[ESPN] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 21:37:00 GMT
- Achiuwa returns to Knicks on 1-year, $6M deal
- Precious Achiuwa Re-Signs with Knicks on $6M Contract amid NBA Free Agency
- Why the Knicks backup center issue doesnt have to be solved right now – The Athletic
- Ian Begley on Precious Achiuwa re-signing with Knicks, Julius Randle contract update
- Knicks re-sign Precious Achiuwa to bolster teams depth
[Posting and Toasting] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:00:00 GMT
Carmelo Anthony reveals he scored Knicks-record 62 out of anger
[Athlon Sports] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 13:02:00 GMT
‘Nobody Scared Of Knicks S***!’ Brandon Jennings Rips Jalen Brunson in Profane, Silly Rant
[Daily Knicks] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 17:15:00 GMT
OG Anunoby trade was still right move for Knicks even with RJ Barrett surge
[Sports Illustrated] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 11:00:05 GMT
- New York Knicks Guard Addresses Mikal Bridges Trade
- Knicks’ Donte DiVincenzo still can’t believe the Mikal Bridges trade
- How the Knicks will help Mikal Bridges rediscover his happy place after toughest situation in Brooklyn
- Bondy: Mikal Bridges happy with friends, relieved to be done with tough situation
- Could the Knicks blockbuster acquisition have an OG Anunoby-like instant impact?
[Empire Sports Media] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 13:30:00 GMT
Knicks reportedly have no interest in trading All-Star forward
[Basketball Network] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 18:11:07 GMT
Mike Bibby recalls Knicks teammate stealing money from him: JR Smith called me, ‘Hey, you wanna go ride on this MF right now?’
[Sports Illustrated] – Tue, 30 Jul 2024 15:20:41 GMT
Joel Embiid Calls Out Knicks Fans
[Posting and Toasting] – Wed, 31 Jul 2024 10:00:00 GMT
Knickslammed: John Wallace SLAM No. 15 (Feb. 1997)
56 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.07.31)”
We have enough room to fit all 3 before hitting the 2nd apron:
1. Taxpayer MLE
2. One minimum contract
3. A couple 10-days
Theoretically, we can send out Precious & a MLE player in a trade, then rotate a couple of 10-days before signing a minimum contract to fill the 15th spot.
You might be able to fit a couple minimums due to proration but that’s too much work for me to figure out before 8am.
Earliest we can trade him is December 15, Brian. So he’ll be on the team at least that long.
Sadly, there really doesn’t seem to be an available center on the market who is at least as good as Jericho.
Seems like we might want to spend the midlevel on a “2nd draft” type prospect like JT Thor (just an example) rather than a vet who definitely won’t play unless there’s a serious emergency.
That’s really it. I would have rather had Precious at $11MM and no access to the TPMLE than Precious at $6MM and the TPMLE. There just doesn’t seem to be anyone worth using it on before the season starts, and having that larger salary in one player instead of two creates flexibility.
I’m not sure “who” is coming in and who is going out, but I’m pretty sure the Knicks are going to trade for a high level C before the deadline. The only way that doesn’t happen is if Mitch is healthy, playing great, the spacing is working well and we are getting very solid backup minutes from someone. So like I said, I’m pretty sure we are going to trade for a high level C. 🙂 By “high level” I mean starter quality. I don’t mean someone to stick behind Mitch. I mean someone that can be the starting C on a contender if Mitch is hurt or it’s not working.
Okay, so we have 14 players signed to big league contracts, leaving one open roster spot and a pair of two-way spots, which will presumably go to McCullar and Jacob Toppin. So that leaves a few options for that final roster spot:
1. Leave it open.
2. Use it to sign another vet minimum contract.
3. Use some or all of the taxpayer midlevel exception.
I think option 3 is by far the most likely. The open roster spot is less valuable to a team in our current situation, where we’d likely be stacking multiple salaries to send out in a trade. And my understanding is that, because we’re over the first apron, the new CBA limits our ability to sign buy-out guys, which would be the other reason to keep it open. And a minimum player is less useful, because we can only use one minimum salary in an outgoing trade, unless we start getting into complicated three-teamers. Since we already have Cam Payne, Bates-Diop, and Jericho on minimum deals, we get greater flexibility if we’ve got a $5 million-ish salary that we can aggregate with one of them and Precious (and possibly Deuce and/or Mitch if we go hunting for bigger game).
