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Jose Alvarado immediately impacts Knicks in debut win over Celtics – SNY
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Guerschon Yabusele on amending Knicks contract to facilitate Bulls trade: ‘The passion is more than just the money’ – SNY
Knicks Bulletin: ‘I did a two-hand dunk, which I never do’ – Posting & Toasting
Grading the Knicks at the All-Star break – Newsday
Knicks’ grueling schedule out of All-Star break to provide another pre-playoff test – New York Daily News
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65 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.02.18)”
if you’re wondering about the split this morning look up 162(m). not obviously easy for dolan to both retain control and avoid it.
The only split I was wondering about is the minutes split tomorrow night between Mo and So…
Today’s fun random quote, from Macri, about one of our favorite topics to poo upon:
“According to Cleaning the Glass, among guys who played at least 2000 minutes last season and 1000 minutes this season, KAT joins Nikola Jokic, SGA and Pascal Siakam as the only players whose teams are at least 7.0 points per 100 possessions better when they’re on the court. “
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again. The discussions about KAT are like the discussions we used to have about Randle where some posters just wanted to trade him for a bag of beans. They didn’t like Randle’s attitude, complained about his defense, and underrated his rebounding. Sound familiar?
In retrospect, Randle is a very good player and in the present, KAT is too.
What I *didn’t* realize until just now is that KAT is actually averaging under 20 points per game on 46 percent FG shooting. It’s the first time he’s been averaging under 20 since his rookie season 10 years ago. It’s objectively been a bad season for him statistically, especially when compared with last year.
As frustrating as he can be at times I think KAT might already be the most underappreciated Knick of my lifetime.
I agree that some versions of the current KAT convo are ridiculously dismissive of him, just like the ones about Julius were after the 2021-22 season.
However, comparing the two is kind of the point. One is making $30-35M over the next 3 years, and the other is making $53-61M.
And that’s the rub. KAT at Mikal’s salary would be an asset. At his current salary, he is an inefficient use of cap space. It isn’t an issue during the regular season, where a team with roster imbalance can pile up wins. But KAT eats up a $20M or so that would be better spent on a “Josh Hart” level rotation player.
So cap-wise, you’d have to compare KAT’s impact to, say, the combo of Julius and Naz, or iHart and Caruso.
And judging by Brunson’s comments that he expects the Knicks to “do right by him,” the problem isn’t going away. I’m not seeing a way that you can max (or near-max) Brunson, extend KAT, and have a championship level team.
So the question isn’t about dumping KAT for a bag of beans. It’s about repurposing his salary slot into 2 or 3 players who make more sense on a Brunson-centric team.
No offense KnicksFan, but saying “some posters want to dump KAT for a bag of beans” is like saying Dems actually want illegal aliens to r@pe and k!ll when they complain about ICE killing innocent people in the street. It’s not exactly nuanced. Z-man gave a good, more realistic example above, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Z-Man, I don’t disagree with your argument in a vacuum, and certainly agree about it going forward. My one caveat is that just as one shouldn’t compare Julius and KAT without considering salary cost, one shouldn’t think of KAT on the Knicks in a vacuum, either. Your example re ‘another Hart’ is exactly the point I’d make, which is our team is loaded (arguably with mismatched toys, but that’s a different argument). We already have ‘a Hart.’ There’s not really room for another (see the arguments about how Sochan might fit in if he’s not a total loser).
Measuring KAT is extraordinarily hard. He’s having a down year for him, which makes it even harder (will he rebound, no pun intended). Yet he’s still one of the better PF/C out there, e.g., leads the league in rebounding. He also makes too much money, and does stupid stuff (Hi, Julius!).
Like many of us, I’m all about riding KAT out this year, hoping his shot comes around as the playoffs near (some nice ones in all-star highlights, so maybe…?). What to do going forward from there is Leon’s bag. Very glad it’s not mine.
“As frustrating as he can be at times I think KAT might already be the most underappreciated Knick of my lifetime.”
