A Knicks Fan's Misery

The New York Knicks on Tuesday night were in last place in the Eastern Conference. This is the same team that finished in second place last year in the Eastern Conference and was projected to make the playoffs again. While watching the classic college basketball doubleheader of Michigan St.-Kentucky and Kansas-Duke, it was impossible to not consider the Knicks never getting good this year and being able to land one of the fabulous freshman in those games. I fully believe that David Stern rigged the lottery to land Patrick Ewing on the Knicks in 1985 and how could I not hope the NBA would do the same and make Julius Randle, Jabari Parker, or Andrew Wiggins the next great Knick.

As I started to consider all of this, I remembered one very important thing: James (Jim) Dolan is the owner of the Knicks.  Jim Dolan, the man who tried to hire Isiah Thomas so many times that the NBA finally said he could not. So I looked and quickly realized the Knicks do not have a 2014 first round pick. It was traded away for Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks’ best player who may walk away in free agency this summer. The reason Carmelo may walk is because the Knicks have nothing to offer him to stay other than more money and the city of New York.

There is minimal championship talent around him, and just this week the Knicks rumored plan to keep him was leaked. The plan is comical, much like James Dolan. The Knicks plan on keeping Carmelo by promising to bring Kevin Love who is a free agent in 2015 to New York. Yes, you read that correctly, the Knicks plan on keeping Carmelo by convincing him they will sign a guy who is a free agent a full year after Carmelo has to re-sign. How does a team that consistently spends over the tax, is in America’s largest market, and plays in the most famous arena in the world fall so far? James Dolan.

This year Chris Smith was described as the worst player in the history of the NBA Summer League. A league where over 75% of the players are not good enough to play in the NBA, yet Chris Smith is on the Knicks bench this year. How did the Knicks end up with such a bad player on their bench? Jim Dolan. If you did not know Chris Smith is J.R. Smith’s brother and only Jim Dolan would force his GM and coach to give a roster spot to someone who did not deserve it simply to make sure his brother re-signs with the team. The Knicks are extremely desperate for an extra big man, yet are stuck keeping Chris Smith on the roster because of Jim Dolan.

Unfortunately this is not the first mistake that Knicks have made regarding roster decisions under Jim Dolan. Jim Dolan was the man who traded away the most popular Knick in 30 years when he dealt Patrick Ewing in 2000. The Knicks could have let Ewing’s deal expire and taken the huge salary cap relief into a summer with Tracey McGrady, Grant Hill, and Tim Duncan all as free agents. No way to guarantee the Knicks would have signed them, but nothing would have been better than Glen Rice, Luc Longley, Vernon Maxell and others.

Jim Dolan was the owner when when the Knicks significantly overpaid for Allan Houston in 2001 despite knowing he was often injured and no one else would pay that much. Sadly the Knicks and James Dolan made the same mistake 9 years later with Amare Stoudemire and his massive deals.We have not even mentioned the fact the Knicks traded two first round picks for Eddy Curry after he had been diagnosed with a heart condition. Those two draft picks were LaMarcus Aldridge and Joakim Noah. Either player would be enough to keep Carmelo on the roster past this season, but instead those picks were traded for 222 games of Eddy Curry over a five-season span.

 Sadly the Knicks can do nothing about their owner. It does not matter if the fans rebel, the fans protest, or come up with some other way to show our displeasure because James Dolan OWNS the Knicks. He is arguably the NBA’s worst owner who has driven a premier franchise into the ground. I can write about firing James Dolan all I want, but it will not mean anything because we are stuck with him as our owner. Maybe one day the team can overcome the incompetence of our owner but until then I will simply go to the Garden and chant “FIRE DO-LAN”!

NBA Salary Cap Part I: The Problem

This is Part I in a two-part series.  To read the conclusion, click here.

After amnestying former math major Metta World Peace, the only contract on the Lakers books for 2015 is Steve Nash. In today's NBA, cap space is sacred. GM's wheel and deal, trying to clear their books so they can offer another max contract.

To contend it used to be an NBA franchise had to get bad enough to get in the lottery, get lucky enough to win it, draft carefully for years, and develop their players. The San Antonio Spurs, Thunder, and recently the Indiana Pacers, are examples of this philosophy. But the Heat, Knicks, Lakers, Rockets, and KG era Celtics are examples of a new way to rebuild- to varying degrees of success. It used to be the best franchise were card counters, playing the odds to the best they can. Now it’s just about buying out the best hands.

Draft picks are no longer the most sacred asset for building a contender. There's been a paradigm shift. Now draft picks are levied to get precious cap space. The Knicks give away draft picks like candy. Yet the team has gone from a bottom feeder to top two in the East, while only hitting on one pick in the process- Iman Shumpert. The Rockets look to be in the middle of a similar situation, if you swap Carmelo Anthony for Dwight Howard and Shumpert for Chandler Parsons. Although the jury is still out on their latest picks, the least important vertex of the drafting-free agency-trading triangle has undoubtedly been drafting.

This is unfathomable in any other sport (except maybe for the Yankees). The same goes for the two time defending champion Heat. Although Dwayne Wade was home grown, LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Ray Allen, were all free agent signings or sign and trades. The Heat's most important draft pick among building this dynasty (besides the ones they traded away) was Norris Cole. The Rockets will have two players making max money on their books who were both drafted and developed by smaller market teams.

Could This Ever Happen?

