The New York Knicks have high hopes for the 2015 offseason, from who they’ll draft to who they’ll sign in free agency.
Enter Donnie Walsh, former Knicks president and current reality-check carrier.
Speaking on SiriusXM Radio, Walsh implored the Knicks and their fans against placing too much stock in free-agency coups. He did everything except hold up the warning sign for Phil Jackson.
From the New York Post‘s Marc Berman:
“That’s one of the most misunderstood things in the NBA, to be honest with you, that you can talk a veteran NBA player into coming to a city just by sitting down with him, talking to him and offering him the most money,” Walsh said on SiriusXM radio. “These guys know what they want to do. They have their own agendas, and they know whether they want to go to New York or they don’t want to go to New York. And there are a lot that want to go to New York, so it isn’t like there aren’t people out there.
“But if you pick out, let’s say, LeBron James, you don’t know like what he wants to do. If you think you can go up and talk to him for a while and he’s going to come flying down there, that’s not going to happen. They see their careers in certain ways and what they want to do, they want to do.
“I don’t think it’s really up to Phil Jackson to talk them into it. They know if they get the salary they want, they know what New York’s all about, if they want to get into that, a big city like New York and live in it and an exciting city with good fans, then they’re going to do it. If they don’t like that, and not everybody likes that, they’ll go somewhere else.”
Woof.
This is exactly what the Knicks and their fans don’t want to hear. And yet, they need to hear it.
Walsh is a harbinger of summer 2010 and therefore knows what he’s talking about. The Knicks settled on Amar’e Stoudemire because their main options wanted no part of their rebuild. Neither LeBron James nor Dwyane Wade nor Chris Bosh nor Joe Johnson bought what they were slinging.
Joe freaking Johnson spurned the Knicks. Think about that. And while his decision to remain with the Atlanta Hawks was likely the direct result of the sixth year and tens of millions of dollars more they could offer him, that’s kind of the point.
Poaching free agents isn’t just about selling them on your vision. In most cases, when it comes to free agents who matter, it’s about convincing them to take less. Any free agent worth signing can ink a longer, more lucrative deal with his incumbent team. That’s just how it works. So the Knicks aren’t only battling their season-long shit show; they’re trying to contend with dollars and cents and sense, as a bad team, in a big market with super high taxes, at a time when endorsement opportunities seldom vary by bailiwick.
It doesn’t seem like their offseason is fated for a happy ending–not unless one or two brave, ado-worthy souls decide New York and its Knicks are worth the cost of winning immediately and, most importantly, precious earning potential.
