"I've learned a lot about the process, that's for sure. It's been frustrating. I worked hard in New York for four years. And it's one of those things where on paper it should be a great fit, where you turn around July 1 and say 'OK, what are we going to do to make it fair on both sides?' But it's not that easy -- especially with restricted free agency, so it's been very, very frustrating."
Lee thought the process would be complete by now because the Knicks had shed so much post-2010 salary last season in the Zach Randolph trade. But with Eddy Curry and Jared Jeffries under contract for that season for almost $20 million in combined salary, Lee is getting squeezed.
"Going forward I thought I could still be a big piece of the puzzle -- and it's not as though I'm looking at a max contract, or talking about either me OR LeBron. I thought it was something where we could get something done and they'd still have more than enough left over for what they wanted in the future, but apparently there's some disagreement on that -- just on how the Knicks want to move forward. And I think at this point they're not completely sure what they're going to do and how they want to proceed," Lee said.
Given the torrent of trade rumors he's hearing, Lee expects something to happen over the next two months that will keep him from having to accept the Knicks' qualifying offer of slightly less than $3 million, which would allow him to become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010.
"I know there's a lot of teams that are interested, and a lot of the teams in sign-and-trades interested in me weren't teams that had cap space going into this summer. But there's still Portland with cap space, and there's still teams very interested in sign-and-trades, and there's still New York figuring out what they want to do."
