Knicks Morning News (2023.05.29)

The salary floor provision shouldn’t make too much of a difference. The only change is teams have to actually meet it rather than just owing to their players whatever the difference is between the floor and their payroll, because they don’t get a luxury tax payroll if they don’t meet it.

Very few teams don’t meet the floor as is, so all the only implication here is every now and then some random journeyman will get gifted a 1/$15M contract or whatever. Good for that guy.

The new apron ($17.5M above the LT line) on the other hand will have enormous implications. I can’t believe the players agreed to it. Make no mistake, it is functionally a hard cap. No team is going to subject themselves to those penalties. I mean:

Penalties for exceeding the second apron include the loss of the mid-level exception, a ban on including cash as part of trades and the inability to accept more salary in a trade than the team sends out. A team in the second apron will also be unable to aggregate salary in trades and cannot trade its first-round pick seven years in the future (ie. its 2030 pick in 2023/24) or sign players on the buyout market.

Also, if a team exceeds the second apron and remains there in two of the four subsequent years, its frozen draft pick (the one that was initially seven years out) will get moved to the end of the first round, regardless of the team’s record in that season.

From this article. That is simply a hard cap, full stop.

The players did get some concessions of their own and I suppose their negotiators would argue that since they’re guaranteed 51% of BRI this won’t actually affect their earnings, just how they’re distributed.

I guess that’s technically true, but I’m not sure they should view BRI payouts as tantamount to contractual earnings. A few players getting high salaries is probably worth a lot more than all players getting a small payout.

The long and short of it is teams simply won’t be able to have very high payrolls for multiple years in a row. Some good talent will shake loose, and yes, first-round picks are worth more than ever. There might be a small shift towards drafting players more likely to succeed as opposed to “project” types.

It’s hard to say just how this will affect the Knicks. I think it’s slightly more negative than positive, because we’re one of the few teams that could theoretically sustain very high payrolls given Dolan’s personal wealth and the team itself always being profitable.

Of course, we haven’t really done that lately because we haven’t had a team even close to justifying it. We’re also in a decent position pick wise, and that might help–those protected picks might gain a little value.

Herro isn’t playing, a fake account duped a lot of people. What joy people get out of doing this shit, I will never understand.

I’m not sure I agree with you all that the new rules on minimum payroll don’t have much impact. I think almost every team is going to be close to the cap or above it and many, like the current Knicks, will be close to the tax line.

This would mean the minimum payroll rules would have no impact.

Martin got the Heat’s taxpayer MLE this year. He’s on a 3/$20M contract.

Strus makes the minimum…but that’s about to change. He might get a contract similar to Hart’s.

Hart only made $12M AAV this year for the Knicks, so there’s actually not a huge difference in opportunity cost here.

I will repeat that I want absolutely nothing to do with Jaylen Brown at anything close what he’s likely to fetch. He has benefitted immensely from playing with the Celtics. I’m not sure I would trade Julius Randle for him.