Looking at the list of remaining free agents and cross-referencing it with stuff Begley and others have reported, I’m guessing we’ll be using the taxpayer midlevel on Davis Bertans.
Doesn’t connecting smaller contracts give us a certain amount of flexibility with other teams that are over the first apron?
There is very little gain in flexibility in having Precious at $11M vs. Precious at $6M and a TPMLE contract at $5M. If the receiving team has a roster crunch, they could just waive one or more of the players coming in, including Precious. I doubt that there’s many teams that would want Precious on the books for $11M.
Moreover, in the case that a significant rotation player suffers a longer term injury, having two players on the roster that are actually worth $5M or $6M is better than having one who is worth that but who is getting paid at least double or maybe even quadruple what he’s worth at $11M.
In either case, it’s a very minor quibble with no right answer. Given this FO’s expertise with both the cap and the nuances of making trades work (e.g. to my recollection, no one here suggested the Shake maneuver as a way to skirt being capped at the first apron) I trust that they chose the option that they think will work best, given the circumstances.
If we trade with another first apron team, then the salaries have to match pretty much dollar for dollar. So in theory, yes, but it would have to be the exact right combination of players going both ways.
Alan, I tend to agree.
As thing stand:
Starters: Randle, Mitch, Brunson, Mikal, OG
Rotation reserves: DDV, Hart, Deuce, Precious
Secondary reserves: Payne, KBD, Sims, Kolek
Tertiary reserves: Dadiet
Two-way: Huk
Possible two-way: McCullar, Toppin
Seems like Bertans would be a solid “fungible” 15th player if he is healthy and in shape. Other possibilities are Gordon Hayward, Luke Kennard, Robert Covington, and Cedi Osman. If they decide to go the minimum salary route, then maybe some OAKAAK like Gallo or Bullock? Or a deep-bench big like Damion Jones?
One of my many hopes for the upcoming Knicks season and for this blog is that the Knicks do not trade for or sign a piece of shit. I’m glad we ended up with Mikal Bridges and not that other one. I’d have trouble with that. I’m glad I no longer have to consider a person’s breadth of conscious reasoning to understand their guilt. Please no pieces of shit.
The reason giving Precious more would’ve blocked our use of the TPMLE is because we’re hard-capped at the second apron and Precious At More (at least by enough to make any kind of difference) + Full TPMLE puts us over. EB laid it out in more detail.
I don’t understand this at all. Again, if we need the TPMLE salary slot as outgoing trade salary we can sign Chris Smith to it and send him out. Now we have the flexibility to do something like that or use it on a buyout guy or use it as a trade exception.
The only counterargument is that the theoretical other team in the trade would be taking back one (1) more player in the trade than they otherwise would. I mean…I’ve genuinely never heard of that holding up a trade. If it really needs to be avoided you can find a third team, but I would be shocked if it ever becomes relevant.
I believe we just can’t sign buyout guys who were making the full MLE or more on their waived contract, so it hardly cuts off the buyout market entirely.
Ultimately we should still probably just fill it with the best TPMLE candidate we can find because we can always waive KBD, Sims, or even the TPMLE guy himself (less likely, at least pre-deadline) if we need the slot for some other reason.
CB, beyond the guys you are obviously referring to, I think they are trying to avoid any guy who might not fit in with the locker room, especially in a likely semi-permanent DNP-CD situation.
TNFH (or anyone else), suppose we keep that TPMLE slot open for now, and then in the future we want to make a deal where the incoming and outgoing salaries match exactly on Dec 15 or after. How quickly can you turn around a player newly signed at that time to the exact dollar figure you need? Is there still a 60-day or 90-day waiting period? Or alternatively, are there other ways to make incoming and outgoing salaries and exact match….cash considerations, elevating a two-way to a minimum-level deal, etc.? If not, then there seems to be no downside to signing someone right now.
