UPDATE (12:45 p.m.) — Jeremy Lin spoke to Sports Illustrated on Wednesday and offered some insight into the decision that went into the Knicks not re-signing the point guard.
Pablo S. Torre spoke to Lin, who said Knicks general manager Glen Grunwald called him about an hour before the midnight deadline to tell him they wouldn’t match Houston’s offer.
“We wanted to keep you, but it couldn’t work out,” Lin quoted Grunwald as saying. “Tell your family I say hello, and good luck the rest of the way.”
The reference to the situation not working out is apparently related the luxury tax hit the Knicks would’ve taken in the third year of Lin’s contract.
Lin was unusually candid, admitting outright he would have preferred to stay in New York, but that he was looking forward to his new start.
“Honestly, I preferred New York,” Lin told Torre. “But my main goal in free agency was to go to a team that had plans for me and wanted me. I wanted to have fun playing basketball. … Now I’m definitely relieved.”
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Jeremy Lin is gone.
The Knicks confirmed just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday that they would not match the Houston Rockets $25-million offer.
The New York Times reported Tuesday at about 4 p.m. that Knicks management had ended talks about whether to match Houston’s offer sheet for Lin and would let the point guard sign with the Rockets.
Since the trade for Raymond Felton was broke by media sources this weekend — and confirmed by the Knicks yesterday — it was assumed the Knicks wouldn’t bring Lin back.
The Times’ Howard Beck reports, “The Knicks are not expected to announce their decision until this
evening, and there is still a chance — albeit incredibly small — that it
could be reversed.”
The Rockets signed Lin, a restricted free agent, to an offer sheet last week of three years and $25 million. The contract was given a “poison pill” of $14.8 million in the third year in order to reduce chances the Knicks would match. The Knicks will already be over the salary cap in 2014-15 with just Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler, so the addition of Lin would create a heavy luxury tax.
The Knicks have until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday to match the offer. They have not made any official announcement.
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