I know, I shouldn’t bother, but this is my personal venting space. The Rangers are as good as they’ve been in a long time and the Giants, well, if I posted every week on this crazy ride they’ve been on, I’d write a lot of incoherent, screaming, excited gibberish, which you will probably get if they happen to win a week from today. 

Anyway, last thing I’ll say about them, and let it be on the record I was saying the trade was a poor one from the get-go. No hindsight here:

Imagine if James Dolan didn’t get involved?

T.Chandler/Amare/Gallo/Shumpert/Felton with Fields, Walker, W. Chandler, Douglas and Mozgov off the bench. That team is 10 deep and with plenty of pieces to trade for a truly elite player like Paul, D-Will or Howard.

But nope, instead we got TWO SUPERSTARS and 90% of Knicks fans falling for the dupe. You got exactly what you wanted, guys. Good job.

(Also, it’s been asked, “What would you have done if the Nets got Carmelo?” Who gives a shit? They would be a 30 win team like they are now.)

I remember saying Anthony Randolph would be a great pickup in the David Lee trade if he got minutes. He put up 24 and 15 tonight for the Timberwolves after being relegated all season to where he was a throw-away in Melopalooza. Fantastic. I also recall saying the Knicks probably gave up too much and were no sure thing after the trade. Sometimes I hate being right; 7-11 seems to suggest that’s happening. The Nuggets are 12-4 since then, but to be fair they haven’t had to face a future Hall of Famer like Tyler Hansborough twice.

James Dolan won, though, because he got to sell a whole bunch of jerseys and there’s almost no chance the Knicks drop out of a playoff spot in the terrible lower half of the Eastern Conference. So there’s that. The Dolans have no trouble settling for mid-conference mediocrity if it means they get some playoff revenue, as they’ve shown with both the Knicks and Rangers in the past. At least with the Rangers there’s a youthful core and a clear direction now - the Knicks can’t make that claim. They made a win-now trade that was never going to win now, and that’s startlingly obvious now.

The best the Knicks can hope for in the near future is luring an excellent supporting cast, but that’s probably going to get much, much harder in the new CBA. I don’t think they’d have been in this kind of shape right now if Dolan didn’t want his headlines or if Donnie Walsh had the freedom to explore options like Deron Williams, which at worst would’ve made Denver panic and sell lower, but that’s all history now. At least they have their two superstars.

I don’t love this trade.

No defense, no big men, a shell of Chauncey Billups at point guard. No depth. Carmelo is a good scorer but is pretty one dimensional and is not the ideal shooter for D’Antoni’s system. If they can get Paul or Williams in a couple of years, I can buy it, but I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed with the 2011-2012 Knicks.

I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not doing cartwheels about it. If they hadn’t given up basically every tradeable asset short of Landry Fields, I’d probably feel differently about it. Oh, and yeah, it’s a really big deal if Isiah had his hands in this. Don’t think for a second that doesn’t matter.