But anyone making below that salary is probably someone you can sign to a vet minimum salary for the rest of the season. The advantage gained of an extra couple of million you can pay a potential depth piece is arguably outweighed by the greater flexibility the team would get by using the TPMLE on someone right now, who can then be traded by December or January.
Given what he got from Phoenix, I wonder if the Knicks thought about giving Tyus Jones the TPMLE instead of signing Cam Payne. Even if a trade doesn’t materialize, he could (i) be a better reserve PG; and (ii) be turned into potentially a late first at the trade deadline. I suppose Tyus has a chance to start now, which might have counted more than an additional 2m or so.
Obviously, the center rotation is questionable, between Mitch’s health and the limitations of Precious and Sims. But it’s not hard to envision a scenario where Thibs makes it work until Leon can work another trade. And on the whole, this is a much deeper and more durable roster than we had last year. Dadiet is the only guy with a real roster spot whom I wouldn’t want to see playing non-garbage minutes this season. The four rotation reserves are all guys who started lots of games, and played lots of minutes, for us during last year’s injury calamity. (And DDV would still be starting if we hadn’t acquired Mikal.) KBD and Payne are real NBA players albeit with limitations. Sims is fine as your third-string center, and it’s not impossible he still has room to grow his game. Kolek looked great in offense in summer league, even though he, like Dadiet, has a lot of learning to do.
And even if you assume that Deuce and Mitch are the only guys in the top 8 whom the FO would even consider trading this season, the way the roster has been constructed with contracts of various sizes gives us a pretty good amount of flexibility, despite being over the first apron, and despite being extremely limited in what picks we can move.
Good job, Team Leon.
https://sny.tv/articles/knicks-re-sign-precious-achiuwa-contract
Begley specifies that Precious can’t be dealt before January 15, not December 15. Teams rarely make trades that early (OG deal coming right before New Year’s was unusual), so it’s not a big thing. Just FYI.
Tyus has made no secret about the fact that he wanted a starting role, but to care enough to settle for a 1-year vet’s minimum deal?
I have no idea what Phoenix is doing. They sure don’t look like a legit contender, and Bradley Beal with a NTC might be the worst contract in the NBA. How long will it be before Durant demands a trade again?
I think we should think of the Knicks’ C rotation as more of a 5-man unit: Mitch-Precious-Sims-Julius-OG. I would be pretty surprised if Mitch and Precious regularly combine for 48 minutes.
I am also hoping that we are in fact good enough to not depend on those two guys to play that much, meaning a) small-ball lineups will be at least a 10mpg thing, b) Sims, or maybe even Huk, are good enough to hold the fort for a few minutes a night or even more during load management situations or injury-driven necessity, or c) we blow out a lot of teams and there are ample garbage time minutes to rest both the starters and first line reserves.
When we signed Payne it was reported that we wanted Jones but he wouldn’t come here
Yeah, by all accounts, Jones taking the minimum in Phoenix is a bet on himself. That team desperately needed a real PG. If the big three guys there are healthy (or even if only two of them are), Jones is going to put up some great assist numbers just setting them up, and he can cash in and go to a PG-hungry team next season. In theory. There just wasn’t that opportunity here. Even if we had promised to put him in the rotation ahead of Deuce, the opportunity here isn’t what he’s getting in Phoenix.
You do, though. You perfectly repeated what I said:
That doesn’t matter if you’re trading for an $11mm guy. Two-for-ones are pretty easy.
But try putting a package together for, say, Jakob Poeltl at 19.5mm.
Precious + TPMLE guy + Deuce + Payne = 19.5
That’s a 4-for-1 deal. Now Toronto has to waive three players instead of two. That’s not nothing.
Precious at 6v11 million has too many variables for me to analyse to take a view. But my view is pretty clear when it is Brock + TNFH v Hubie
Do we still have Precious’ bird rights? I’m not sure what impact, if any, waiving his trade veto power has. I would hate for him to get good and not be able to sign him.
