My first reaction? Great, great trade for Orlando. Francis had three seasons on his deal after this one, at about $16M per season. He's by most charitable accounts an obnoxious individual who takes self-absorption to new heights and who has been disliked by almost every teammate and coach that he's played with in the NBA. The Knicks now have two pass-last point guards to go with all their other perimeter players who can't do anything except shot for a really low percentage. Has anyone mentioned they already gave away their draft picks to get an all-offense center who never touches the ball?
Marc Berman (don't know if there's any relation) of the New York Post quotes a sane NBA coach who doesn't like the deal:
"He'd be one of the last guys I would think they would want," one NBA coach told The Post. "Watching them, he's another guy who wants the ball. That's their whole problem. They need guys more willing to play without the ball.
Orlando on the other hand has another year of Dwight Howard on his rookie deal and just got rid of their only salary commitment greater than $6M/year. They have decent young players (Darko, Nelson) some of whom can be expected to work out, a future superstar in Howard, multiple top draft picks in the coming years and plenty of cap room. If they use all this wisely, look out. If I were LeBron James I'd be thinking about the fact that I could both get a max contract and play with the 20 year old kid who's already leading the league in rebounding.
EDIT: On reflection I wasn't really sure it was true, so I went and looked it up. The Knicks current backcourt rotation now consists of Stephon Marbury, Quetin Richardson, Jalen Rose, Jamal Crawford, Steve Francis, Qytel Woods and Nate Robinson. On one hand they may have former All Stars backing up their backups. On the other hand I would not have thought such a dysfunctional and incompatible group of players could be constructed outside of a rotisserie league. Take a lot of 'good-but-meaningless-stats-on-bad-teams' players and put them all together and what do you get? Sure looks like an awful team.
The big question in New York remains: who gets fired first?
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