Seems to me that Julius already has that position locked up, being that he is outplaying KAT this year at 60% of his salary, and that the Wolves haven’t missed a beat after salary-dumping KAT for a guy that a broad swath of Knicks fans couldn’t wait to see run out of town, after he had 2 all-NBA seasons for us and was on a way to a third before blowing out his shoulder.
Looks more and more like this really is a one year window for us, at least with this particular team. We would need to win it all for Leon to want to bring the band back and even then, he might sacrifice the chance at a repeat in order to extend our window of being a really good competitive team. I could see KAT going even if we do win it all this year, which I think we have a very good shot of doing.
OKC looks beatable now. None of the West teams really scare me that much. We’ve beaten SA and Denver. Houston could be a problem for us for sure. After that? Minny? The Lakers? Phoenix? I don’t think any of them will make it to the finals.
The path to the finals, though, is harder than it appeared at the start of the season. Detroit, obviously, but Boston (esp if Tatum is good when he comes back), Cleveland, Philly…all going to be tough opponents. But if we make it past them and get to the finals I like our chances against anyone.
So let’s go grab this title and worry about what to do with KAT afterwards.
“Your example re ‘another Hart’ is exactly the point I’d make, which is our team is loaded (arguably with mismatched toys, but that’s a different argument). We already have ‘a Hart.’ There’s not really room for another (see the arguments about how Sochan might fit in if he’s not a total loser).”
I hear you, Raven, and completely agree with the last paragraph in your thoughtful post. However, I only mentioned Hart in terms of his “value” and not his game. For example, take the Pacers acquiring Zubac, who is making “Josh Hart” money. If he was our starting C, $30M in cap space would be available to bolster another position. If you can spend that $30M on someone who pushes Hart to the bench, or on two players that obviate the need to sign the Yabu’s and Clarkson’s of the world, you wind up with a more balanced team.
Indiana is instructive in this sense. They lost Myles Turner for nothing, and still were able to pivot to Zubac. This was possible because they don’t have an albatross on the books…both Siakam and Hali make less than KAT…and they also made other roster-building moves more efficiently than Leon did. They got Siakam for roughly the price we paid for OG, they got Nesmith for a fraction of what we paid for Mikal (and are paying him a third of Mikal’s salary). They aren’t carrying any bloated salaries on their cap sheet.
“he (Randle) had 2 all-NBA seasons for us and was on a way to a third before blowing out his shoulder”
He had a lot of help from Jaime Jaquez on that one.
“(esp if Tatum is good when he comes back)”
Tatum’s steady drumbeat lately is that he is “undecided” as to whether or not he’s planning on coming back this season.
I haven’t changed my opinion on either Randle or KAT. Both can be frustrating at times with defensive lapses, TOs and bad decisions on offense, but KAT is the far superior player in terms of impact on winning. Even in this down year of misuse and weak shooting I’d take Towns over Randle without hesitation (and he can still easily turn this year around with coaching adjustments and better playmaking).
As to salary, I think we are well beyond the point where it matters all that much except to Dolan. We are mostly a finished team. The idea is to have the best possible player at each key position even if you have to overpay. Randle at a much cheaper salary would make us worse. Any flexibility gained from Towns making less would not get us a player better than Towns. It would add some better bench piece that would barely move the needle.
At most you can say having Towns at this salary makes it tougher to trade him for a better player – which imo is the only reason we should trade him to begin with. But even if he was making less and we could find a better player to slot into his position, we’d have to add picks or someone else good to upgrade.
Towns is what he is.
I think it’s easy to argue our two stars Brunson/Towns are not as good including defense as some other 1-2 punches, but how many teams have role players at the same level as OG, Bridges and Hart with guys like Mitch, Duece, Alvarado and Shamet off the bench?
Kyrie won’t play this season. Shocking. Tankers gonna tank.
