Yeah, the cap makes the Knicks’ options a lot more limited for trade partners than you would expect.

If you keep everyone. But some guys are obviously not going to be here. So trade Frank and Smith for picks (doesn’t matter if they’re good picks). Decline Trier’s option, or pick it up and trade him for a pick.

We’re also at the point where it’s potentially reasonable to ask KD and Kyrie to take a smidge under the max acquire a third piece.

One thing I did underestimate last night, though, was Beal’s salary. I had it at $22 (last year), it’s $25 next year. Can’t get him without throwing Knox into the mix, and that’s a little too rich for me.

Yeah, the cap makes the Knicks’ options a lot more limited for trade partners than you would expect.

That’s why we need to look for low priced redundant players on other teams and add picks to the mix.

If NYK play their cards right, here’s our roster:
1: Kyrie, Kadeem
2: Satoransky, Trier
3: Covington, Dotson
4: KD, Bertans, Kornet
5: Mitch, Room Exception (Deandre or Taj), Kornet

The first step is to trade #3 pick, Lance, one of DSJ/Knox/Frank to Twolves for Covington. This trade could take place before July 1 and would free up cap to max Kyrie and KD. After that, we should have enough using our picks (1st and 2nd round) and two of DSJ/Knox/Frank to land Satoransky and Bertans.

Imagine campus recruiting day being like that. “Hey, kid, I know you really want to work for Goldman Sachs, and they’re prepared to offer you $500k to start, but here’s the thing: it was determined in the back room that you’re going to have to work for a paper company instead. Good luck. You can change careers in 7 years. Maybe 6 if you’re willing to be an asshole and let everyone drag your name thru the mud.”

It’s really amazing that this team can lose its best player and still win a Conference Finals. Name me any team in NBA history that has ever able been able to do something like this.

The Knicks

Yeah, the cap makes the Knicks’ options a lot more limited for trade partners than you would expect.

But Beal for Barrett, Smith and Frank would be ok by me if there are going full rebuild. issue is we need to get to about 22m in salary to take Beal after filling our space and those three are only about 16m. We can’t keep LT because we need the space for the max players.

Basically we’re in a tricky spot with trading the three if we want to wait until after filling our space. Trading it with space limits us to one major FA. Realistically, trading it post space might only net a 20m player if we add a couple of our contracted players and elite 20m players who are on the block are, shall we say, rare.