Hubert, I may have misunderstood what Macri was saying on today’s podcast, but I think the idea is that we still have his Bird rights, but any team we trade him to wouldn’t, because it’s a new contract. Mostly, though, Macri is convinced that Precious is unlikely to get a deal next year worth more than $7.2 million, which is what the Knicks or a team that trades for him could give him, since the CBA allows for a 20% raise in the absence of Bird rights.
Thanks, Alan. I was thinking of the unlikely but wonderful scenario in which Precious pulls an iHart.
Alan, for sure, I wonder who will that opportunity be with. Most contending teams have rock-solid starting PGs and won’t have any cap space in 2025-26. Maybe the Bulls? Nets? Magic? Clips? Jazz? Spurs?
That 2004 pistons team couldn’t shoot for shit.
In the very specific scenario in which we’re trading for someone that requires us to cobble together 4 salaries, it’s possible we’ll have to throw a third-team a second rounder in order to take on one of them. In all other scenarios, Precious + TPMLE Player X is better than Precious alone. I like our chances.
Tyus was never going to come here to play 12 minutes a game. He’s trying to re-enter the market and get a nice contract next offseason. I hope we can all agree to refrain from doing a “Leon slept” take on this one.
At 6’8″ 225 lbs, I think of Precious as more of a big wing, meaning that he is pretty undersized for a C…especially with the increasing size of big lineups all around the league, including PFs like Giannis, KAT, Mobley, Banchero, Chet,etc. As such, I don’t think his value will increase much unless he evolves into more of a floor-stretching 3-and-D big wing. Since his shooting has not improved at all, I don’t see that happening. As such, my guess is that he will probably continue to be at most a $5M AAV utility big off the bench, if that.
On paper, it looks like we definitely could use a big body to eat minutes against the Embiids, Jokics, etc. I suppose that there will be a lot of data collection in the first couple of months of the season.
This is the reason Memphis salary dumped Williams to Brooklyn, so he wasn’t coming here. Nonetheless, the list of available FAs worth giving the TPLME to gets ever shorter. At a certain point, if this person is going to be a trade exception in human form, might as well give Archie a bag.
I do want to mention that we still need at least 14 players on the roster. Whether we make a 3-1 or 4-1 trade, we need to fill 1-2 spots with leftover money.
Because of proration for minimum deals, if we hold off on signing a minimum deals now, then we could sign more than 1 minimum contract following the trade deadline.
Basically, both these deals work but we couldn’t sign another minimum deal right now. It really only matters for Precious at $11M because it would force us to roster only 14 guys for now.
“I think of Precious as more of a big wing”
Hideously minor quibble, but I don’t. To me (and YMMV) a wing is ‘out on the wing,’ in that he is capable of regularly driving with the ball from the three-point line to the hoop or shooting from out there. Precious strikes me as a classic old-style power forward, in that he’s not tall enough to qualify as a classic center (doesn’t mean you can’t play him there, especially in today’s game), but mostly plays around the basket, filling space, getting rebounds, making layups and dunks, sometimes blocking shots. The Charles Oakley ideal, not the Karl Malone version (who to me actually played like a gigantic wing, at least in the early years).
I’m in favor of throwing away a roster slot on “the rooster”. That way his career can end where it started. He’s very popular in NY and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind one last shot on a contender and the Italian food in NYC.
Precious is a tweener.
He’s a PF that doesn’t provide enough spacing from the 3 point line to be really effective at that position, but a bit too small to guard some of the bigger Cs. I hope he’s working on his 3s in the off season.
This team really needs a Dennis Rodmanish, draymond Greeny, Isaiah Hartensteinenly type big to really command top contender status. Precious is not that, even if he is at his best and hits more threes we will need that. That player may not be available this year.
It sucks so badly that we couldn’t keep our own C.
Rooting for South Sudan right now
So some of us said Leon would try to get a C this offseason, and if the opportunity wasn’t there, he’d end it by re-signing Achiuwa. All going according to plan, is what i see. It’s huge that they’ve signed him to a 1-year deal and managed to have him waive the no trade clause. Achiuwa is here to help the C rotation for now and be traded by the deadline. My bet is that the Wiz will fail, as usual, and revert to tanking by the deadline, meaning Valaciunas will be gettable. He makes 9.9M.
