Knicks president Walsh clears more space, now real work begins

When Donnie Walsh took over as president of the Knicks in 2008, his stated goal was to remain as competitive as possible while cleaning up the mess left behind by Isiah Thomas and his numerous predecessors at the same time. And what a mess it was.

Walsh finally finished digging out on Thursday, when he swept the last remnants of more than a decade of irresponsible management out the door. On July 1, the laughable team that is supposed to be the NBA’s flagship franchise will be able to sign unrestricted free agents for the first time since they added Allan Houston and Chris Childs in 1996.

That’s when the real work will begin.

There are no guarantees in the cap-space game, and very few teams have ridden such acquisitions to any sort of important success. But Walsh and other executives believe it will be different this time -- believe that the NBA’s watershed moment has arrived with some of the biggest names in the sport potentially looking for a new home. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with once-in-a-lifetime risk associated with it. The doors to Madison Square Garden are open -- for not one, but potentially two of the best basketball players in the world to come and turn it into their personal playpen.

Heading into the trade deadline, the Miami Heat were in the 2010 driver’s seat. They already have one of those players, Dwyane Wade, and $18 million-$20 million in cap space -- more than enough to sign the teammate of his choice. The Nets have one of the worst teams in NBA history, but the prospect of an important new arena in Brooklyn, enough space to attract one max player, and maybe even No. 1 overall pick John Wall. The Bulls joined the club this week, shedding John Salmons’ contract and creating enough room to lure one max player to team with Derrick Rose.

Before Thursday, Walsh already had liberated the franchise of tens of millions in bad contracts -- from Jamal Crawford to Zach Randolph, from Quentin Richardson to Jerome James. The coach Walsh hired, Mike D’Antoni, even made the Knicks’ worst acquisition of the decade, Stephon Marbury, disappear. But there were still two bad debts on the balance sheet: Jared Jeffries and Eddy Curry.

By sending Jeffries (due $6.9 million in 2010-11) to Houston in the complicated, three-team trade that sent Tracy McGrady to New York, Walsh all but accomplished his goal. With a fairly standard buyout of Curry’s contract, the Knicks will have cleared enough cap space -- $33 million -- to sign two max players. (This depends on whether the team retains Sergio Rodriguez, obtained in the McGrady trade, and exactly what the cap is.) Either way, Walsh paid a dear price. Company secret: Nobody at the Garden is too upset about 2009 No. 8 pick Jordan Hill's departure, but the key to the deal is the first-round picks that Walsh had to include as the price of unloading Jeffries.

Knicks president Donnie Walsh has cleared $33 million in cap space. (Getty Images)

To get this deal done -- to open the Garden floor to its first legit superstar since Patrick Ewing -- Walsh had to place virtually no protection on those draft picks. A 2011 first-round pick is top-1 protected, meaning Houston will have the right to swap picks unless New York wins the lottery. The 2012 first-round that goes to the Rockets is top-five protected.

Believe me, if Thomas hadn’t traded the Knicks' 2010 first-round pick for Marbury, Rockets GM Daryl Morey would've asked for that, too -- along with Marbury’s Bentley.

Which leads us to the question of whether Walsh's work will pay off. There can only be one answer: Check with me on July 1. Walsh gets an A-plus for shoveling out of this blizzard of ineptitude, but his final grade can't be issued until we see if the free agents come.

Just for the sake of argument (and not realism), let's just say Walsh got the best possible combination of free agents to take James Dolan's money: LeBron James or Dwyane Wade combined with power forward Chris Bosh. To do so, the Knicks would be unable to retain All-Star power forward David Lee, but they wouldn’t need him anymore, anyway. Who’d they be playing with? Possibly Rodriguez, the point guard D'Antoni has long coveted. Definitely Danilo Gallinari, whom D’Antoni views as a Dirk Nowitzki-like third option on a team with All-Stars. Also Wilson Chandler, who along with Lee was one of only two functioning assets left behind by Thomas. The bench would be 2009 second-round pick Toney Douglas and five or six minimum-salary players. (New York would decline team options on newly acquired J.R. Giddens and Bill Walker.) So there you have it -- your 2010-11 New York Knicks.

There are probably a half-dozen other combinations -- Wade and Bosh, Joe Johnson and Amar’e Stoudemire -- that would work, in addition to dozens of sign-and-trade scenarios that might be preferable to any of these options. And that’s the point. Given the cold plate of overpriced leftovers he was served when he walked in the door on April 2, 2008, Walsh turned it into a chance to be great. That’s all it is -- a chance -- but it’s a chance that the Knicks haven’t had in 14 years. For that alone, Walsh deserves to have his number retired in the rafters of the Garden. What number? That’s easy.

With all due respect to Patrick Ewing, there’s a new No. ($)33 in the building. Let’s see what Walsh does with it.