agree with the basic premise. Even if this wasn't Morey's plan all along, I think when the Knicks started making other moves, he saw the opportunity to redo the terms and keep Lin. Hopefully, he knows how far he can push Orlando regarding taking back bad salaries ("I'd love to take all your crap salaries, but now I *can't*!"). We'll see how that plays out.

Of longer-term interest is how this affects Morey's reputation around the league. I can imagine other GMs looking at this series of situation with admiration, then making mental notes to negotiate very cautiously with DM in the future.

 

Honestly, my opinion is that Morey is just going by the seat of his pants. We all know he has big balls and he likes risks. As a numbers guy (and sadly like most bankers) he probably gets a high from playing with high stakes poker, and that's what this really boiled down to.

I think what happened was:

1. They do the poison pill for Asik
2. They realize they could do same thing for Lin (chose not to keep Dragic)
3. Think its win-win: if NY matches then at least they screw out CP3 competition and get some $$$ for the boss man. If NY doesn't match then Linsanity
4. Probably do the Camby deal as a sympathy trade, like you said NY probably didn't haggle too hard, that Camby trade was minor highway robbery (like a mugging lol)
5. I think that was the end, else why rumors of Rox talking with AB?
6. Then NY started signing everyone in sight, DM and his bros got predatory and jacked it up.

Its a bit of a douchebag move IMHO, it seems like NY was the well-meaning good samaritan and DM turned around, stabbed him in the back then stole all he had. But at this point I don't care, NY has a ton of money and will recover from this. We, on the other hand, need as much help as we can get.

 

Agreed. Would not cross the man if I had a choice in the matter. I mean, did you see those roundhouse kicks?

 

I woudln't put it past Morey to do something like that, well probably never know the truth about how things transpired. I bet Dealing with the traditional NBA execs must be child's play to Morey and his MIT MBA, I bet the guy has his and the other NBA GMs moves mapped out and down to a science . Just Look at Orlando's GM and his laughable attempts of trying to get Morey to up his offer.

 

If you're scared of wolves, don't go into the woods.

 

Spot on.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...in-played-well

People are saying all kinds of horrible things about Jeremy Lin now.

One idea is that he's all about the money -- even though he may lead the league in endorsements declined.

Another idea is that he is not very competitive -- even though he has been fending off skeptics with hard work and great play for half a decade.

Another idea suggested here and there is that he's not worth a medium-sized NBA contract because he's not that good of a player, especially on defense.

Here's where the whole project starts to reek of revisionist history. My two cents:

Jeremy Lin IS a risk because he has only played at an elite level for 886 minutes, and everything about that has the chance to be a little fluky. Regression to the mean can hurt.
Jeremy Lin IS a risk because after that short stint playing long minutes, he was injured. It seems a little nuts to project his health for the next 246 regular season games (three seasons, or the scope of his next contract) when he was shelved after his first 26 games of regular playing time. With Greg Oden as my witness, some bodies aren't meant for the NBA grind. There's no special reason to suspect Lin will have trouble, but you'd feel better if he had 200 NBA games under his belt.
Jeremy Lin IS NOT a risk because during the 26 games of Linsanity he didn't play very well. The simple truth is that, even if you count in his bad games, he was tremendous.


One of the simplest glances at a players' effect is to tally how the team plays when that player is on the floor. Plus/minus is an imprecise tool, but it's no good ignoring it entirely. It's like looking outside to guess what the weather will be like -- look at the satellite image too, but don't forget to look at the sky. It's the heart of common sense.

And it cuts through a lot of hocus-pocus. Box score stats can make superstars out of players who put up big numbers without winning much. Case in point: Carmelo Anthony.

The fact is the Knicks were very good with Lin on the floor. Far better than they were with Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler or Amare Stoudemire. BasketballValue's rankings show that if you adjust for the other nine players on the floor -- who he's playing with and against -- Lin was literally the Knick who enjoyed the most success last year.

Even in terms of raw plus/minus, simply tallying the team's performance when Lin played, he was one of a small handful of Knicks who were starkly in the positive last season. Anthony, Chandler and Stoudemire all played much more, and therefore had much more opportunity to both fail or succeed, but all were squarely negative.

Setting aside team effects, and cleverly rounding up scoring, rebounding, assists and other box score contributions, Lin was the second-best Knick in terms of PER, just behind Anthony and among point guards squarely in the Steve Nash/Ty Lawson range. Lin's also better than Raymond Felton by virtually every measurable method.

Nate Silver has done some rough-and-ready projections, for The New York Times, about the value of a good point guard. Anything close to last year's productivity and Lin is worth what the Rockets are offering -- simply for his play on the court.

Of course, in a discussion about money, Lin's impact cannot be ignored on the business side, where he is second only to LeBron James in terms of potential to affect a team's bottom line. Teams don't profit directly from jersey sales, but in-arena sponsorships, local TV deals, ticket sales and overall team value could all reasonably be expected to jump on any team Lin plays for.

There are reasons not to pay Lin a ton of money, mostly to do with the fact that it's hard to know what you're going to get. But less fuzzy is what the Knicks actually got, which was stellar play that resulted in the Knicks outplaying opponents.

Let's not be confused about that.

As long as that's so, the only really powerful reason I can see for the Knicks to let Lin walk is if they have other, better plans for those dollars and cap space down the road -- perhaps, as has long been whispered, Chris Paul.

 

lol unlikely, thats not the sort of thing you learn at MIT. All of his moves are deliberate and well planned out. Just look at his refusal to offer a 4th year to Dragic, who is a better PG than Lin. Its obvious Morey is setting up the team to have major capspace in the year when Luxury Tax teams will be desperate to dump salary. Doesn't sound like a guy who does things by the seat of his pants.

 

You can be well planned and still go by the seat of your pants. Its like playing chess, you don't know exactly what move your opponent will do but whatever it is you're gonna have a counter to it. That's why DM and his crew valued flexibility above all else, and why they haven't made any moves that locked them to a definite direction Post-Yao. They don't know what the environment will be, and what opportunity will present itself, but they want to be at the right place at the right time when it happens. I think its pretty telling that the only strategy we've heard them say is that they want to "get predatory".

 

More like they were trying to get their high asset FA agent for cheap and got burned.

Regardless of what any media talking head prints Morey didn't so **** to New York. IF New York wants to match they can match with 0 affect on their cap. Period.

The Knicks aren't the Hornets. They're aren't on economic life support. All New York has to do is match, like they said they were going to do. They're already over the salary cap, luxury tax and apron without Lin. Dolan lost more money TODAY in stock price on MSG than matching Lin would have cost them.

Right now in New York it's politics. It's not that Morey put the Knicks in a position where they can't retain Lin or even that their franchise would be HURT by signing Lin.

Either way New York is locked into Carmelo, Chandler, Amare for the next 3 years. Signing Lin would simply dictate whether they have a stable starting PG for that entire period (one who has won them more games on the court and statistically than ANY of those other 3 guys). Year 3 those contracts are all expiring. There's 0 longterm risk or ramifications for the Knicks for signing Lin. ZERO. The Knicks are a franchise that sucked from 2008-2010 just so they could try to get Lebron. Miami sucked for years for the same thing. New York can't invest 3 years into the young PG who won the most games last year? 3 years too long too risky?

The only thing is Dolan would have to spend some money which he has, which he can afford to keep Lin or as a matter or principle/racism that Lin isn't "worth" the extra salary to let him walk. All Morey did was make New York put their money where their mouth is and actually pay Lin market value.