“I think it’s easy to argue our two stars Brunson/Towns are not as good including defense as some other 1-2 punches…”
You could have stopped there. Once that is easy to argue, you made my point for me.
“…but how many teams have role players at the same level as OG, Bridges and Hart”
Those 3 will make a combined $95M next year. Can you find another team who is paying that much to 3 “role players?”
“…with guys like Mitch, Duece, Alvarado and Shamet off the bench?”
I haven’t looked carefully around the league but would suspect that our bench isn’t significantly better than other contenders when they are at full strength.
It’s a good discussion about Towns. The one thing I’d like to add is that I’m not very worried about his points per game. Given the change from Thibs’ offense to Brown’s and the Knicks better shooting from their role players, I would have expected Towns’ to be scoring fewer points.
There’s the rub. A “lesser” player who could also play defense would be a better fit and most likely cost less. Siakam (or Randle) is a reasonable example. Leaves us thin at center, though which I guess underscores the other problem: it’s not only that KAT has various issues at a high price point; it’s also that Mitch is not reliably available. If he were, maybe we’d still have Randle and could be arguing about his issues instead.
I sometimes watch this video of Brunson in Game 6 against Detroit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZIV8AYqeHo
I have been mezzo mezzo on Towns from the start. Also not worried about his scoring. He’s expensive and a terrible defender but I don’t think he is a disaster in terms of overall value.
He and Brunson aren’t the ideal championship building blocks but I can still enjoy them, the latter especially. Towns frustrates me a fair bit too.
Edwards in the Athletic. Guess which player he said that about?
Also in the Athletic, a good piece about Dieng. I forgot OKC traded us 3 first round picks to move up for him. We don’t remember probably because we needed some of those picks to unload Kemba etc. But it’s a good reminder that every GM makes mistakes. That’s kind of a big one – they got nothing from him in the last four years, not much in the trade.
Shams:
did not previously know that the new york knicks are the only nba team tied to a publicly traded company…
sure feels like the knicks are dolan’s toy with a super tight grip on control…remember though a while back milo sharing that dolan’s margin of control was actually sort of slim…
so what does it all mean milo?
the magic just may have the most disappointing team record this season to date…
KAT would fit great on their team…KAT could potentially help several clubs this off season…
so when does jalen get a pay raise, ’27 – ’28 season or ’28 – ’29?
seems near impossible to fill out a roster and put a sustainable winning team together with multiple players making over 50 million…
somehow though the celtics have figured it out…
Well, duh. That’s why they’re also “contenders.” If our bench was ridiculously better than the other contenders then we would be more than contenders.
It’s a high bar. We have one of the best teams in the league 1 through 10 with 2 all-star starters and some of the best role players in the league.
I think the argument being made is yes, KAT is overpaid, but breaking his contract up into say 2 30 million dollar players wouldn’t necessarily make us any better because we all ready have great players 3 through 10 outside our top 2.
He’s having a down year. Randle had a down year too and people really tried to argue he was on physical decline at age 28 (pepperidge farms remembers).
KAT could erase all this doubt with 6 weeks of perfectly timed glorious play and thinking that might happen isn’t some pie in the sky fantasy. We’ve bolstered the team with 2 great defensive players, which should make life easier for KAT (and Brunson for that matter).
I like our chances.
Watching JB in Game 6 vs. Detroit ’25 never gets old.
Thanks for sharing that.
“I think the argument being made is yes, KAT is overpaid, but breaking his contract up into say 2 30 million dollar players wouldn’t necessarily make us any better because we all ready have great players 3 through 10 outside our top 2.”
And my argument is that we actually don’t have great players 3-10. None of Deuce, Alvarado, or Shamet are great players (they are all significantly undersized for their respective best positions), and the last two are just so-so. They are better than Yabu and Clarkson turned out to be, but that’s a very low bar. We are also counting on a 20YO rookie and a buyout guy as our backup long wings. It’s a decent bench, but hardly one to get overly excited about except for Mitch, and even he has his limitations.
