The Knicks are Incompetent, impotent, and not important

Congratulations to Isaiah Thomas as he continues to make Scott Layden look like Ned Irish, Jerry West, Pat Riley, and Ernie Grunfeld combined!

The Knicks trade Trevor Ariza and Penny Hardaway's expiring 15 million dollar contract to Orlando for Steve Francis.

Let's look at the good side. With Ariza gone, David Lee can play a bit more at small forward. Coach Larry Brown, who called him "delsuional" in front of the media, never liked the second-year forward. And they didn't have to surrender a draft pick.

Ok, with that out of the way, onto the bad.
1) Francis has three more years and about $48 million left on his deal.
2) The Knicks lost the chance to take 16 million dollars off their payroll by trading Hardaway's expiring contract.
3) The Knicks have Francis, Stephon Marbury, and Jamal Crawford in their back court. All are ball hungry and love to shoot. None is a true "setup your teammates" point guard. Not to mention Quentin Richardson and Nate Robinson, both of whom love to shoot and can be careless with the basketball. And Richardson is the only one of the five who has even considered playing defense this season. At least Nate can dunk, even if it takes him 17 tried to make one!
4) This is not a team desinged to contend with Miami and Detroit and make a run at a championship. It's designed to be fast and exciting and fill up Madison Square Garden. The championship thing doesn't matter that much to Isaiah, he won two as a player. Larry Brown finally won one with Detroit. Owner Jim Dolan cares as much about championship as this country cares about men's curling!
5) Francis is a locker room distraction. He's an on-court distraction. He's someone Shaquille O'Neal correctly identified as holding back Dwight Howard the Magic's young star forward.

We should have traded for some guy who plays tough defense and helps bring a team together on the court. I don't know who that guy is. But there are a lot of them out there. What good does adding another shooter and scorer do for this team, or should I say, this group of players. Because they are so far from an NBA team, it's ridiculous. You have about 20 college teams right now that can beat the Knicks. And 40 college teams that can score 120 points on them.

Heck, my Division III school of 1500 people is 23-3. THEY could beat the Knicks! Because at least they still give a damn about their season.

We made the playoffs 15 years in a row; now we may wind up not winning a playoff game 15 years in a row. As bad as the Rangers were for 8 years, this is going to be far worse. This team is not even in these basketball games. The last playoff game win was against Toronto. The year was 2001 and counting...