David Lee said he would have left the Knicks as a free-agent had Isiah Thomas still been in charge of running the team.

"If this was the old regime with all the accompanying craziness, I would've been outta here," Lee said. "But I talked to Mike [D'Antoni] a lot over the summer and I'm down with everything he and Donnie [Walsh] are trying to accomplish."

Thomas drafted Lee 30th in the first round of the 2005 NBA Draft.