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62 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.30)”
without even having a coach in place i am supposing that it should probably be a signal to us that we are not going to make any kind of splash in free agency or trades should be as much of a dud day for us as draft day was i guess maybe it is for the best but it is difficult to know without knowing who the coach will be
What would we make a splash with? We used up 2 years worth of flexibility last summer.
All worth it, of course, to make “the leap” from a 50 win team with terrible injury luck to a 51 win team with incredible injury luck.
Don’t know if I’m in the minority on this, but as Waterboy for the ‘Bring Em All Back’ team (I’d be Captain but I don’t want that kind of responsibility), I’m fine if we’re quiet over the next few weeks.
Would kind of appreciate having a coach, but I’m not feeling strongly about any of the current candidates, so I can live with the embarrassment for a while there, too.
And the Mets have the day off, so I don’t have to concern myself there, either. It’s a worry-free Monday!
for our current situation making a splash could consist of picking up pretty much anyone who we will actually play picking up luke kennard would be quite a coup for example how likely is it no idea
Espn says we should try to pick up Bruce Brown or Kennard and that we have interest in Horford and Kornet. I would be fine with any of those and also not mind if we used one of our minimum slots on TJ Warren – he’s still only 31, he might have enough gas in the tank to be useful.
Aw man, the Wolves are supposedly shopping Donte for cap space.
I think if we wanted TJ Warren on the team, he’d have been on the team ahead of Shamet last year. (Or ahead of player-coach PJ Tucker.)
Right, I’m just saying I wouldn’t mind him this year. If we get Kennard or Brown, Shamet would be redundant.
uhhhh between letting go of shamet or cam payne the choice is pretty easy for me cam payne can go
30 teams passed on TJ Warren last year. I’m not against bringing him in if he’s the best guy, but it seems unlikely that he’ll be the best guy
If we pass on Cam, the question becomes how comfortable we feel with Deuce and Kolek at the point.
Deuce isn’t great at running the point, so it’d largely be up to Kolek to shoot and defend well enough to stick on the floor.
Is there another PG we can conceivably get that’s better than Payne?
Does Tyus Jones go for the minimum again?
Does CP3 move farther from his family for a (perceived by players) championship shot?
Are Kolek and Deuce good enough to stand pat?
I think Lue and Payne are the most likely options and are upgrades over Kolek & Deuce.
If we bring em all back we’ll probably have to be quiet over the next 2 years.
lue and payne?
i guess ty jerome does not play point either
but i think that you are forgetting delon wright he is a great pure point and we already have him on our roster he is a huge reason we do not need cam
Wright is a free agent right now. I’d be happy to bring him back on a vet minimum.
And Ty Jerome will get way more than the taxpayer midlevel.
Here me out.
Let Cam go and resign Delon and Shamet.
Then trade Deuce to The Twolves for DDV!
Would that be possible?
Brunson/Delon/Kolek
Mikal/DDV
OG/Shamet
KAT/Hart
Mitch/Huk/???
At least it’s a very good year to be a flawed team.
This past year we had to run a gauntlet to win the title, beating championship caliber teams in rounds 2, 3, and 4.
Now it’s probably just us and Cleveland in the East, and even though they’re better than us I’d hardly consider them unbeatable.
OKC winning helps us, I think, bc it’s very hard to repeat. I doubt the western representative in the NBA finals next year will be as daunting as this year.
So if we nail the coach, we likely have a much better shot at the title next year simply bc the tide is going down.
With Brock Aller it might be.
i like it a lot walkerbender but start ddv over mikal
I would be super-sad to see Deuce go, but at least we’d be able to get rid of that depressing Villanova ad.
You’re kidding, right?
First of all you have to match salaries, and we can’t do that with just Deuce. Second, if Minny wants the cap space, then we’d need a 3rd team with cap space (Brooklyn?) to absorb Deuce and more (or just Mitch), so we can take DDV back. Plus, the third team will want compensation for that – maybe a 2nd rounder each from the other two teams.
I guess it could happen with Mitch if we knew we were getting another backup center (Nance?) with the TPMLE, but then you’re starting KAT at center.
In other words, your dream scenario would be pretty difficult to figure out.
Me too BUT if Minny is trying to save money, Deuce would do that. And while I think DDV is better overall, Deuce is a pretty good young piece for them to get back in return.
Plus, Deuce is more of a combo guard. He’s a good defender but DDV is a pure SG and is also a good defender (if not quite as tough or aggressive as Deuce). If you have Delon, the defense in the second unit doesn’t lose much losing Deuce.
DDV, Hart and Shamet should be plenty of fire power and offense for that second unit.
As far as starting DDV over Mikal, I think I’d still go with Mikal but DDV could play A LOT of minutes if he has it going.
No, I’m not. I don’t really follow or care to follow all the minutia of the cap. That’s why I asked, so others who are more knowledgable could answer.
So I was watching a random highlights vid of our game 1 win vs. Boston, and remembering that going in to that series, we were supposed to get our asses kicked by the prohibitive title favorites. And we proceeded to take them down in 6 games.