Funny note: Can you believe the Wiz have a 207M roster!? A roster that will probably go nowhere! :O
I’ve been away the past few days, but i’d still want to say… Welcome Mortimer! It’s always nice to have new “voices” around here! 🙂
And now you’re in the run for KB Rookie Of The Year 2024-25! 😉
I enjoyed the World Series preview in Philly this week.
The vibes in Yankee land have been restored.
Jazz Jazz
“Hideously minor quibble, but I don’t. To me (and YMMV) a wing is ‘out on the wing,’ in that he is capable of regularly driving with the ball from the three-point line to the hoop or shooting from out there.”
But he actually CAN do those things, and did so rather regularly (if inefficiently) quite a bit when he was in Toronto. Take a look at this video and you will see him doing lots of these things. In fact, he closed the 2021-22 season on a roll, making 39% of his 3’s after the all-star break on 97 attempts. He would also get out in transition, even dribbling the ball upcourt himself. But with the Knicks, the percentage of shots he took at the rim dramatically increased and his 3PAr dropped from 25% to mostly emergency shots. His usage went from near 20% to 14%. So while he did a lot more “wing-y” things with TOR, there wasn’t really the freedom to do that here.
“Precious strikes me as a classic old-style power forward, in that he’s not tall enough to qualify as a classic center (doesn’t mean you can’t play him there, especially in today’s game), but mostly plays around the basket, filling space, getting rebounds, making layups and dunks, sometimes blocking shots. The Charles Oakley ideal, not the Karl Malone version (who to me actually played like a gigantic wing, at least in the early years).”
But that’s what he’s being told to do here. Beyond that, he has real versatility on defense…more than, say Julius Randle, who I would be more inclined to call a traditional PF than a big wing, even with his versatility on offense.
Anyway, the larger point is that for him to become more valuable, i.e to be worried about losing him to a higher bidder if he improves, he would have to do a lot more wing-y things, starting with knocking down corner 3’s at a higher percentage. I’m sure he’s been trying to improve from there, but maybe that ship has sailed. He’ll never be worth all that much as a backup C or pure old-school PF.
Alan, you have to wonder whether the iHart contract played into Allen’s extension. Is that the going price for that genre of C now? If so, if Mitch stays healthy, the 80/20 thing will definitely no longer apply to him!
Precious is 100% a big, not a wing. Since being drafted, he’s played 75% of his minutes at C and the other 25% at PF. Taking the occasional 3 or driving occasionally doesn’t make someone a wing. If that were the case, then Jokic, Brook Lopez, and Anthony Davis would all be wings as well.
Precious is far closer to players like OG, Grant, and Siakam than Embiid, Jokic or Lopez. He’s both big and mobile enough to effectively guard all 5 positions. I agree that he is technically a “big” but he has defensive versatility that most bigs just don’t have. Didn’t realize that calling him a “big wing” would be so controversial.
Glad to start a kerfuffle — I was just winging it…
Haha Raven, it really isn’t that big of a deal, big, big wing, whatever. He is a switchable and athletic but undersized big with a versatile but inefficient offensive game. If he could just learn to shoot 35+% from the corner 3 spot, he’d be awesome on his salary. But he can’t, so he isn’t.
Sam Perkins would really be fun in todays nba.
I predict the last full roster spot won’t be filled until the end of preseason, if then. It’s what they’ve done the last couple of years. This enables them to evaluate players in preseason and then maybe sign them. Also, since it leaves space to promote someone from a two way contract to a full contract, they could keep it open for a while. An example might be if Hukporti or Skapintsev is needed as a backup in case of injuries.
And Alan, Begley says January 15th in the text, but December 15th in the video, so who knows which one is correct.
i give the cavs credit for going with roster continuity…good players, maybe first round home court advantage in the playoffs next season…hopefully it won’t be to our detriment for the cavs to now have kenny guiding them during the playoffs…
I never understood the Cavs hiring Atkinson, but who knows, maybe they will do well with him.
Atkinson.