
The summer of 2010 was going to be the Knicks' summer.
Finally.
After years -- make that decades -- of bloated payroll and anemic win totals, things were going to change. The change started in 2008 with the hiring of former Pacers exec Donnie Walsh, who made it his top priority to clear cap space, something the Knicks had never done in the era of free agency. He dealt Jamal Crawford and Zach Randolph, the team's two top scorers, in the season's first month, with the focus firmly on the summer of 2010, when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Amaré Stoudemire would all be free agents. The big-ticket guys always talked about how much they loved playing in Madison Square Garden -- now one, or even two, of them could make the World's Most Famous arena their home for max money.
Well, we all know what happened next.