February 15, 2004

SALT LAKE SURPRISE: With today's

SALT LAKE SURPRISE: With today's trade of University of Utah alumni Keith Van Horn and Michael Doleac, Knicks hoop boss Isiah Thomas has finally purged New York of Scott Layden's creepy Utah fetish. Of the small army of former Jazz and Ute players brought in and signed to inexplicably astronomical Knicks contracts by Layden, only Shandon Anderson remains.
Getting rid of Simon-from-"Real-World-Paris" lookalike Van Horn, who goes to Milwaukee, was a no-brainer; the Knick faithful were never going to accept the player who replaced Sprewell, especially not if he was a goofy-looking white guy who's now been traded five times in six years. Doleac wasn't doing much either, and while Tim Thomas may be a career underachiever himself, he's not nearly as embarassing as Van Horn. Having a big center named "Nazr" will help them even more- imagine the punny headlines ("Nazr Party"?) in the Post.
The Hawks, for their part, seem to be moving ever closer to their goal of having no players left at the end of the season, in order to have, you guessed it, cap space. Does anyone else realize how overrated "cap space" is? No one's ever parlayed cap space into a championship, and every team in the last ten years that's had tons of cap space has either a) signed a bunch of players who ended up sucking, or b) been unable to sign anyone because no one wanted to play for such an awful team. I could see the Hawks going either way, so I guess that counts as "flexibility."
At any rate, the Knicks have made their third good trade in a row, after a years-long streak of bad ones. Never thought I'd praise Isiah, but he's done good.

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 15, 2004 09:16 PM
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