FanPost

Are we getting greedy here?



Yo, these are the dog days of summer, no doubt. The excitement happened at the beginning of July and now it is really just about counting down the days for some damn basketball games to start up. Now, yeah, we still need to keep things fresh here at Posting & Toasting and we need to flex our analytical muscles and vent our annoyances at Nets fans and other unnamed Sports Networks which love to undersell the New York Knickerbockers. But here is the thing:

I think we are getting away from Donnie Walsh's Big Plan.

Look, God knows we want a winning season and a team that earns respect from around the league. It's been more than frustrating these last years and now that we have finally turned a corner, most of us are batshit crazy about the upcoming season to see how all of these offseason acquisitions turn out. No, it is not a championship caliber team, though I feel like we could very well be on our way to one. But I think we are getting to a point where we may be trying to go too far.

It's not really our fault either. Let me just say that first. This isn't about blame or any shit like that. We have flipped this roster almost entirely in the last 2 months. The free-agency frenzy has really done a number on the league and its fans in trying to understand all of the changes and exposing the perceived notion of team loyalty. It's pretty6 natural to see the pace of things and want to continue that pace until the season starts. That is where we are getting ahead of ourselves in my opinion.

We have our roster right now. Not everyone is signed (Landry Fields, Jerome Jordan, etc.) but it seems they will be shortly, and those are very minor pieces anyways (at least for this year). We have addressed our needs at PG, C and Defense. We have taken on a slew of versatile players who can play multiple positions and we seem to be team of healthy depth. I guage that the majority of Knicks fans like the guys we have gone after and signed or traded for. I know I am very pleased. Yeah we all wanted certain other players, but as we didn't get them, we did pretty damn good anyways. We also didn't blow our financial future either. We have a good mix of youth and veterans, a good mix of offense-minded players who can D-up, a good mix of long term investments and expiring contracts for next year and beyond. So why aren't we stopping?

Because the big names start popping up. Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony. Other players too, like Rudy Fernandez, Tony Parker, Ricky Rubio (still!), and others. What is so wrong with our current roster that we have yet to see play together? It's like we can't stop trying to improve. But we haven't even seen our guys and if they gel. We haven't seen if they can overacheive yet and we seem so anxious to dump many of them in trades to get more established guys. Yo, I'm all about getting guys like Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul, but at what cost?? We love Gallinari. We are quickly loving Anthony Randolph. We already love Wilson Chandler and the more we think about Ray Felton the more excited we are about the probability of him taking a significant jump in his first year of a high-powered D'Antoni Offensive Scheme. Getting these superstars won't come without a heavy cost to our roster either, so why in the fuck are we so seemingly anxious to break-up this collective group of talent? We DO have money to spend next offseason too and maybe it happens that Carmelo Anthony gets traded to another team... but maybe it doesn't.

Here is what I'm saying. We have a roster in place now. A very competitive one. An exciting one. A roster bursting with talent. Donnie Walsh's original plan was NOT to have a championship team ready to go in 2010. Ours isn't championship ready right now. We are right on the track of this plan so how about we chill out on trying to replace parts on this team before we even turn on the engine. No one should be eyeing Tony Parker or Chris Paul right now after we JUST inked a very capable, young, promising, Ray Felton to run our team. No one should be looking to upgrade our SF spot when we have interchangeable pieces like Gallinari, Chandler, evne Anthony Randolph. We can get by with a very capable Azuibuike, Bill Walker, Gallinari (at times), Toney Douglas, and maybe even a rookie like Fields or Rautins at the SG spot.

Lets focus on what we HAVE instead of adding to the neverending speculation of what we could POSSIBLY get. That shit makes us a Knicks version of ESPN. And after this summer... none of us should want that comparison.

This season is going to be awesome.