Yes, the Pacers series sucked and we can argue forever about how it would have gone if we hadn’t blown game 1, but damn, we beat the fucking Boston Celtics in 6 games! And for all his flaws, Mikal Bridges was a huge part of that.
So I’m firmly on team “run it back with a new coach”. If it doesn’t work this time around, ok, then start looking to retool the roster. But let’s give it one more shot, the East is weak man!
Something like Deuce + Precious S&T for 1yr at $7.7M (plus non-guarantee for multiple years to meet S&T rules), then send the WAS 2nds somewhere. Probably more 2nds to either Brooklyn (or whoever) or Minnesota.
Might cost a lot of 2nds, assuming there’s a number of 2nds that gets the deal done at all.
I’m not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. Deuce was part of a lot of our best lineups.
ok then i will say this if we keep deuce and we probably will then we should definitely give him a nice loooong look in the starting lineup over mikal with mikal and joshie anchoring a great bench unit
Karl Anthony Towns made approximately $10M more than Randle & Donte.
Mikal Bridges made about $5M more than Bojan.
Aller managed to close the salary gap in both deals. Shake Milton was involved, and somehow Serbia was, too.
I don’t know how exactly but I think Deuce and Donte is within the Aller margin.
It’s a good idea, Swift.
It won’t happen. But it’s a good idea.
Why? Cause DDV yelled at Rick Brunson during a pre-season game?
Sounds like Dorian Finney-Smith is heading to Houston. That’s gonna be a very tough team next year.
Does anyone have a reliable breakdown of exactly what we can and can’t do second apron wise?
I think with our current roster situation we’re at 10 players including Huk, and $11,514,776 under the second apron. So we can use the full TPMLE ($5,685,000), sign one vet-minimum contract ($2,296,271), and then sign two 0-to-1 year minimum contracts ($1,272,869 and $2,048,491 respectively). That puts us at 14 and we’d have to wait until the prorated minimum would still keep us under the second apron to sign a 15th player, like last season.
You could also break this down differently by not using the full TPMLE, giving you more flexibility to sign vet-minimums instead of 0-to-1 year minimums.
I could also be totally wrong about all of this and will be running it by Jeremy Cohen shortly, but if someone can correct me in the meantime, by all means.
The window to retool changes drastically, though.
Josh Hart at 30 coming off 2.5 productive years and with 2 years left on his deal is likely worth considerably more than Josh Hart at 31 on an expiring. He’s the chip I’d be looking to cash in on this summer.
Bridges is a lot harder to figure. If he signs an extension and bounces back, he’ll be easy to move. If he signs an extension and plays mediocre basketball for a 3rd straight season, he’ll be an albatross.
I think they are both free agents and Shamet may draw interest from others. We may not have a choice. And I think Delon is a free agent too
Don’t teams sometimes like expiring contracts though? Like they want to get off of a longer contract but still get back someone who can help for a season (or they trade at the deadline to a contender looking for a playoff boost?)
Jeremy has confirmed my breakdown is accurate with the caveat that there are minor variations in the reported second apron, but they’re probably too minor to matter. So with that said, a somewhat realistic, non-exhaustive, list of guys I’d be satisfied with at every slot:
TPMLE: Kennard, Yabu, Tyus Jones, Horford, Lopez, Coffey, Russell
Vet-Min: Lonnie Walker, Cam Payne, Shamet, Delon Wright, Thomas Bryant, Trent Jr., Armando Blumenthal, Dinwiddie, Gary Payton Jr., Nance Jr., Taurean Prince
0-to-1 Min: Kevin McCullar and Anton Watson, I guess
There’s some flexibility here–some of the TPMLE guys wouldn’t get the full thing and some of the vet-min guys might get some of the TPMLE instead–but I don’t think I’ll be wildly off base about how much any of these guys wind up getting.
Wright looked more valuable to mine eye than Thib’s beholders. I would like to see him back. If KAT can learn, Horford would be like the guy. Otherwise, let’s clock right this shit.
My bad. I think I got your posts confused with TNFH’s.
Also FYI it’s being reported that other teams are interested in Shamet, so he might not be a slam dunk to return for the minimum.
And I agree with EB. As much as I like DDV, swapping him for Deuce probably doesn’t make any positive difference in the long run. Plus, we really need a guy 6’8″ or taller coming back if we’re trading Mitch. I also don’t think other teams value Hart as much as we do, not that Leon would trade him anyway.
That said, I’m very curious about what they will do, as I don’t think Leon wants to stand pat.
Bc I think we really like Deuce and I don’t think we are motivated to bring Donte back.
And also bc we have OG and KAT on such bloated contracts that we probably need the savings as much as Minnesota. I imagine there are some pretty steep apron consequences of adding $8M in a trade.
I’m pretty sure we could legally trade for DDV by sign-and-trading Precious at around TPMLE amount and including Deuce and Kolek with the latter going to a 3rd team, but then we’d have 8 guys under contract and getting to 14 while staying under the second apron would be very difficult.
Not impossible, and we’d have to do it no matter what because aggregating players triggers it as a hard cap, but our deep bench would be ugly.
I would rather keep Deuce
Even though everyone’s most down on Mikal, I think the KAT trade is what really killed us.
