There was a lot of news surrounding the Knicks this past week. The team just announced it picked up the 2014-15 option on head coach Mike Woodson, but Amar’e Stoudemire had another knee surgery this offseason that nobody knew about, and their demotion of GM Glen Grunwald was unexpected and ugly.
First, the good. The Knicks announced they picked up the 2014-15 option on head coach Mike Woodson’s contract. His tenuous contract situation could have hovered over the Knicks all season with the head coach losing some of his authority with the players if they thought he might be gone at the end of the season.
Sep. 30, 2013–President and GM Steve Mills announced that the team has picked up the option on M. Woodson’s contract for the 2014-15 season.
— NY_KnicksPR (@NY_KnicksPR) September 30, 2013
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But the new President and GM, Steve Mills, only recently got the job after replacing Glen Grunwald late last week. The Knicks demoted Grunwald, and many executives and agents around the league have expressed surprise and outrage at the move after their former GM was so heavily involved in offseason pickups.
Some thought the Grunwald demotion was a sign that Woodson might be gone at the end of the year, too. Grunwald and Woodson were college teammates at Indiana and remain close. So it’s somewhat surprising they would let their GM go, but the new GM would then extend Woodson. That’s the ugly.
The just plain bad? Frank Isola of the New York Daily News reported yesterday that Amar’e Stoudemire had offseason surgery on one of his surgically repaired knees.
According to a Knicks source, Stoudemire had an unreported surgical procedure in July to repair one of his ailing knees. The Knicks open camp on Tuesday and have yet to announce that Stoudemire has had a third knee operation in 12 months. The surgery was described as “clean up” and isn’t considered major.
That makes three surgeries in a year on Stoudemire’s bare-boned knees after he missed all but 29 games last season — including New York’s entire first round playoff victory over the Celtics. With Stoudemire set to make $45 million over the next two seasons — he has a player option he will definitely pick up for 2014-15, unless he wants to do the Knicks a solid and turn down all that money — it’s tough to envision him ever returning to the form that allowed the Knicks to offer him all that money in the first place. It’s more bad news on the injury front after their summer acqusition (by Grunwald) Andrea Bargnani only recently started practicing again after battling pneumonia for most of the summer.
What do you think about the Knicks heading into training camp?
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