Now the Lakers are taking a similar gamble. They believe there is a chance they could sign Lebron, Melo, or both and are willing to sacrifice the entirety of the 2014 season to do so. Whether they have a chance at either is a topic for another column (spoiler alert: no).

The Nets are going for it. So much, in fact their salary commitments for next year exceeds $100 million, in a league where the cap is set under $60 million. Brooklyn won't be under the cap until the 2016-17 season, and it will be interesting to watch how newly acquired Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett gel. Their owner is crazy rich, and teams like San Antonio, OKC, Indiana just can't go that deep into the luxury tax, as Brooklyn will be paying over 70 million dollars in luxury tax alone. The Nets total payroll obligations could touch $180 million. A team will be paying one hundred and eighty million dollars in a league where the cap is a third of that.

Although the goal of the new CBA was supposedly to help the balance of the NBA and prevent the big market teams from buying the best players, it seems to have done the opposite. It is certainly not impossible for small markets to win (as the Spurs just demonstrated), but their margin of error is a lot smaller. Even if a major market team has been plagued by bad drafting,it is easier for them to contend then their small market counter parts.

The result is major market teams are at a huge advantage. More troubling, small market teams are not keeping their home grown super stars. The luxury tax penalties are steep, but not steep enough to deter big markets for dipping into the tax to get another max guy. It's like an electric fence that hurts small market teams disproportionally when they try to run through it. 

The max contract is hurting the NBA. Or not. Ratings are up, and one of the best finals ever was played. The NBA has a real villain in the Miami Heat. Does David Stern or Adam Silver really want to change a winning formula?

This is Part I in a two-part series.  To read the conclusion, click here.

The Knicks' Suffering: Dolan's Fault?

A frustrated Carmelo Anthony

As always, views expressed by individual writers do not, in any way, represent the views of the Cornell ILR Sports Business Society. 

In February 201l, there was pandemonium in New York, as the city's beloved Knicks traded for “superstar” Carmelo Anthony. The trade for Carmelo offered Knicks fans a sense of hope that the team would finally be in legitimate competition for an NBA title. However, since the trade, the Knicks have been hampered by continuity issues and lingering injuries, leaving the team in a state of mediocrity. As the 2012-2013 season approaches, the once optimistic view of success has all but faded. As a frustrated fan, it is easy to blame the current Knicks for their shortcomings, but the true fault runs in the organization, starting with owner James Dolan, and his refusal to commit to a true rebuilding process.


For the past 12 years, the Knicks have been repeatedly haunted by a front office that continues to make the same mistakes. Instead of bottoming out and actually rebuilding the team with young talent through the draft - an approach proven successful by the Oklahoma City Thunder - the front office has decided it is better to trade for and to sign overpaid middle of the pack “star” players. The list of overpaid veterans the Knicks have acquired in the last 12 years includes Antonio McDyess, Stephon Marbury, Zach Randolph, Eddy Curry, Jalen Rose, Steve Francis, Tracy McGrady, and now Carmelo Anthony

Marbury and Anthony have been able to lead the Knicks to three first round playoff appearances, but the other players mentioned can be considered complete disasters, as the team has only finished above .500 twice during that span. In order to acquire players, such as Eddy Curry and Tracy McGrady, the Knicks gave away draft picks, which have turned into players such as All Star LaMarcus Aldridge and impact defensive center Joakim Noah

In 2008, when the Knicks hired famed executive Donnie Walsh as President of Basketball Operations, it seemed as if the team was finally headed in the right direction. After a few years of working to get under the cap, in 2011 the Knicks emerged as an exciting young team led by newly signed Amare Stoudemire, accompanied by draft picks Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler. However the trade deadline deal for Carmelo Anthony, in which the Knicks gave up, Gallinari, Chandler, starting point guard Raymond Felton, as well as four future draft picks, signaled the Knicks had fallen for the same trap. What was more intriguing were reports that James Dolan stepped in at the last moment to make sure the deal went through. Adding to the suspicion that there was dissent amongst the Knicks front office, Donnie Walsh chose to leave the team at the end of the season. Although Carmelo Anthony might be a class above several of the other players the Knicks have traded for, his selfish play as well as lack of postseason success should have been a red flag for the organization.

Fans are still flocking to the Garden

The primary reasons suggested for owner James Dolan’s continued pursuit of overpaid middle of the pack stars comes from the claim that the Knicks revenue would suffer greatly if they were an absolutely terrible team. However, there are several financial factors that prove this is far from true. 

Despite not advancing past the first round of the playoffs for the past 12 seasons, the Knicks are still currently the second highest valued NBA franchise at $780 million, according Forbes. Also, the Knicks have been in the top 10 in the league in attendance for all 12 of those years. The primary evidence, however, comes from the 2005-06 season.

That year the Knicks finished with their worst record during the aforementioned 12-year span at 23-59. However, they still finished sixth in the league in attendance, averaging close to 19,000 fans per game. What James Dolan continues to misunderstand is that New York basketball fans are intelligent basketball fans. The true Knicks fan would not lose allegiance to the team over a bad season or two if they saw the team building towards the future through the draft. As the beginning of the 2011 season showed, a young and exciting team that hustled and played hard every night would truly bond with the city.

 For the past 12 years James Dolan has been content producing a mediocre product and benefiting solely on New York’s craving of basketball, instead of operating the team following a true plan with potential for long term on-court success and unimaginable profits for the franchise. Going forward a fan can only hope that whether or not the Knicks long term commit to Carmelo Anthony or not, they will finally learn from their mistakes and focus on building the team through the draft and by acquiring role players without burdensome contracts.