Let's make sure we have this straight: the Knicks have spent all of their recent history overpaying everybody they could manage to throw money at, are usually paying heaven knows how many coaches at any given time, would still be backing an armored truck to the doors of people like Eddy Curry and Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas had circumstances not intervened, sent half the franchise elsewhere so Carmelo Anthony could drive their fans batty, have obliterated the idea that all of this money should go toward constructing a team that might actually win more than one playoff game and they keep increasing ticket prices to pay for the renovated playground of Madison Square Garden.  Jeremy Lin at the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles last week.  And this is the team that makes a statement for fiscal responsibility by throwing a snit and letting its one genuine fan sensation walk out the door for nothing in return? They drop the ax on Linsanity, the one thing that made everybody happy and suddenly excited to go to the Garden? The Knicks — the Knicks — decide to make their principled financial stand on Jeremy Lin? Really?  It's hard to believe after all these grim years that a terrible Knicks decision has any surprise factor at all, but this one defies even Jim Dolan-as-total-nitwit logic. Lin fell through their ceiling like a gift from basketball heaven, a genuine out-of-nowhere star whom fans adored. Even the Knicks couldn't botch this one, could they? Let him walk because two years from now they might be overpaying the one player who makes people jazzed about being Knicks fans?  Wow. Dolan might as well have traveled to Knicks fans' houses and doused all of them with fire hoses.  Talk all you want about how everyone will now move on, à la Mike Lupica of The Daily News, or how this is really Anthony's team anyway, per Mike Vaccaro of The New York Post, or how we really don't know if Lin would have played up to his contract, as Ken Berger writes on CBSSports.com. Plenty of people have lauded the Knicks for avoiding that costly third year of Lin's deal, which is sort of like praising the Cookie Monster for stopping after his 85th Oreo. Hey, Dolan just saved a lot of people the trouble of watching Knicks games. That's worth something, right? Honey, what's on HGTV tonight?  But like many, Ian O'Connor of ESPN.com is aghast that the Knicks chose to get persnickety about money now and Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com calls this the most Dolan move ever. Will Leitch writes in New York magazine that the Knicks clearly never got Linsanity, and never deserved it. And now it's over. Houston, as Randy Harvey writes in The Houston Chronicle, doesn't even know exactly what it's getting. And even if Lin does all the things that gave Knicks fans goose bumps, he'll be doing it for a rebuilding team that, unless it miraculously lands Dwight Howard, everyone outside the arena ZIP code will forget is even in the league. Linsanity, it turns out, burned brightly like a comet and then passed out of view. And Dolan is feeling richer. Isn't that swell?  If all that made it hard for you to sleep, you could find yourself rolling out of bed at 4:30 a.m. and flipping on the British Open Thursday morning. Much of the first round will be dedicated to figuring out which Tiger Woods has showed up at Royal Lytham, because even he has gotten a bit dizzy trying to explain his up-and-down year, writes Mike Walker on Golf.com. Robert Lusetich of Foxsports.com believes Woods's problem is his own anxiety about adding to his major victories. There is also the usual anxiety among the English about whether Lee Westwood will ever win anything of consequence. Or you can ponder, along with ESPN.com's Rick Reilly, whether Rory McIlroy's love life has K.O.'ed his golf game. Whatever happens, the British golf gurus would like the players to do it all a bit faster because rounds are starting to feel like extended tax audits.  Of course, even the dullest golf round is more entertaining than contemplating the N.F.L.'s off-season arrest docket, which has gotten ludicrously long. The Cowboys' Dez Bryant became the latest when his mother claimed he threatened to kill her.  We do know that Bryant cannot claim Linsanity as a defense. Because thanks to the Knicks, that is history.  Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt
The Knicks, after all of their financial follies, somehow chose this time and this player to make a stand for fiscal sanity.