Knicks' Offseason Plans 101: Are They In Position To Land Stars Of 2010?

When Donnie Walsh was hired by the Knicks in April, he immediately had his eyes on the summer of 2010.

Many hope that during that much-hyped summer, the Knicks will become not only a respectable, but a competitive team by signing free agents that could be key to the team’s future.

As the 2008-09 season came to an end and the summer approached, there was still a year left to wait, but some very crucial table-setting was in order.

In May, just a month after Walsh joined the Knicks, I, like many fans and critics, had suggestions for him. I expressed my thoughts in my own personal outline for the summer. See http://bleacherreport.com/articles/166857-knicks-offseason-plans-101-stay-pat).  My general feeling was that the Knicks should stay quiet while handling some house-keeping issues, such as re-signing David Lee.

For the most part, that is what Walsh has done, but not before flirting with disaster. Jason Kidd and Grant Hill both expressed curiosity about the Knicks, and met with team officials before re-signing with their current teams.

The Knicks also held serious discussions with Ramon Sessions and were said to have prepared a multi-year offer for him that would have seriously altered its 2010 free agency hopes.

As it stands now, fortunately for the Knicks, nothing came of those meetings, but the team is not out of the woods yet.

David Lee and Nate Robinson both waited the entire summer to be rewarded with one-year deals more lucrative than their qualifying offers. The Knicks have secured them for now, but what does that mean for the future?

Lee has proven himself to be crucial to the team’s success and is the perfect supporting player. However, Walsh has failed to lock him up, and if Lee has a repeat performance of last season, or even better, he could be looking at more lucrative offers next summer.

Robinson failed to command the lucrative offers he was expected to, and opted to re-sign. Kudos to Walsh for waiting this one out. For the next year (at least), Robinson will continue to provide fans with that exciting spark during another season which is expected to be a huge disappointment again.

The problem with maintaining both Lee and Robinson for just one more season is the dilemma that the Knicks could face next summer: what if they both play well enough for the team to want to keep them both?

Walsh would not only have to focus on wooing some of the best players in the game, but re-signing some of his own players. Cap space will certainly be tight, but even more troublesome, how can Walsh be expected to extend himself in all directions, when he could not even provide his undivided attention to Lee and Robinson until now?

The ultimate worst possible scenario, and what I predict will happen is Walsh will not be able to secure Lee and/or Robinson to multi-year contracts, and in effect, free agents like Lebron James and Dwayne Wade will be turned off.

Maintaining and/or obtaining appropriate role players over the past two seasons has been crucial to the Knicks’ 2010 summer hopes. All that would be missing is a key star or two. It could end up being a perfect fit. However, without those role players, this current Knicks team is merely a rebuilding job, and no star that is already part of a serious contender is going to want to join a team like that.

As the long-awaited summer approaches rather rapidly, the possibility that Walsh will actually improve his team before then is bleak. At this point, the timetable for any positive move has just about run out. It will be seemingly impossible for the Knicks to find a trading partner that would want to trade a talented expiring contract for players like Eddy Curry and/or Jared Jeffries.

Trading one or both of the pair would have been a smart move in a further effort to retain Lee and/or Robinson in addition to coveted free agent(s) next summer. Now it probably appears best, as dismal as this upcoming season’s hopes may be, to stay put with the contracts in place. As many contracts expire, any optimism for the Knicks would depend upon certain free agents being attracted to the idea of becoming a savior to the city and its deserving fans, not to the status of this current Knicks squad.

New York was once a basketball city with bright lights and high hopes. The Knicks have promised fans that recent ill-fortunes will be reversed come next summer. However, judging by Donnie Walsh’s first summer audition, those once bright lights could be staying dim for quite a while longer.