Who is Farhan Lalji?

Donnie Walsh is the new president of the New York Knicks. Hallelujah. Finally. For the past two years I’ve had a draft blog post saying that until Isiah Thomas was history I wasn’t going to be able to say “I’m a Knicks fan” with a straight face. We’re half way there.

I like Walsh, think he did good things with Indiana over the past 25 years – till he brought in Larry Legend and then things kind of went downhill. Still, it’s an upgrade over Isiah who basically took a sinking ship and made it sink a heckofalot faster.

It’s turnaround strategy time. How should Walsh turn the ship around?

This is a tough one. If I was Walsh, I would do 4 things, change the leadership, clean the house out, find and promote the talent, and improve relationships.

Changing leadership; I would fire Isiah, take the GM role for a while and bring Herb Williams in an interim head coach role ASAP. Bring in strong leadership at the top, Herb isn’t the long term guy but he shows promise and has the players respect. Let Herb have a go next season if he succeeds it turns out like the Raptors and Mitchell, if he fails he’s likely not to fail as dramatically as Isiah.

Clean the house out; buy out Steph Marbury, trade Eddy curry for a bag of peanuts to whoever will take him, get rid of Zach Randolph, and stop and breathe. Try and clean up some significant cap room so when players like Lebron, CB4, Wade, Melo come on the market in a couple of years the Knicks are an attractive situation.

Find and promote the talent, the Knicks have some good players, some good personnel, Nate Robinson and Crawford are decent, I would package one or both of them if it gets Curry/Randolph out the door, otherwise no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Renaldo Balkman, David Lee, and their draft pick, plus Nate - if he keeps him – are a decent foundation. Add to it a strong pick in the draft – again if he keeps it – and we have a decent core with the Knicks.

Improving relationships; keep it authentic. Be real, be true, speak to the other GMs in the league and let them know there will be no more sucker trades, but the Knicks have got some assets and some needs.

This is a sweet situation, there’s absolutely no worse it could get. Walsh has a chance to be the King of NY. Or could it get worse? F***, I hope not.