I Love NY

There's a report out on RealGM that asserts that Tracy McGrady if bought out would make his way to NY.

For over ten years free agents in their prime have avoided signing in New York. There's always one excuse or another but few players in their prime care a whit about coming here. Oh, they'll blow smoke up our asses about NY being in the mix but its always just a leverage mechanism.

But when those players lose their hops, reach a point of being overpaid that would make a decent man blush, they always turn their sites to NY. One last big score. A paycheck and a rush no one else anywhere on the planet can offer.

And so the media entertains the notion that trading or signing Tracy McGrady is both possible and desirable. In basketball for the Knicks such talk is the equivalent of a Biblical sign that the season is shot and the slide back into basketball hell is just a few games away.

Knicks fans addicted to cap space illusions of grandeur will argue that he's a rental and comes off the books. True enough. But if the cost is existing expiring contracts, who cares? We'll be trading functional, useful players out to contenders and get what may be no more than another Mobley contract to hang on the wall.

The media is reporting considerable turmoil among the players. N8 swearing at D'Antoni during a timeout. D'Antoni trying to unload Harrington as a bad influence on the younger players. And so on.

Walsh may be a good steady businessman but the Knicks like Bill Murray's character in Ground Hog's Day are once again in turmoil, in crisis, with no hope in sight. Walsh, bless his heart is a nice man but his nose for talent; Duhon, Milicic, Harrington, the resigning of N8, D'Antoni, and so on is a grim reminder that while the media is selling a shopping spree this summer any analysis of the available players on the market who the Knicks have a legitimate shot at signing is indistinguishable from a discount bin of bench warmers.

As someone on another blog said, "At least Isiah was entertaining." With Walsh, there is a drone of progress that is no more exciting than waiting for the mail to arrive.