The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

A message for the Knicks: New York fans are smart. They know that the team sucks and they know that you're way over the salary cap. They would understand if you rebuilt the team and just admitted to sucking for the next 5 years instead of trying to hide it for the next 10.

I don't understand any of the off season buzz for the Knicks so far. First of all, Phil Jackson will never, ever coach this team. I don't know why they're talking to him or even floating his name. Phil only coaches teams that are favored to win, and the Knicks are anything but that. It would be interesting to see Marbury, Crawford, and Kurt (superfly) Thomas in the triangle offense, though. I think they'd make it work to a certain extent.

Second, why is Larry Brown's name out there as the next potential coach of both the Knicks and Lakers? He's got a team that's already built, is playing well, and is the defending champion. Why would he want to leave them just to go to a worse team? Larry is notorious for his commitment issues with teams, but it just seems ludicrous for him to want to leave Detroit for a different coaching job. If he were going to just stop coaching for a season, then I could see it, but to leave for another team seems pretty stupid.

If neither one of these guys is the coach of the Knicks next season, and I would be enormously surprised if either of them were the coach, the worst thing the Knicks could do would be to keep Herb Williams as the head coach. He's a good dude, and he's also a pretty good coach, but this team is going absolutely nowhere. They are too far over the cap to change their roster significantly, and they can't bring in any free agents. Every single player on that roster is overpaid and underperforming, with the exception of Kurt the Flirt, who is also overpaid, but performing up to his abilities. To remain absolutely stagnant is just to admit defeat.

The only possible moves the Knicks could make would be to package Kurt Thomas and hopefully a salary dump for a marginally better player. That would be a sad day. Also I suppose they could trade Marbury if someone were willing to take him, but who could they possibly get in return for him? There is no way the Knicks would get equal value if they traded Steph. Also that would change the face of the franchise, and I don't think Isiah wants to do that.

Bottom line, the Knicks are going to Suck with a capital S for years to come. The best move would have been to wait out their salary cap woes and lure a huge free agent to the team in the next year or two (LeBron, anyone?). Now they can't do that, however, since they added to the salary cap in order to get fucking Malik Rose and Maurice Taylor.

In absolute complete honesty, I think that I could have run the Knicks better than Scott Layden and Isiah Thomas have over the last 5 or 6 years. I was literally yelling at my TV for them draft Ron Artest. Instead of drafting Amare Stoudamire, they drafted Nene, fine, but then traded him for McDyess, who played something like 15 games in a Knick uniform. Marcus Camby is playing his heart out in Denver now, as is Nene.

I almost feel like a Cubs fan trying to route for the Knicks. I just know that they won't compete for at least 5 years, but I want them to do well. At least if they had some young guys we could watch them develop like the Bulls have.

The best plan would be for them to build around Marbury, Sweetney, Crawford, and Ariza. I'm willing to accept that Crawford can improve in time, even though he's enormously frustrating to watch at the moment. They need to lose (but don't have any viable means of doing it) Tim Thomas, Allan Houston, Maurice Taylor, Jerome Williams (even though I like him), and Penny Hardaway. Kurt Thomas and Malik Rose can play significant roles, but only for the next 3 to 4 years.

I feel strongly without being 100% sure that they traded their first round draft pick this year. They do have San Antonio's or Phoenix's pick, but those are worthless at the end of the first round.