FanHouse DonnieWalsh

Man, Eddy Curry spends his entire summer working the Stairmaster and eating like a vegan caveman and he still can't get fit enough for his Knickerbocker bosses. Curry tweaked his calf within the first days of training camp, and that (plus ongoing fitness issues) had Knicks prez Donnie Walsh telling reporters things like "When he can get out here and do it without pulling something, we'll bring him back."

Walsh is rarely this direct; you'd never see the Knicks discuss Danilo Gallinari's back injury (which plagued the 2008-09 season) in this fashion. But Curry's reported lack of effort in the gym prior to this summer hasn't earned the big fellow the right of indignation, I suppose.

In the foreseeable absence of Curry, the Knicks will roll with various levels of David Lee, Darko Milicic and rookie Jordan Hill at center.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Knicks have slowly climbed their way out of salary cap hell -- but all that got them is a season in NBA purgatory.

Instead of making moves toward actual improvement, the Knicks are blatantly looking past this season to next summer when they hope to strike it rich with the famed free agent class of 2010. But while Donnie Walsh's long-term strategy may eventually pay dividends, it offers little hope in the interim that the Knicks might rise above last year's fifth-place finish in the Atlantic.

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Stephon Marbury is one of those weird characters who has just the right mix of "crazy" and "keepin' it real" where you can't ever be sure whether to trust or distrust him. Personally, I think he's a bad apple who keeps getting too many chances, but some people feel differently.

After Marbury recently did a Knickerbocker-beat-down of an interview with the New York Post, I would imagine no one who plays professional basketball in the Big Apple is much of a fan either. Marbury's quotes are full of disparaging remarks, as he essentially urged any free agents to avoid Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni like the plague.

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Matt Moore set the table on Jason Kidd's impending free agency -- Dallas, New York, Cleveland and Portland figure to be the best options. Though Kidd has publicly said he'd give the Mavericks dibs, you'll be interested to know Kidd will spend Wednesday, the first day of the free agency period, in New York City chatting with the Knicks.

Frank Isola of the New York Daily News reports that Kidd will meet with Knicks president Donnie Walsh early Wednesday, hoping to get a commitment. NY cannot offer more than the mid-level exception (a starting salary of less than $6 million) unless Walsh works out a sign-and-trade with Dallas, which holds Kidd's Bird rights. But the Knicks certainly have a hole at the point. Chris Duhon, ahem, ain't getting it done.

As teams get eliminated from the 2009 NBA playoff picture, Fork 'Em figures out what went wrong.

There's been a movement of late, first spewed by David Friedman of Pro Basketball News and later parroted by Marc Berman of the New York Post, to assert Mike D'Antoni hasn't actually helped the Knicks improve at all. This, frankly, is contrarian garbage. The Knicks didn't end up in the playoffs, but the franchise has clearly seen a new dawn.

Stephon Marbury's arbitration hearing with the Knicks regarding the team's $400,000 fine for his alleged refusal to suit up earlier this year is set for Tuesday, but Marc Berman of the New York Post reports that Marbury will meet face to face with Donnie Walsh (hopefully on a bench with a camera rolling) one last time before the hearing in hopes of finally reaching a resolution -- and perhaps even a buyout.

Why should we believe that Marbury and Walsh might finally reach an accord? Because for the first time all year, there's a legitimate deadline in place: if Marbury isn't placed on waivers by this coming Sunday, he won't be eligible to appear on the postseason roster of any other team.

Okay, so by now you've probably had it up to here with Stephon Marbury coverage. Will he take the buyout, won't he take the buyout, will he go to the Celtics, will he go to the moon, will he sing a song of sixpence, will he continue to complain about the Knicks' refusal to release him while still refusing to take a cut on his buyout, you've heard the gamut.

Well, we just might have the ending to this thing.

No, really. Wait. Come back. Hear us out.

As Tom Ziller pointed out over the weekend, rumblings of a three-way deal between the Knicks, Blazers and Clippers surfaced a few days ago. Exact details of the alleged trade were never clear, but it seemed to hinge on David Lee (and potentially Eddy Curry) heading to Portland, Marcus Camby returning to New York and, well, someone going to the Clippers.

Now that a couple of days have passed without movement, the trade appears to be dead in the water -- and if you believe the parties involved, it may not have ever been alive in the first place.

Cuttino Mobley officially announced his retirement at a press conference today due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a medical condition that results in an enlarged heart. He's known about the condition for a while (he signed a waiver releasing the Clippers of liability earlier this season) but it's become more and more serious and the Knicks were unable to find a specialist willing to clear him for action.

In hindsight, the trade is bittersweet. Not only was he playing for the Clippers before the trade, he was playing well, and he was likely in line to start for the Knicks. But as Newsday's Alan Hahn points out, had Mobley not been traded, he might not have realized just how far his condition had progressed until too late.

Conceivably, the trade could have saved him.

"I hope it did," team president Donnie Walsh said. "I really do. None of this is as important as somebody's life. None of it. Period. So I'm glad that we had a doctor that put him through tests to show that the risk is there."

How does Mobley's retirement affect the Knicks' bottomline? Because he's retiring for medical reasons, Mobley will get all of guaranteed money -- he's making $9.1 million this year and $9.8 million next.

In theory the Knicks could be granted a medical exception worth 50% of Mobley's salary to sign a replacement this year, and they might be eligible to remove Mobley's salary from the salary cap once he's sidelined for 12 months. Whether that actually happens, though, remains to be seen -- because they completed the trade after they learned he might not be able to play, it's up for debate whether the Knicks are even eligible for such relief.

The Dallas Mavericks seem to have found a winning formula: bench Jerry Stackhouse. The Mavs had a 3-7 record the day Stackhouse requested a trade. He hasn't played a single minute since, and the Mavs have won eight of nine games in his absence.

Knowing this, it's not a huge surprise the team has granted him permission to seek a trade elsewhere. At 34, he's not the player he once was, but he can still provide some scoring punch and has a palatable contract that expires in time for the summer of 2010. Hmm, who might be interested in a player like that?

Alan Hahn of Newsday connects the dots and suggests a match with the Knicks, who could send back Malik Rose's expiring deal in return. With a heart condition putting Cuttino Mobley's career in jeopardy and a nagging groin injury bothering Nate Robinson, the Knicks have been playing shorthanded.

Donnie Walsh certainly won't pull the trigger on a multiyear deal to fill a short-term need, but Stackhouse seems like the kind of player who could thrive in Mike D'Antoni's offense not to mention bring some veteran leadership and swagger to the court. The Knicks will be over the cap next year anyway, so losing whatever space Rose's expiring deal brings isn't that big of a deal. The real prize is the summer of 2010, and bringing Stackhouse on board wouldn't change that at all.