He’s almost 30 and has only underperformed in the playoffs. I like the guy, but he is so far from being worth 50 mil a year.
Idk what kind of trade you could do with him – maybe to Phoenix for a group of players – but I really think he will be holding us back.
I don’t believe this would require us to stay under the 2nd apron.
Precious can be S&T with his bird rights and only the team receiving a player needs to stay under the 2nd apron.
The more difficult part is that I don’t think we can package Precious with another player, so we’d need to send picks.
We can sign Precious up to the max thanks to bird rights. If we did not want to include Kolek, we wouldn’t need to include him as long as we send enough picks.
You can then re-sign Cam & Shamet for a small increase since they’re returning players and you’re not avoiding the cap. Then add a couple guys for the minimum.
I should add James Nnaji to my list of baby minimum candidates. He’s free to try to hold out for more and/or try to get his draft rights traded, but in the Age of the Aprons the best approach for someone like him may well be to just get the guaranteed money ASAP and then get to work on his second contract.
I am not worried about KAT for next year. I think we are 50-55 win team again. Is what it is.
But I am really worried about a long term deal.
I would also love to bring Wright back, he seems like about as good a value as you can expect from a vet minimum and slots into our roster well.
The “sign-and-trade Precious alone” option doesn’t, but I was assuming we’d need to trade Deuce for value purposes, so the aggregation triggers it.
i thought that the suns could not aggregate players
They were both pretty bad.
Randle ending up on an extremely reasonable extension has definitely re-contextualized the KAT trade. Obviously no way of knowing if he would have been amenable to the same deal here but getting out in front of Julius’ contract situation always seemed to me like a key part of the motivation for the deal and that part looks a lot less clever a year later imo.
As did Detroit going from the worst team in the NBA to the 6th seed in the East.
Getting that pick thrown in when its value was low is what winning the margins looks like.
I’m going off memory of the rules, so you’re probably right.
I still don’t really know that it’s worth it to go from Deuce to Donte, add a bunch of salary, and deplete whatever assets we have left. But that’s another discussion.
I don’t think the Knicks can do much at the start of free agency. Which, I guess is a mix of a good thing (have solid foundation) and a not so good thing (the need to make some changes).
But, I kind of see 2 needs/wants.
One would be a PF so we can slide OG to the 3. He can probably impact the game more when playing small forward. That would also make him very switchable to the 4, etc. But it would help with the team rebounding, because OG isn’t the greatest rebounder.
The other need I would like to add is another ball handler or 2. One common item with a lot of the top teams is they have multiple playmakers on the court at the same time. The Knicks sort of needed Brunson to generate all the playmaking. He even had to bring the ball up the court the majority of the time. Another ball handler would enable him to play off the ball more and also not get so beat up by teams that full court press him.
I am not sure how this is accomplished. The past idea of a Lonzo Ball (healthy version) type player would be good.
Maybe we consider trading players such as Mitch or Hart to add a ball handler and get deeper?
I think we have a highly skilled team that doesn’t seem to fit that great together. It is strange saying that when we were in the ECF.
I find this sentiment very, very hard to square with Mikal and KAT’s respective playoff performances.
In the playoffs
Mikal avg 16, 5 and 3 on 52 TS
Towns 21 and 12 on 59 TS
Towns trade def did not kill the Knicks. I’ll take the star over the 5 pick role player anyday
spencer dinwiddie might be someone we can get with flagg klay christie hardy exum causing a glut of guard and wing types there
KAT costed two useful players, Mikal costed none. I know 5 picks is a big number, but how do you get a useful player just at 20 million, sending nobody meaningful in return?
KAT is a poor fit, and I dont think his individual numbers translate to team success.
Love this menu type framing. Thanks you TNFH.
Leon and Gersson: We all know you follow this site. Unless you’re swapping KAT with Giannis, – this is what winning the summer looks like:
TPMLE: Al Hortford
Vet Min: Taurean Prince
0 – to 1: Kevin McCullar
well said tho i would rather get horford than hortford quite honestly i would rather get kornet if at all possible but horford would be a good consolation
Well, I think KAT himself is a very useful player, so the net loss was one useful player with the idea being KAT + whatever you cobble together as a DDV replacement > Randle + DDV. The jury is out, but I think us having the second best odds to win the finals next year reflects the consensus that our upside is higher with KAT.
Meanwhile the opportunity cost of Mikal may well literally be Giannis Antetokounmpo.
i would rather not think that so we should pretend that no way was giannis coming here anyway that will feel better if he stays a buck
KNICKS 2025, – With all due respect sir, – piss off.
We would have been a better playoff team with Randle and DDV. The opportunity cost of KAT might have been a trip to the finals. But, as your scenario, that is hypothetical. The reality is that we were a defensive team built around an iso-Brunson offense and had complimentary players around him, but we threw that identity away. Now we dont take full advantage of our defensive abilities, neither of our offensive abilities, even if the sum of individual talents is greater than before.
What I say plays along the lines that KAT raises our floor, but lowers our ceiling. We win games by sheer talent, but our team does not click in way that can throw opponents off.
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