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Forget LeBron; rebuild Knicks pick by brick

Shaun Powell

May 20, 2008

There's a tendency by restless Knicks fans to fast-forward past tonight's NBA draft lottery and look to the 2010 lottery, when the prize won't be some 19-year-old who led his team to the Final Four but a certain 25-year-old who never led his team to a championship.

This is assuming the Cavaliers keep sticking LeBron James with scrubs, and assuming LeBron will get frustrated and leave Cleveland as a free agent two years from now, and assuming the Knicks by then will be in position to buy him.

This is part of the master plan, at least inside the head of team president Donnie Walsh, to make the Knicks attractive enough to get LeBron and flexible enough to pay LeBron and presto, just like that, basketball will be rediscovered in New York.

Let's all conveniently forget that LeBron is super-tight with Jay-Z, the rap maestro who has a small piece of the Nets, and if that new arena ever gets built in Brooklyn (my hunch says no), LeBron will be coming to New York, all right.

The more realistic if less dreamy way to reshape the Knicks begins tonight in the lottery when the first brick of a new foundation is laid. It matters less about where the Knicks end up selecting in the June draft and more about whom they take. Or what they do with the pick.

And the same goes for next year's lottery pick.

Yes, if the Knicks are really serious about finally getting it right, they'll make plans for the 2009 lottery, too, and even 2010, if necessary. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to their situation, just a long, potentially painful but ultimately satisfying process that will depend on their ability to make decisions that don't set back the franchise.

They can't afford to blow any more big decisions, whether it's the draft or trades or free-agent signings. They need a winning streak off court before they ever see one on it.

Bad decisions cripple bad teams. If you're holding a No. 1 pick and use it on Michael Olowokandi, for example, then you become Elgin Baylor, the GM of the Clippers, who has his own chair at the draft lottery. And if you own a high pick and do something dumb - as the Hawks did in 2005, when they needed a point guard but passed on Chris Paul and Deron Williams and took Marvin Williams with their No. 2 pick - then you spend years making up for it.

Same goes for free-agent signings. The Bulls used all their available money on Ben Wallace without realizing that Big Ben left his best years in Detroit; they wound up dumping Wallace less than two years later. The Nuggets gave Kenyon Martin a ton to leave the Nets, only to discover Martin wasn't so dominant without Jason Kidd throwing him lob passes.

Same goes for trades. While in Indiana, Walsh stole Jermaine O'Neal from the Blazers several years ago. The Blazers didn't get another good, young big man until last summer, when they bottomed out, got lucky in the lottery and drafted Greg Oden.

In the Isiah Thomas administration, the Knicks managed to screw up draft, trade and free-agent decisions in swift and consistent fashion. They drafted Channing Frye rather than take a chance on Andrew Bynum. They signed Jared Jeffries and Jerome James. They traded for Stephon Marbury, Eddy Curry, Zach Randolph. When it came to the Knicks and making decisions, their misses were big, their hits small.

The Knicks can fantasize all they want about getting LeBron in a couple of years, but first they must set the table. They must dump salary, draft the right players and get the right players through trades. By 2010, they must have at least two solid starters from the lottery, a reliable veteran or two and perhaps a young player with upside, along with a payroll lean enough to compete for LeBron and other free agents.

That's the goal the next two seasons. Forget winning. Making a number of wise decisions, for once, is the priority.

Getting lucky won't hurt, either, should the Knicks somehow get in position to draft Derrick Rose.

It all starts tonight for a team that needs to win more than one lottery to finally strike it rich.