While it's widely been assumed that the Knicks would decline to match the Raptors' three-year, $19MM offer sheet for Landry Fields, that's not necessarily a given. Raptors president Bryan Colangelo told Toronto media today that there's a "50/50 chance" the Knicks match the Raps' offer to Fields (Twitter link via Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun).
Colangelo may not be the most reliable source for information on the Knicks' free agent strategy, but Frank Isola of the New York Daily News
tweets that the Knicks aren't concerned about the luxury tax, so "you can see them matching" Toronto's offer sheet. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports agrees, noting that the Knicks have a three-year, "win-now" window (
Twitter link). Marc Berman of the New York Post says the Knicks will likely take the full three-day window to make a decision (
Twitter link).
If the Knicks were to match Toronto's offer sheet for Fields, New York's salary commitments for the 2014/15 season would become pretty alarming. If we assume a third-year salary of $8.5MM for Fields and $9.3MM for Jeremy Lin, the Knicks would be committing over $80MM to five players (Fields, Lin, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, and Tyson Chandler) that season.
