MSM: Don't be this guy

I love shots that pan to the crowd. This one especially brings me joy. From today's Celtics win over the Knicks right after Ray Allen's lay-up made it 110-105 Celtics.

Nate Robinson a Celtic:Here's How It Worked Under the Cap

Nate Robinson and Marcus Landry were acquired from the Knicks for Eddie House, JR Giddens, and Bill Walker. This deal didn't work under the cap, but our good friend Eddie Ray, official logo designer of the CMSB, figured out how it worked. The answer? Trade Exceptions. From Larry Coon's site on the Cap:

TRADED PLAYER EXCEPTION -- This exception is used for trades, and cannot be used to sign free agents. It allows teams to acquire more salary in a trade than they send away. It also allows teams to take up to a year to complete some trades, banking a credit in the interim.

Exceptions are the mechanisms that allow teams to function above the salary cap. Any trade which results in the team ending up over the salary cap requires an exception. This is true even if the team is moving downward in salary. For example, if the salary cap is $50 million, a team has a team salary of $55 million, and they want to trade a $5 million player for a $4 million player, they still have to use an exception. Even though their team salary would be decreasing by $1 million, the fact that they would still be over the salary cap ($54 million) means that an exception is required.

The Knicks had trade exceptions from the Quentin Richardson and Malik Rose deals to use.

Click on the photo above to see.

Celizic decides to kick that dead horse one last time

Wife left you, blame it on Thomas



I am sure that most have heard about the weird incident involving Knicks' Center Eddy Curry where his former driver, David Kuchinsky, a convicted accused Curry of having tried to solicit gay sex, hurled racial slurs at Kuchinsky and a host of other things. I am sure that some will say Curry was being decent for trying to give the guy a chance and Kuchinsky is extorting him, some will look at Curry with a raised brow from now on and so on. But NBCSports.com's (I don't know what it is about that site the past few days) Mike Celizic decided to look at another aspect of this story, one that really isn't even related--Isiah Thomas.

The title of his masterpiece--"The Isiah nightmare lives on".

Okay, I get that Isiah absolutely screwed up the Knicks and never met a bad contract he didn't like, and we all still joke about if a team wants to get rid of a bad contract, they should hope Isiah gets another GM position in the league. But how is this incident Isiah's fault at all? Curry hired the guy roughly the same time Thomas brought him over from the Bulls. This is not the same thing as bringing in Pacman Jones, Curry had displayed no off court behavior to think that this sort of incident was likely to happen.

In fact, Celizic makes only two references to Thomas in his article, neither indicates Isiah should have known this would happen over three years after picking him up, if at all:

"This is advice that goes both to Not-Very-Fast Eddy and any team that decided to employ such as he. From the day Isiah Thomas traded with Chicago for Curry in 2005, Knicks fans have wondered what Thomas ever saw in him. Of course, Knicks fans wondered what Thomas saw in many of the bodies he swapped in and out of Madison Square Garden before his reign of error finally ended last year. But Curry always was one of the bigger mysteries."

Yup, he was a bad pick up, talent wise.

"Thomas’ bad judgment in trading for Curry pales beside the center’s total lack of judgment in hiring a convicted burglar — and allowing him to live in his home — to be his driver."

Oh, you mean Isiah's judgment was not the one to be questioning or highlighting in your title? Gee, weird that the guy who made the alleged comments and made the alleged acts is the guy you should be looking at. I don't know, that's just me.

So let's recap. Yes, Isiah destroyed the CBA and the Knicks, you can hammer him on that. But when a player allegedly acts as though he will be the next guest on the Jerry Springer Show, and there was no indication this guy would allegedly act like this, it's not Isiah's fault.