By Jonathan Lee
July 10, 2012
With their various moves this off-season, the Knicks look like they are the one team in the league that is willing to completely ignore the new salary cap penalties and pay any and all luxury taxes. Their latest move was to re-acquire Marcus Camby from Houston and sign him to a three-year, $13.2 million contract.
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Camby does help the team as a capable defensive back-up to Tyson Chandler. He is 38 years old already, and joins Jason Kidd in the geriatric portion of the Knicks roster. While both are old by NBA standards, both should help the team incrementally. New York will also be resigning Jeremy Lin as well as J.R. Smith, and will have expensive players up and down the lineup.
Going forward the Knicks project as a capable Eastern Conference team making the playoffs nearly 81 percent of the time, but on average finishing as just the fifth seed. The current roster mix does not appear to be a true threat to Boston or Miami despite the money being spent by Jim Dolan and company.
The Sixers also made a couple moves that will impact their season significantly. They surprised most pundits beating the Bulls in the first round and pushing the Celtics to seven games in the playoffs. That success was not good enough to go into this season with the roster as is however, and the team releasted Elton Brand under the amnesty clause and signed Nick Young to replace Lou Williams as a bench scorer.
The moves are slightly curious given the fact that Philadelphia has dropped out of a coveted playoff position according to AccuScore simulations. Williams was the team’s leading scorer despite playing a bench role, and Brand was the one reliable post player. The team does save some money under the salary cap, but not nearly enough to fit a max or near-max level deal.
This off-season has put the team in a position of limbo being close to contention, but clearly a few magnitudes behind teams like the Heat, Celtics, and Bulls. As constructed the Sixers are not a championship level contender, and must decide where to go in the future with players like Andre Iguodala and Jrue Holiday.
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