Danilo Gallinari

Danilo Gallinari
SF/PF, 6’10, 225lbs, 28 years old, 8 years of experience

Recorded the most efficient season of his career with an excellent .622% true shooting percentage, a large mark for a focal point of the offence. Still shoots the three well, still drives the ball, still has a tremendous knack for drawing fouls, and still has an aggressive desire to do so. But with age and injuries, he is probably a power forward from here on out, which will remove his mismatch value. It will also call more into question his always mediocre rebounding and worse defence, which both took another step back this year. In scoring so many so efficiently, and in still only being 28 years of age, there is probably a $90-100 million con-tract coming in from somewhere, even with his legitimate defensive concerns. Is it worth Denver making such an offer too? I would say yes, but not with a view to keeping him for all four. See also; the Nene delayed sign-and-trade.

Player Plan: Entering unrestricted free agency off a career year with a bad knee. May be about to get $100 million. Try to re-sign him, certainly, but proceed with caution.

It won't look like it in hindsight, but there was a time when there was absolutely no way that the Knicks were going to trade both Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari for Carmelo, let alone also get them under the luxury tax and give out every possible future young asset not called Landry Fields in the process. But then an NBA team yielded to the input of the head coach of a Sun Belt Conference team. It's not who you are in this business; it's who you were.

1) Arn Tellem has signed players to rookie contracts that start at 100% and use incentives to get to 120% in previous years; he did this only last season with Gerald Henderson, and in 2008 with both Danilo Gallinari and Anthony Randolph. He knows the rules and has played by them before.

Am I the only person who thinks that Danilo Gallinari, when he's spiked his hair up, looks a bit like Butthead? Probably.