The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

I am prone to hyperbole, but I am not being facetious when I say that I am certain I would have been a better general manager for the Knicks than Scott Layden and Isiah Thomas have been over the past 6-7 years.

Kurt Thomas was the only player the Knicks could conceivable trade. He's the only guy anyone would want and he's the only guy who's not ridiculously overpaid on their team. He's overpaid, yes, but not ridiculously. He's been their most consistent player for 5 years now at least and he's just a solid guy. Kurt's got 12 and 10 every night more or less for the Knicks and he was their best post defender.

It was obvious that they would trade him because they're under the guise or rebuilding or reloading or whatever the hell they say they're doing. There is no bigger Kurt Thomas fan than me, but even I knew he had to go since the Knicks painted themselves into a proverbial corner.

Since we knew he was their only tradable guy, why on Earth did they go and trade him for Quentin Richardson? Q has had exactly one good season in the league and he was the 4th or 5th option on that Phoenix team. I thought they signed Houston to hit shots for them. I thought they signed Jamal Crawford to hit shots for them when it became clear that Houston wasn't healthy. I thought Tim Thomas was supposed to be able to hit shots. I thought Maurice Taylor was a shooter. I thought Stephon Marbury could knock them down when necessary.

There were exactly two consistent scorers for the Knicks last season, Steph and Kurt Thomas. Kurt hits that baseline jumper with the consistency that Ewing used to. He spreads out the defense on the baseline and creates opportunities for his teammates and he's not afraid to crash the boards and guard any big man in the league.

Richardson would be a good pickup for a lot of teams, but the Knicks are so far beyond the point of adding a role player who can hit threes that this move is absolutely ludicrous.

Is Michael Sweetney really the best the Knicks have to offer in terms of an inside force? The Knicks have lacked size and the ability to play big teams for years now and they traded away their only two quasi-legitimate big men in Kurt Thomas and Nazr Mohammed, who was a key role player in the Spurs run to the championship this year, but the way.

This is getting to be absurd. The salary cap for last season was about $45 million and the Knicks payroll was $105 million. The best team they could put together with a team 250% over the salary cap was the last place finisher in the weakest division in the league.

At this point I can see no light at the end of the tunnel.