Raymond Felton arrived in Westchester last month for voluntary workouts in very good shape, according to an NBA source. That is good news, since conditioning has been a knock on Felton, especially last season in Portland.
With Knicks training camp opening today, Felton will get to meet the media formally for the first time since rejoining the team, with the first set of practices set for tomorrow.
The bad news for many New Yorkers is Felton’s predecessor at point guard, Jeremy Lin, won’t arrive here at all.
Lin’s “17’’ Knicks jerseys and countless designs of Linsanity T-shirts still hang plentifully in clothing stores around New York, but mostly on clearance racks. Lin will be in Houston today, where triple the amount of their normal media turnout is expected — many from Asian outlets, according to a Rockets official.
It was 48 days of storybook — from the time Lin scorched the Nets on the fabled night of Feb. 4 to his last game as a Knick against the Pistons on March 24.
It has taken a lot longer for the Knicks front office to explain why it no longer wanted to be a passenger on the ride to Linsanity.
Today, the silence will break when the Lin-less Knicks hold Media Day. General manager Glen Grunwald and coach Mike Woodson will, for the first time publicly, explain the decision not to match Lin’s revamped, backloaded, three-year, $25.1 million offer sheet, instead bringing back Felton to be their new starting point guard in a sign-and-trade.
After Felton was obtained, the Knicks didn’t stage a media availability for him — as they did for signees Jason Kidd and Marcus Camby, both backups.
After the July 17 decision, amid furor from Knicks fans, the team’s front office went underground. Grunwald was invisible and Woodson was on a gag order. If it were owner James Dolan’s edict not to explain the move — considering Lin had become a worldwide phenomenon — to their crushed fan base, it was a cryptic call even for Knicks’ media-policy standards.
The irony is the club had a case beyond the financial nightmare (The final year of Lin’s contract would have cost $43 million alone — $14.8 million in salary and $28.2 million in luxury tax, thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement’s escalating tax rates for repeat offenders).
Discounting finances, the Felton-over-Lin move made basketball sense, considering where the Knicks are in their quest of their first title since 1973.
According to a person close to Grunwald, Felton was a better fit for Woodson’s halfcourt style. Lin was a scourge in Mike D’Antoni’s read-and-react speedball system that relies heavily on point-guard penetration and decision-making. That’s the old days. Now Felton, Kidd and Spanish Leaguer Pablo Prigioni form a three-headed point guard platoon that better befits Woodson’s structured style.
And is it just possible Felton is the better, more proven player than Lin, who is 24, coming off knee surgery and never having played an 82-game schedule or a playoff game.
There were too many unknowns and the championship window is closing. Felton had a solid run in his lone, 54-game run with the Knicks in 2010-11 before he was sacrificed in the Carmelo Anthony blockbuster. Felton especially worked well in tandem with Amar’e Stoudemire.
Still, the Knicks were planning to match Houston’s offer to Lin until the Rockets GM Daryl Morey ramped up the original offer sheet by making it more back-loaded in the third year. Though legal, the Morey maneuver enraged the Knicks front office which already had given 3-year contracts to Steve Novak, Marcus Camby and Kidd, based on the original Lin offer sheet.
With Felton still available in a sign-and-trade for three years and $10.2 million, the move became a no-brainer, even though the fans had fallen hard for Lin during that 26-game run when he averaged 18.5 points and 7.6 assists before his knee surgery.
The Lin-less Knicks gather today, perhaps less intriguing, and less exotic, but with a better point-guard alignment than 2011-12.