Does Donnie have Blank Checks?
This is a situation really worth paying attention to.
In a time of great financial despair, it would seem as if the Cablevision empire is still on relatively solid ground, so money continues to not be an issue for James Dolan.
However, Dolan mandated that there would be no buyouts under the Isiah Thomas mess, instead forcing Zeke to prove that his acquisitions were good ones. Now that Zeke is out and Donnie Walsh is in charge, does he have all the tools necessary to dump Marbury, Jerome James, and Malik Rose by just writing a check and saying goodbye?
“I don’t know,” Walsh was quoted as saying on Hahn’s blog. “I haven’t asked the question yet.”
“I was doing this in Indiana for a long time and I can’t remember buying out a contract,” he said. “I really can’t. I dealt with it with trades, I guess. I always tried not to do that. That isn’t good management if you have to do that.”
Good management or not, these aren’t Walsh’s guys. He likes Patrick Ewing Jr, and apparently Anthony Roberson, enough to sign him to a contract, as he also did with Chris Duhon.
Walsh knew going in that he had a full roster. So why add more players? I would make sense that it was a case of out with the old and in with the new.
But will he rid the old? There’s no need for Marbury on this roster. Give him a check for $21 million and be done with him, that seems logical enough. And Malik Rose? With ZBo, David Lee and Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari expected to see minutes at the 4, you can what’s the need for Rose? Obviously no team is interested in swapping for Marbs and Rose’s 28 million cap relief, at least there hasn’t been any nibbles to this point.
So as we head into training camp, Walsh has 17 players for 15 spots, so two won’t make it out of Saratoga.
Or two could have a nice fat check waiting for them with a note saying, “Don’t let the door hit ya…”
It’s a question he HAS to ask.
