When the New York Knicks confirmed Tuesday evening that they had decided not to match the three-year, $25.1 million offer sheet tendered by the Houston Rockets to restricted free-agent point guard Jeremy Lin, many fans expressed sadness at what they viewed as the too-soon conclusion of Lin's brief, remarkably eventful tenure in Manhattan. (This one included.) Many others stood fast against that emotional tide, though, arguing that this was a logic-based decision predicated on the financial reality that Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan simply couldn't agree to pay a still-unproven commodity with a rotation-player resume just 26 games long a whopping $14.9 million for one year of work three years from now.

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Even the NBA's most valuable franchise can't just sign up for $35 million luxury-tax payments, the argument went — and as I wrote Tuesday, the Knicks' balance sheet indicates they'd be writing a check at least that big in 2014-15 if they matched Lin's sheet, depending on how else they filled out the roster. Strip out the emotion, they said, and as the New York Times' Howard Beck wrote, "the short answer" for why the Knicks would let Lin go is "money."

Except, of course, that you can never strip emotion out of the Knicks' decision-making process, because as our own Kelly Dwyer put it, "it appears as if the lone thing that James Dolan is an unmitigated expert at is stubbornness." Since the start of the "will they match/won't they match" drama, the talk around the Knicks was that the team's disinclination to bring him back had less to do with money than it did with Lord Jim's hurt feelings, which is exactly what Frank Isola of the New York Daily News wrote Wednesday:

The decision was both financial and emotional since Garden chairman James Dolan was upset over Lin restructuring his deal with Houston last week to include a third year salary of $14.9 million. Dolan, according to sources, felt he was deceived by the 23-year-old Lin. "Much love and thankfulness to the Knicks and New York for your support this past year," Lin said on Twitter. "Easily the best year of my life. #ForeverGrateful." Of course, team officials privately felt that Lin's actions over the past few weeks were anything but grateful. They were upset that he hired a publicist without their consent and were livid that the second-year point guard out of Harvard went back to the Rockets for more money. [...]

"Deceived." "Upset." "Without their consent." "Livid." Doesn't sound like bottom-line-based decision-making, does it?

Lin going "back to the Rockets for more money," as Isola put it, came after reports surfaced that Houston planned to sign Lin to a four-year, $28.8 million sheet — really three years and $19.5 million, since the Rockets would hold a team option for the fourth year — with the so-called "poison pill" coming in the third year, when the 23-year-old point guard would be due a $9.3 million payout.

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The Knicks — both privately and publicly, according to Yahoo! Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski, and repeatedly, as noted by BDL's Eric Freeman — vowed to match the sheet ... which led Rockets general manager Daryl Morey to reconfigure the offer to ratchet up the third-year value, bumping Lin's '14-15 salary up to $14.9 million and creating all sorts of heavy luxury tax implications. That, according to Isola's story, was the line in the sand for Dolan:

Dolan has a history of overpaying his players and has never shied away from the luxury tax before. But in this case, Dolan felt betrayed by Lin for going back to Houston to rework the contract. After all, the Knicks acquired Lin in December after he was released by both Golden State and Houston.