NBA Free Agent Analysis: Amar'e Stoudemire Agrees To Deal With New York Knicks

The New York Knicks made the first real splash in the free agency frenzy by reaching an agreement with Amar'e Stoudemire in which he will recieve a five-year, 99.7 million dollar contract, the richest deal Stoudemire can recieve.

But does Stoudemire deserve a maximum contract?

Even though Amar'e has a reputation for putting up superb stats, he will not have a legitimate supporting cast in New York because David Lee is a free agent as well.

We have seen one example in recent years of a one man team and that example is the 2005 Los Angeles Lakers. Los Angeles had Kobe Bryant but not much else and as a result they did not make the playoffs that season and New York will have a one man team if they sign just Amar'e.

This was a poor decision by New York in terms of how much money to pay Stoudemire because in essence this takes them out of the LeBron James and Dwayne Wade chases. It is well publicized that James wants to win a championship and New York may need maximum money to get him to consider coming to the Knicks. New York no longer has that type of money so that essentially takes them out of the running.

The Knicks also took themselves out of the Chris Bosh chase as he wants to be the key player on an NBA team and that will most likely not happen if he paired up with Stoudemire.

To make a long story short this was a wasted opportunity by Knicks management as they could have paid Stoudemire 30-40 million dollars along with still having enough money to possibly lure LeBron or Dwayne Wade to New York.

This was definitely a good agreement between New York and Stoudemire but they could have signed another elite free agent if they had not spent an excessive amount of money on specifically Stoudemire.