The Knicks DO have D’Antoni on the bench. Could you imagine a freak like LeBron in his system?
It’d be very exciting and the stats would be crazy, yes. (Donnie Walsh is also good at what he does.) But the Cavs are a better team, and D’Antoni is not exactly a Red Auerbach with tons of postseason success and deep runs. He’s more like Don Nelson 2.0. And Mike Brown isn’t a great coach.
Still, the Cavs had more than twice as many wins as the Knicks did this past season, and even with some contracts coming off New York’s books after the 2009-10 season it’s hard to imagine them being better poised to compete year in and year out than Cleveland. I think it’s more likely Cleveland keeps LeBron and woos Chris Bosh to join the team.
Despite that, I’d say the chances are 60/40 for him staying. I’m not convinced that the Cavs are clearly a better team. Sans LeBron, I don’t think the Cavs would have probably been swept in the first round. If LeBron got hurt in the second round, would they have got to the conference finals?
The Knicks have a bunch of cash coming off the books, they’re in some disarray, but New York is a pretty big draw. What would surprise me is if he went to Chicago or somewhere else.
Also, Mike Brown is a really bad coach. Don Nelson 2.0 is clearly better than Mike Brown.
New York IS a really good city to be very rich in.
Also, I don’t think it’s solely New York myopia that leads the press to constantly want to drag star players to New York. It’s also because the city is a great basketball town at the high school (and playground) level, and it’s kind of weird that it has a pro franchise that’s so decidedly mediocre. I mean, one championship almost fifty years ago?
It would be like Montreal never winning in hockey.
Probably not, but what would LeBron care about that? That’s still a lot better than the Knicks were this year and I don’t see why they will be much better this coming year.
So do a bunch of teams. Why is New York different, other than the sports media says it is? LeBron is a huge star as it is and I really don’t believe a move to New York would increase his profile. And I’m not convinced he wants to play here anyway.
D’Antoni is a better coach, but he’s never won a thing. If he had a great record I could see the appeal for LeBron, but Nellie 2.0 only managed to make the conference finals once with that Suns team, which was (even with a significant revamp) much more talented than his Knicks team.
This is funny. From media reports a year or so ago I thought that he was bound to go to the Nets and not the Knicks when his contract ran out. It seems to me that it will take about 10 years for the Knicks to clean themselves after the Thomas years to be a team that anyone WANTS to go to!
Really, this impending payday is going to be the albatross around his neck, much like what happened with Kevin Garnett.
I’m not a fan at all of the East Coast bias that seems to be prevalent in the Worldwide Leader, but New York City has anything and everything he could possibly want to see, do, or screw. We can’t know what lurks in his mind right now with regards to what he wants to do, but we could all tell him what he needs to do, and that’d be to take a huge pay cut and get the free agents rolling into Cleveland.
From ESPN:
Interesting. Good find.
Also from ESPN:
Usually I’ll believe a first report over a self-interested denial. LeBron doesn’t want to close any doors or make Cavaliers management believe they can stop trying to improve, but I do think he’ll re-sign.
I don’t think the case for going elsewhere is that strong. As I understand it (and I don’t undestand the NBA salary stuff at all), the cavs can offer LeBron a bigger salary than any team in the league. And any of these potential bigger market teams are much worse off than the Cavs at having a shot at a championship. And this is not only his hometown team, but a team he’s probably growned attached to, playing his whole career there.
And in the days of our modern telecoms and such, would LeBron be that much bigger of a star in New York? He’s already recognizable all around the world.
Larry Bird exception
Perhaps the most well-known of the NBA’s salary cap exceptions, it is so named because the Boston Celtics were the first team permitted to exceed the salary cap to re-sign one of their own players (in that case, Larry Bird). Free agents who qualify for this exception are called “qualifying veteran free agents” or “Bird Free Agents” in the CBA, and this exception falls under the auspices of the Veteran Free Agent exception. In essence, the Larry Bird exception allows teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents, at an amount up to the maximum salary. To qualify as a Bird free agent, a player must have played three seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. This means a player can obtain “Bird rights” by playing under three one-year contracts, a single contract of at least three years, or any combination thereof. It also means that when a player is traded, his Bird rights are traded with him, and his new team can use the Bird exception to re-sign him. Bird-exception contracts can be up to six years in length.
[edit]Early Bird exception
This is the lesser form of the Larry Bird Exception. Free agents who qualify for this exception are called “early qualifying veteran free agents,” and qualify after playing two seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. Using this exception, a team can re-sign its own free agent for either 175% of his salary the previous season, or the NBA’s average salary, whichever is greater. Early Bird contracts must be for at least two seasons, but can last no longer than five seasons.
A much-publicized example for this would be Devean George, who vetoed his inclusion into a larger trade during the 2007-08 that would have sent him from the Dallas Mavericks to the New Jersey Nets because he would have lost his Early Bird rights.
[edit]Non-Bird exception
Free Agents who qualify for this exception are called “non-qualifying free agents” in the CBA, meaning they do not qualify under either the Larry Bird Exception or the Early Bird Exception. Under this exception, teams can re-sign a player to a contract beginning at either 120% of his salary for the previous season, or 120% of the league’s minimum salary, whichever amount is higher. Contracts signed under the Non-Bird exception can last up to six years.
From here. I believe that LeBron falls under the Larry Bird rule.
For LeBron the salary does not matter. He can make many times that on endorsements. But doesn’t he get a lot any way? They have built a pretty good team for him, so why go start over?
That’s what I mean - the idea is that New York will be a bigger endorsement market, and he’ll be launched to superstardom… but can he be much more famous than he already is? His money comes from big national endorsements for the most part. Does the “big market” logic apply here?
He’d probably get more of a star boost from winning some championships, and his best shot right now is probably staying in Cleveland.
Plus, he really, really is a homer. He likes Cleveland/Akron.
They really haven’t, that cleveland team is lottery bound without Lebron. I don’t think the horrible Knicks organization can do any better though.
It’s not a great team, but you underrate it. It’s hard to imagine the team with the best record in the NBA becomes a lottery team with the loss of one player. He has experience and chemistry with his teammates. With Z and Shaq’s contracts expiring next year, they open up some salary cap space to sign someone like Chris Bosh. His chances of getting a championship are way better where he is than with New York.
Oh?
You’re looking at it through just LeBron’s eyes, though. To other players, they’d want to go to New York, not to Cleveland. If LeBron goes to New York, he’ll make more cash (supposedly), but he’s already making abnormal amounts of cash as it is, he’d be playing for a coach that would enhance his offensive numbers, and the destination would be better for alluring other teammates.