You can almost hear it now. In a few days, the Knicks will tell us they did all they could to convince LeBron James to come to New York, but through no fault of their own he made other plans with his free agency.
The Knicks will then try to convince us that despite losing James, they’re happy with their Plan B: signing Joe Johnson and Amar’e Stoudemire to max contracts.
If you read the tea leaves on the NBA free agency that begins at midnight Wednesday night, that may well be the Knicks’ best-case scenario, unless you believe Garden owner James Dolan can somehow turn into Mr. Personality and convince LeBron that playing for the Knicks is the best thing he could ever do.
Somehow I don’t see Dolan pulling that off when he and the rest of the Knicks brass meet with the James in Ohio on Thursday.
With the Knicks appearing to be a longshot to land James, having a Plan B makes sense: But don’t expect Knicks fans to be happy about using two max contracts on Johnson and Stoudemire, as rumored.
For two years, Knicks fans have had to endure miserable basketball, waiting for the free-agency period to arrive with the prospects of landing James, Dwyane Wade or Chris Bosh. The thinking was the Knicks would dazzle James with the chance to play in the world’s most famous arena. Now that may be wishful thinking.
Plan B, signing Johnson and Stoudemire, isn’t a satisfactory alternative, especially not if both max contracts are used. The Knicks can spin it all they want, but their fans are savvy enough to know when they’re being sold ground beef instead of steak.
The Knicks think they have a good shot at landing Johnson and Stoudemire because those two have played for Mike D’Antoni when they were in Phoenix. The flip side is, even with Steve Nash, the Suns didn’t win a championship.
They won a bunch of games and made the playoffs every year, which is something that hasn’t been done around here in a decade. But that’s not all Knicks fans are looking for out of this free agency. .
Don’t get me wrong. Johnson is a nice player, someone who will average 20-plus points each game. But he’s not a superstar, not the kind of player who can carry on team on his back.
Stoudemire is a stud, but must be teamed with the right player, someone who can carry the Knicks when he can’t, someone, who is playoff-tested, someone like James or Wade.
But seeing James on Wade in a Knicks uniform already is being labeled a longshot even before the courting has begun, and Dolan might be the only one who can change things.
That can’t bode well for the Knicks. Dolan doesn’t light up a room, especially when Dallas owner Mark Cuban and the Nets new Russian billionaire owner Mikhail Prokhorov are making sales pitches.
Prokhorov can offer James an international business platform, while Cuban’s business interests extend well beyond the basketball court. They are the faces of their franchises, high-profile owners ready to sell themselves and their franchises. Dolan has never had to do that with the Knicks. That’s why the Knicks had better come up with a better Plan B.