Did Knicks Pass on Lin for Right Reasons?
Just so they could hand the ball to the unworthy likes of Raymond Felton, a decent ex-Knick who was outplayed last season by — you got it — Jeremy Lin.
Felton is likely a bigger creation of the Mike D’Antoni system than his predecessor at the point ever was. He’s four years older than Lin, and as a seven-year veteran he isn’t getting any better and isn’t getting his new team any closer to Miami.
But the Knicks ran off Lin anyway, if only to make the point that nobody — not even the inspiration of the worldwide craze known as Linsanity — crosses Jim Dolan and gets away with it. Just last week, after it was reported Lin had verbally agreed to a Houston guarantee worth nearly $20 million, (Mike) Woodson announced that the Knicks would “absolutely” match the offer and that Lin would “absolutely” open as his starting quarterback.
Only the Knicks “absolutely” lost their minds after Lin took Woodson’s empty pledges back to the negotiating table, inflated his poison-pill wage in Year 3 from $9.3 million to nearly $15 million, and stuck the Knicks with a luxury-tax bill in 2014-15 that would’ve left Warren Buffett cowering under a table.
So they made the trade for Felton, and then sealed it with a dis, telling Lin he could take his offer sheet and stuff it.
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