Good one, 8893. The old, "I'm getting tired of you defending Lin so I'm going to accuse you two of being in a sexual relationship" retort. I don't think I've heard that one since the eigth grade, thanks for bringing back the memories.
Anyway, getting rid of Lin would have been less laughable if the Knicks had not shelled out the same amount of combined money to Raymond Felton and Jason Kidd. Not only was Raymond Felton absolutely terrible last year, but he was 20 pounds overweight and the absolute furthest thing from a professional. Jason Kidd is older than a lot of posters on this message board and coming off a season where he doublessly looked washed up.
Lin's turnover numbers were so high last season because in the time when Anthony and STAT were out, he used the ball as much as anybody in the NBA, thus leading to more turnovers. His turnover ratio was still around 2:1 in that timeframe which is far from terrible, although you'd like him to be more around 3:1. Basketball wise, there are not really any statistics you can point to if you're defending this decision besides crazy hunches backed in zero evidence like, "Lin needs the ball in his hands at all times", or something along those lines.
This is one of the best articles I've seen on the subject:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id...g-new-york-knicks-james-dolan-blundered-again
Sorry for the juvenile attempt at humor; I was picking up on a theme someone posted the other day about Lin and WCH (who, incidentally, had admitted to having an interest in Lin's career, whatever that means). It was a joke, but obviously not meant to be a deflection, as I went on to address the apparently misguided claim directly.
As to your points, first, I want to be clear that I am a Knicks fan, but by no means one who believes they are run soundly either on the court or financially. I've said that repeatedly. But that doesn't mean that everything they do is foolish. Most things, perhaps. But they are still "my" team and I'd like to think about ways they can make things work, rather than obsess about them being the cause of all evil in the world and the villains who killed Jeremy Lin.
I believe Kidd is getting $9M over three years and Felton is getting almost $15M over four. The two of them together will cost the Knicks just shy of $7M per year for the three years at issue. In the NBA, it is the per year cost that matters most. Lin's third year--i.e., the only year that was a problem--would have cost the Knicks $15M. So...you think it's laughable to pay
two players combined
less than half of what you would have to pay
one for the same position? Okay then. I've said all along that I would rather have Lin than either one, but you need more than one. Financially, I understand what the Knicks did and why they did it.
Basketball-wise, I don't know what to tell you, stat-man, except that 29 of 30 NBA GMs don't agree with you. And anyone with even a passing familiarity with statistics appreciates that Lin's numbers are, by definition, a small sample size. No one could argue with a straight face that they are valid for comparison of anything at this point. Again, I would have preferred to keep Lin, but it has become clearer to me that it probably would not have been better for him, or for the Knicks (as presently composed) in the long run. I wish the Knicks were composed differently, and I wish Dolan was not calling the shots. But neither one of those things are going to change any time soon. So, I can either accept what the team is and hope it works it out, or I can be a miserable hater of my own team--in which case I'd rather switch to Brooklyn now. The fact that I am also a Mets fans tells you all you need to know. In other words, I'm not smart enough to do that.
Finally, on the Lin saga. I've come to the conclusion that he, personally, probably did not realize what was going on until it was too late for him to ask some of the questions he probably should have asked if he really wanted to stay in New York. He let his agents handle it, and I am 100% convinced that they knew it all along, and that it ended up pretty much as they wanted it to and hoped it would. It sounds like they did not have the greatest relationship with the Knicks management from the get-go, and things deteriorated from there. They wanted a max deal, period. The Knicks were not willing to do that for Lin, period. As long as they could convince at least one team to offer the max, this was doomed from the start imo ("doomed" meaning that Lin would not end up in New York). As it turns out, it wasn't so much that they convinced Houston that Lin was worth it, but that Houston became desperate enough after losing Dragic and Lowry that they were the only team willing to bite. Houston can say all it wants know about how badly they wanted Lin back, but the facts say otherwise. They did not contact him at the deadline to express interest, and even when they made him an initial offer (the only team to do so), they made one that they knew was likely to be matched by the Knicks, meaning they wouldn't have ended up with him. It was only after they were left without any real possibility of a starting PG that they upped the offer to fend off the Knicks, which just happened to be exactly what Lin's agents had been working for from the start. A perfect storm, as it were, and anything but a simple story.
So, BL, I will admit that I was wrong about two things: (1) My very first reaction that Houston was foolish because the poison pill would hurt them, too, was incorrect. At that time I did not understand that they only get hit with the per-year average, rather than the actual amount paid in the third year. (2) I don't think Lin himself was as much of an active participant in the process that sent him to Houston as I thought originally;
but I do believe that his agents were. When someone is acting as your agent, they are acting on your behalf, so their actions are fairly attributable to you. For a smart kid, Lin appears to have been pretty ignorant of the business end of this, and it also appears that his agents kept him in the dark about the fact that he was not likely to return to the Knicks if he signed an offer that had a max third year.
