NEW YORK—In an effort to further reduce payroll, the Knicks have traded all of their remaining players for cheaper replicas. The replicas are life size models and realistic in nearly every respect. It takes a very trained eye to notice the difference. Avid Knicks fan Spike Lee has been attending games for years and only recently discovered that former Knick Nate Robinson was just an inflatable doll.

When asked for details on the deal, Team President Donnie Walsh called it “a no-brainer.” “We only had, like, two humans left anyway, so why not make the switch complete? I mean, Tracy McGrady (recently acquired from Houston) has been a cardboard-cut-out for like three years now and nobody has noticed. We have also been trotting out the corpse of what was once Eddy Curry without experiencing any drop-off in our overall production.”

Coach Mike D’Antoni agrees, adding that “Human players just bring too much drama. I wish we had done this with Stephon Marbury last season. A whole lot of trouble could have been avoided if we just paid for a simple mannequin and gave Steph some hush money”.

This move to reduce payroll is all part of a major effort to gain enough cap space to sign star free agent Lebron James in the summer of 2010. The New Jersey Nets started the salary cap-reducing trickery when they switched their team with a bunch of sixth graders from a Newark CYO league. The fact that they have won 5 games this year is extraordinary considering that they only have one player who can even reach the basket.

The response from Knicks fans to the deal has been mostly positive. According to one fan, “I see nothing wrong with this. We weren’t going to make the playoffs anyway; why not increase our chances of getting Lebron?”
The only possible drawback to the blockbuster deal is that the Knicks have given up the remaining three draft picks they had left until 2020.