How about we speak in Buddhist metaphors instead? The Celtics and Nuggets are the Brahmins in the God realm; the Knicks are securely in the Human realm, which is a nice re-birth step up from being Hungry Ghosts for the past 20 lifecycles. Saṃsāra has ended and Nirvana is achievable from the Human realm!

He can get $40 million in multiple places, and he can get $40 million while playing with Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey if he wants to. I agree he will definitely be returning to the Knicks, but the only reason I ever thought he was signing for less than $40 million was if he was another one of those guys who just inexplicably gives the Knicks a team-friendly deal, and, well, apparently he doesn’t plan on being one of those guys. As Katz noted he was told by one league source, “OG has the Knicks by the balls.” They have basically no leverage here. “Give us a discount or go get paid more on another good team while we have no way of replacing you.”

Again, I’m sure he will be back, but it’s weird how they seem to want the guy desperately, but also want him to give them a discount when he has suitors lined up around the block. It doesn’t quite make sense.

Hubert, I totally get what you tried to do with mezzanine, but I’d like to suggest retiring it as for most people it seems to mean something different than what you are thinking. Sort of like if I started calling short, muscular guys ‘power forwards,’ like you know, Brunson. Cuz he, you know, powers forward.

Just calling them ‘tiers’ works pretty well. If there are only three, and I don’t think that’s a terribly useful way of looking at the NBA, I’d argue that the (healthy) Knicks are in the first tier. If we said there were maybe five, I’d say the Knicks were in the second tier, with Boston and Denver sitting by their lonesome in the first.

I’d also argue that that in that second scenario (five tiers), the first and second tiers are ‘contenders’ — in that they are all legitimately contending for a title, and with the right kind of breaks could come out on top.

The last two years we had two teams that I really didn’t think belonged in the finals — Miami and now Dallas. But the fact is they did (by, you know, dictionary definition) ‘contend’ for the NBA championship, because they played well and things broke right and they ended up in the finals. Contending.