For the first time since the calendar changed from the old millennium to the new, the Knick's, yes, the Knick's, acted fiscally responsible.  They reached agreements with both their free agents, David Lee ($7.5 million) and Nate Robinson ($2.9 million) on one year contracts yesterday.  This allows the team to go into the 2010 free agent sweepstakes with a tremendous amount of cap room with hopes of signing one, and potentially two of the big fish available (can you say LeBron, Wade, and/or Bosh?).

GM Donnie Walsh has a plan.  And yes folks, watching the Knick's will be painful this season.  But when next summer rolls around and one or two of the aforementioned free agents hopefully signs to plan at the World's Most Famous Arena, we'll gladly folk over our money for what will be $10 pretzels.  Today's deals are just the foreshadowing of the "Master Plan".  Let's hope that Walsh can pull off the same magic in 300 days.

The summer has come and gone, and the Knick's still haven't improved themselves free-agent wise.  It's not like they haven't tried, but there wasn't much pickings and the real prizes are available next year (like we have to list LeBron, Bosh, and the rest of the class).  So the idea was to get some complimentary pieces.  And here we are today, just before the opening of training camp.

David Lee is not signed, though he had some action from other teams.  Most thought he would be gone, and understandably so, since his price tag would interfere with the 2010 plans.  But here he is, still available and none to happy that the Knick's are thinking of low-balling him to keep the cap space.

On the wild side is Nate Robinson.  Most thought he was gone too as the Knick's interviewed everyone short of Bob Cousy to take his spot.  One by one they rejected the Knick's overtures.  And then Nate tried his hardest to be an upstanding citizen in the Bronx.  Well, "tried" may not be the best term as he has done his best to ruin his reputation.  The best he will most likely see is a one year $1 million dollar contract or he should start learning a European language.

The Knick's will take us through an up-and-down season with hopes of making the play-offs.  Next June starts the real season.

While most of you wouldn't know of Myles Brand, he passed away yesterday from Pancreatic Cancer.  He was for the past 6 years the President of the NCAA and has had a profound effect upon collegiate sports.  Brand curtailed the rampart spending that was creating the "Haves" and "Have Not's" in the NCAA.  Not concerned about that?  Well next March when you fill out your office poll for the tourney, forget the upsets if none of the "Have Not's" don't have the ability to get the quality players they do.

More importantly, Brand re-established the "Student" in student-athlete.  If the NBA, NFL, and other professional sport leagues need farm systems to develop players, they could do so on their own dime.  The primary purpose of college is education, not entertainment or developing athletes with no intent of doing any or minimal scholarly work to use the NCAA as their training ground.  Is it a fine hair?  Absolutely.  But a hair none-the-less.  And Brand swung the pendulum back to the educational side of the equation.

As a reformer of the system, he will be missed for a tenure far too short in span.

We were sorry to hear of the passing of Wayman Tisdale on Friday.  Tisdale was a force as an Oklahoma Sooner before moving onto a 12 year career in the NBA.  But to just look at that as the mark of a man is selling the world short on a truly diverse individual.  He became a contemporary jazz musician great, making several albums.  Known for his outgoing and kind personality, it is hard to find anyone to say a poor word about him.  He suffered a cruel fate that athletes face, his body betrayed him.  Two years ago he was found to have a cancerous cyst behind a knee after he fell at home and broke his leg.  That eventually led to the amputation of his lower leg.  Perhaps the cruelest fate was that he was only 44 and leaves his wife and three children.  We see athletes only bywhat they do on the court or field.  There is much more to them.

In what would be a tremendous move regionally, financially, and competively, Hofstra University is considering leaving the Colonial Athletic Association and joining the Atlantic 10 Conference.  We say ABSOLUTELY!

In the NCAA world, there are within the Division 1 conferences distinctions of their relative strength, both financially and competitiely.  The ACC, Big-10, Pac-10 and SEC, the so-called "Power Conferences" are also known as High  D-1 conferences.  The Atlantic-10 (A-10) is considered a Mid D-1 Conference, one where there can have a number of competitive schools in each sport each year for a national title.  The Colonial American Association is considered a lower Mid-Major, perhaps to a Low-Major Conference.  When a George Mason comes out and makes the Final Four, its from a tremendous run in the tourney, not from being a competitive or financial equal.

Hofstra joining the A-10 would have them become immediate rivals of Fordham University, both on the fields and courts and off them for the same level of recruits.  They would receive a greater share of television monies, and the strength of their programs would grow to meet the competition.  They may take some early lumps, but the Pride's programs have shown themselves to be highly competitve.  The conference would have a meaningful New York presence (sorry Fordham, but you've been a door mat) with Temple, Xavier, and Rhode Island, among the 14 present members, making their way out to Hempstead, L.I.  The move makes sense for all parties.  You just might have to rename the conference though, to the A-15.

Demonstrating that Madison Square Garden is continuing to put its less successful recent past behind it, the Garden announced today that Steve Mills, the Garden president, will be leaving to join with Magic Johnson Foundation and teach a course, "Dilemmas in Athletics" at his alma mater, Princeton, where he played point guard.  Mills hired Isiah Thomas as coach and GM of the Knicks.  Thomas was recently hired as coach of Florida International University.

Can hardly remember the last time an opening round series in the NBA Playoffs has been so intreging as that of the Celtics - Bulls.  Game 6 just finished after 3-OT's with the Bull's NBA Rookie of the Year Derrick Rose blocking Celt's Rajon Rondo's potential game winner to give the Bull's a 129-127 victory.  That's 4 out of the six games inthis series that has gone into overtime.  We may be showing our grey's but is this the best opening round ever?

There have been great series in the past, Knick's - Celtics of the 70's, Knick's - Bull's of the 90's (and we know it's us looking through our Knick colored glasses, so send in your best remembered series to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and help us out) and many others.  But none have gone with 4 overtimes.  You know we are rooting for a 6 overtime "thrilla" for game 7.  Somehow a blow-out just would't be right.