The Knicks Are A Team in Limbo

In April 2008, Dolan appointed Walsh as the Knicks president of basketball operations. Walsh was able to rid the Knicks of contracts such as those belonging to guard Jamal Crawford and forward Al Harrigton to give the team some much needed flexibility in the salary cap. Walsh brought in Mike D’Antoni to be the head coach to turn the Knicks around. The Knicks new strategy was to create as much salary cap space as possible for the summer of 2010 with big-time free agents such as forward LeBron James set to be on the open market.

That summer the Knicks used their new found wealth to sign power forward Amare Stoudemire to a five-year, $100 million contract. Stoudemire primarily received this hefty salary due to the fact the Knicks were attempting to show players such as James that they were committed to winning and developing a top notch team.

Eventually James took his talents to South Beach as he signed with the Miami Heat to team with shooting guard Dwyane Wade and forward Chris Bosh. The Knicks had positioned themselves for James and they came away empty handed.

Hope sprung eternal for the Knicks in 2011 as forward Carmelo Anthony had notified the Denver Nuggets that he would not sign a long-term extension with the team and he expressed interest in coming to the Big Apple. The wheels for the trade were set in motion by Dolan as both Walsh and D’Antoni were not fans of the trade being that the Knicks sent five players to the Nuggets including 2008 first round pick Danilo Gallinari. The Knicks would go on to end their playoff drought that spring, but by June, Walsh had seen enough and thus he decided to resign. D’Antoni had been asked to taper his coaching style to accommodate Anthony and by March 2012 he was fired as the Knicks head coach.

Fast forwarding to the present the Knicks are dealing with a huge dilemma. Stoudemire’s production is way down as he has appeared in just 1- games this season and he is only averaging 5.1 points and 2.8 rebounds in just 14.5 minutes per game. Prior to signing with the Knicks, Stoudemire was a member of the Phoenix Suns for his first eight seasons in the NBA as he averaged 21.4 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. While with the Suns, Stoudemire had undergone microfracture surgery on his knee. Former Suns general manager Lance Blanks had done his research on players and how they begin to break down after the microfracture surgery. This led Blanks and the Suns to only offer Stoudemire $71 million over five seasons. Now the Knicks are seeing the results first hand in Stoudemire, but they are stuck with his contract and his achy through the 2014-2015 season.

Under the NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement each team is allowed to use the amnesty clause once. The amnesty clause was created as a “get out of jail free” card to allow each team to escape from a bad contract. Along with Anthony, the Knicks acquired point guard Chauncey Billups from the Nuggets and in December 2011 the team decided to use the amnesty clause on Billups instead of saving it now for Stoudemire.

After this season Anthony has the option to become a free agent which could leave the Knicks in dire straits. For his 11-year NBA career Anthony has averaged 25.1 points per game and he is a six-time NBA All-Star. Anthony has achieved many individual accolades, but he has yet to win an NBA Championship. Anthony was the third overall pick of the 2003 NBA Draft and every other player that was selected in the top five of the draft that year has won at least one NBA Title. Anthony has been on NBA All-Star teams and Olympic basketball teams with players such as James, but he is unable to join in on the NBA Championship discussion.

Every season since Anthony has been with the Knicks he has been the team’s leading scorer with the disparity between he and the second leading scorer on the team increasing each year. This season Anthony is averaging 26.5 points per game while forward Andrea Bargnani is second on the Knicks in scoring at 14.7 points per game.

The remedy for the Knicks would have been to keep power forward David Lee. The Knicks drafted Lee in 2005 and in his five seasons with the Knicks, Lee averaged 13 points and 9.6 rebounds per game as he was in and out of the starting lineup. Lee became an unrestricted free agent in 2010; the same time that the Knicks were concentrating on James. Lee agreed to a sign and trade as he was sent to the Golden State Warriors after inking a six-year, $80 million deal. Now as a full-time starter with the Warriors, Lee has averaged 18.2 points and 10.2 rebounds per game in four seasons with Golden State. These are the numbers that the Knicks expected and need from Stoudemire.

Instead the Knicks have started this season with a record of 3-11 and they are currently nursing a seven-game losing streak. This season Anthony is second in the NBA for scoring, but as a team the Knicks are 27th in the league for scoring at 92.2 points per game. As a team the Knickerbockers are attempting 85.1 shots per game with Anthony taking nearly a quarter of those. If Anthony finishes this season as one of the top three scorers in the NBA it will symbolize that the Knicks didn’t have a successful season and his frustration will continue to grow. 

The Boston Celtics, Miami Heat, and Indiana Pacers have respectively eliminated New York from the NBA Playoffs in the past three seasons. Each of these teams have built their reputations on the defensive end. In each series loss, the Knicks role players were shut down and Anthony was left doing his usual which is taking 25 shots per game to score 25 points. In those three elimination series the Knicks combined record was 3-12.

Dolan has sent down his edict from on high that he expects the Knicks to win a championship this season. As bad as New York has been in the early stages of this season they are only 2.5 games out of first place in the ultra pathetic Atlantic Division where a two-game winning streak can flip the script for them in a New York minute.

Led by Anthony the Knicks have talent as they are trying to weather this current storm and get the ship righted. But for Anthony to win a championship with the Knicks he must go through both the Indiana Pacers and Heat in the Eastern Conference. The Pacers are currently the top defensive team in the NBA as they are only yielding 86.5 points per game while the Heat are 6th in the category as they are surrendering 96.1 points per game. The Pacers have a dynamic small forward in Paul George who is quickly emerging as one of the top players at the position in the NBA. At 6’9″, George has tremendous length as he was a member of the NBA’s All-Defen
sive Second Team last season. When the Knicks face the Heat, Anthony must contend with James who is arguably the best basketball player in the world currently. As the Knicks were during the Patrick Ewing era, if their star in Anthony fails to shoulder the load then the chances for them winning becomes extremely remote.

If the Knicks fail to win a championship this season you can expect wholesale changes for next season. With the team’s slow start this season current Knicks head coach Mike Woodson is on shaky ground as he might not be roaming the sideline at Madison Square Garden by New Year’s Day. Heading into 2014 the Knicks owe nearly $50 million in salary just to Stoudemire, Bargnani and center Tyson Chandler. As of now the Knicks are projected to be $32 million over next season’s salary cap which will make it extremely tough for the Knicks to improve their team around Anthony. The Knicks will be unable to build their team through next summer’s NBA Draft as their picks are currently owned by the Nuggets and Sacramento Kings respectively. 

Teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers could become extremely enticing for Anthony to join. In Los Angeles, Anthony would be in the second largest media market in the country (behind New York City) and he would have the luxury of teaming with a five-time NBA Champion in Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant. Bryant will be 36-years old at the start of the 2014-2015 NBA season and he is currently recovering from an Achilles injury. But would an aging Bryant be a better option for Anthony to team with than anything that Dolan and the Knicks can currently offer?

If Anthony does decide to leave, the Knickerbockers currently don’t have a plan B in place which means that they would once again be stuck with bloated contracts belonging to overpaid players with the potential of a 35-win regular season. This is the dilemma that Dolan was stuck with before seeking Stern’s help in hiring Walsh. Walsh cleaned up Dolan’s mess that was primarily orchestrated by former Knicks president of basketball operations Isiah Thomas, but Dolan couldn’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar and he had to interfere with Walsh which led to his frustration and departure. Now the Knicks could be starting over “again” and fixing the problem this time many not be as easy.