Knicks On The Verge Of Acquiring Andrea Bargnani From Raptors

Knicks appear close to acquiring Andrea Bargnani from Toronto, per source. NY offering Camby, Novak, 2 picks (1st rd/2nd rd).

— Howard Beck (@HowardBeckNYT) June 30, 2013

Oh yea. This is the missing piece. This is the guy that takes Melo and the Knicks from pretender to contender.

Look I love the idea of bringing in a guy who showed enough skills to once be considered a promising star. I like the idea that a change of scenery and getting out of Toronto can help fuel a guy who’s been a bust. But not for a guy like this. Plain and simple Bargnani sucks and hes expensive. He’s a soft, jumpshooting, injury prone big man owed $22.5 mil over the next 2 years. Giving up 2 picks, one of them a first rounder, for that is an awful, awful idea. I mean this deal isn’t even done yet and the first thing I did was check to see when his awful contract will expire. Obviously Camby means nothing, and as much as a fan favorite as Novak has become the past couple years, this past postseason showed he’s really not capable of playing at a high enough level to get serious minutes on a contending team. But the picks, and the money, for a guy that has seriously underachieved and doesn’t really fit in with this current Knicks team at all is a horrible idea. Mortgaging the future for a bad contract on a highly questionable player – this seems more like an Isiah move than anything else.

PS – if this deal goes through the Knicks will pay Amare, Tyson Chandler and Andrea Bargnani $96,788,307 over the next 2 seasons. Let that sink in for a second. And yes that means they will have expiring contracts to deal and potentially a ton of cap space in 2016 but almost 100 million for those three dudes – thats insane.