Man, getting the Knicks under the cap ain't easy...

[asgsjb]

Man, Isaiah dug my Knicks dynasty in as big a hole as he did the actual Knicks. To build for the future, I traded Jamal Crawford with Sundov to Memphis to get Jason Williams (to replace Marbury for when I was going to trade him for Kobe) and Antonio Burks (a throw-in due to roster spaces). I then dropped Burks (to get a roster space) and traded Marbury for Kobe. Kobe has as big a contract as Marbury had, but Kobe is an unstoppable force, both in real life and in NBA Live 2005. Even with a weak front court, you can win a championship with Kobe. And while Jason Williams has a $6.88M contract and has 4 years left, he is a dominant PG for this gane, with great 3's, passing, dribbling, speed and steals (especially steals).

But after that, I'm screwed. Penny's $14.63M comes off my books this year, but my Knicks are now $57.07M over the cap...so Penny coming off the books still leaves me at $42.44M over the cap. The big hit is Allan Houston's $17.53M and 3 remaining years. But Tim Thomas' 2 remaining years at $12.90M and even Shandon Anderson's 3 remaining years at $7.30M, Kurt Thomas' 3 remaining years at $5.89M, Jerome Williams' 3 remaining years at $5.60M, Nazr Mohammed's 2 remaining years at $5.25M and Vin Baker's 2 remining years at $3.45M all hurt too. To get under the cap, I'd have to lose Penny's, Houston's, Tim Thomas', Shandon Anderson's and Kurt Thomas' salaries without adding any new salary...and that is almost impossible. In theory, I could trade these multi-year contracts for expiring contracts or draft picks, but trading for draft picks is hard and most expiring contracts either are far less in total value or the quality of the players with matching salaries don't add up. For example, with Allan Houston, there is no expiring contract over $15M, let alone over $17.5M. And the few expiring contracts between $14M and $14.5M are for players who are younger and higher rated than Houston (i.e. Ray Allen, Ilgauskas, Eddie Jones, Van Horn, Sprewell, etc.), so the CPU won't trade them for Houston. And it's tough to combine players in a deal for Houston, as the next salary tier down from the Ray Allen-level contracts are under $8M. So it's unlikely I'm going to find 2 expiring contracts on the same team that equal or are within 20% of Houston's contract and where the players are ranked around or under Houston's. Same problem occurs for Tim Thomas and even Shandon Anderson....the expiring contracts on other teams just don't add up.

And the players I'd really like to get (young, cheap, talented players...like Okafor or Gasol) are impossible to get because they are so cheap. On the Knicks, the closest salaries to contracts like Okafor's or Gasol's is Moochie Norris, and the CPU is never going to come close to swapping Okafor or Gasol for Moochie Norris. So the Knicks' contracts are a killer, at least until they ultimately expire. Pretty brutal!

Any thoughts on how to best navigate this?