Knicks Roster Will Look Drastically Different Next Season

Of the Knicks’ current roster, only Wilson Chandler, Danilo Gallinari, Toney Douglas, and Jordan Hill are locks to be on the team next year. Nate Robinson, Eddy Curry (player option), Chris Duhon, Al Harrington, Larry Hughes, Jared Jeffries (early termination option), David Lee, Darko Milicic, Marcus Landry and Cuttino Mobley will be unrestricted free agents while Marcus Landry will be a restricted free agent after this season.

Donnie Walsh hopes to stock and reload the roster and obtain at least one NBA superstar. The Knicks players who are in their final year of their contracts know they probably don’t fit into Donnie’s plans. They know the organization is eyeing superstars like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh, to name a few. The point is that the current Knicks will be free agents too and looking to sign contracts themselves. They need to play well in New York this season to get paid by another team next season. Players like Al Harrington, Larry Hughes, David Lee and Nate Robinson won’t get great attention because of the glaring star-power in the free agent class but they’ll be expected to make an impact on the teams that sign them. A poor showing in 2009-2010 will hurt their chances of signing good contracts.

It behooves the current Knicks to play well and win games. It behooves the organization because they don’t have a first round pick and want to show potential free agents there is a good, young group of players to build around. Most of the current Knicks know they aren’t in the team’s future plans, but they are playing for themselves right now as much as they are playing for the team. The team just isn’t that good.

Chandler, Gallinari, and Douglas could be a good trio Donnie Walsh can build around. Hill hasn’t played enough to get a feel of how he’ll be. The roster will be completely overhauled before next season and an entire city is hoping Donnie Walsh can put together a playoff caliber team.

What has Donnie Walsh Really Done So Far?

Donnie Walsh was supposed to be brought into the Knicks organization as a savior.  He was supposed to cleanup Isiah’s mess and turn the team into winners.  He was brought in to appease Knicks fans and give the franchise hope.  Lets take a look at what he has done in the one year and four months that he has been the president of basketball operations of the team.  

Walsh’s first area of business was hiring a new head coach and he lured in ex-Sun’s coach Mike D’Antoni and his explosive seven seconds or less offense.  This was Donnie’s first move and it was a great one.  D’Antoni comes with a pretty good resume and playoff experience.  

This is to the extent in which Walsh has proved he is worth all the hype.  Since then, he has done minimal to improve the Knicks.  I know he has been able to let go of some dead weight and regain some financial flexibility but he hasn’t improved the talent on the team.  You can say he is positioning the team to make a splash in next year’s free agency but what if he isn’t able to land an elite player in 2010?  Then what?  All of this dumping of salary is great but if the Knicks don’t use the money on superstars, then they are going to be stuck as a mediocre team because those elite free agents will turn teams into contenders. 

The players that Walsh was able to acquire so far are guys like Chris Duhon, Darko Milicic, and Larry Hughes.  There’s no elite talent there.  He drafted decent players (Gallinari and Hill), but no elite players (yet anyway).  Walsh hasn’t done anything extraordinary and I believe the job he has done so far could have been done by other guys.  It’s what he does next summer that will show us if he really is the great basketball savior we all expected.   

Donnie Walsh has a lot of work to do and this summer has been terrible  Other than the draft, he has done nothing to improve the talent on the team.  He has tried.  He put out some offers to veterans but nothing has panned out.  Hopefully Donnie can put a team on the court that will play well in 2009-10 and hopefully he can land a superstar in free agency next summer.