Dang! Then how the hell are we third in the east when our 3 through 10 players are so bad! Being “underszied” doesn’t automatically make you a bad player.
Shamet has been regularly touted in articles as one of the best vet minimum picks ups of the season.
If we put Deuce on the trading block, we’d have plenty of teams that would want him. He plays defense and can hit 3’s and is on a ridiculously cheap contract.
Alvarado is a great player for being a back up bench PG. I mean did you watch the Philly game? What the hell are you expecting?
Mitch, OG, Mikal, Hart…all great players.
Feels like someone peed in your cornflakes this morning. You could find flaws in any player in the league outside of like the top 5 guys. They all have their “limitations.”
swifty, are you even capable of not being hyperbolic? Where did I say “our 3-10 players are bad? Please get a grip.
I’m not sure there are even 5 guys without flaws. Jokic and SGA, pretty great on both ends. Maybe Jokic is only mediocre on D, but it’s not a weakness. Maybe SGA isn’t lethal from outside, but it’s not a weakness. Tatum doesn’t have real flaws, I guess? But:
Giannis can’t shoot the 3 (and sometimes struggles from the line)
Mitchell is not a great defender and is small
Doncic very much not a great defender
LBJ, Durant, and Kawhi are without weaknesses, but they are old or frequently injured or both
Maybe Steph is without weaknesses? Became a pretty good defender over time, and is healthy enough to qualify this year.
Obviously, being absolutely dominant can make you an MVP despite weaknesses. But true all-time greats could do it all, and there are very, very few of them.
We already found flaws with Giannis…think it was something about poor spacing & shooting etc…and he’s only a top three player in the world.
Reminds me of my childhood friend who was super picky and as a result didn’t have a girlfriend until ~ 24yrs old. Indiana went to the finals last year…and the team is full of flaws.
For those of us who put a team together at work know that dozens of employees are way underpaid with respect to their production and a few of them are way overpaid.
It’s not about getting best value for your dollar, – it’s about winning. Doesn’t mateer if they win like OKC did through multiple 7 game series or they sweep through the competition. Just win.
Great stuff… but recall much of that room to dance and prance around the basket was brought to you by KAT’s offensive threat (21.4 ppg in 18 playoff games + 11.6 rpg). And Dennis Schroder won”t be on the floor 33:06 and Thompson WILL be on the floor more than 22 minutes cause even Bickerstaff can’t be that dumb 2 years in a row.
Which is why dumping KAT for a rickety 41 yr old LeBron is at the very least “questionable”. For all of KAT’s flaws, he has 2 particular elite skills that allows the Knick’s to run this particular offense which virtually no one else in the league (save Denver and SA can run).
The discussion yesterday was what to do if we acquired Lebron for a minimum or Yabu-like contract. If we acquired Lebron effectively for free, it would make sense to trade one of our not so great defenders for a better defender.
It’s not dumping KAT for Lebron, it’s adding LeBron and trying to get commensurate value for him. If you don’t like what we can get by trading KAT, that probably says something about KAT.
My bad. You didn’t say “bad.” You said “not great” which I guess is not the same thing.
We should field a team of great, all-star caliber players from 1 to 10. I bet we could win a championship that way!
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/kat-2025-playoffs-stats
KAT in the first round vs Pistons: 19.7 PPG, 10 RPG, 1.7 APG, 1.2 SPG, and 1.3 BPG on 49/48/90 shooting splits (59.7 TS%)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTmbtMcBA9E
watch the ending…
If Detroit and NY swapped KAT and Duren last year, – they beat us.
KAT is having the worst season since rookie year and he still made the all star team.
We need to be more loyal to our players and not turn on them during the times they go through a prolonged slump.Just remember the joy he gave us when he hit that step back three to win the game next time he gets called for an offensive foul.
Surprisingly substantive comments from Brown today re: Sochan’s role:
Sounds like he will in fact eat into Diawara’s minutes, at least initially. That will upset some people, myself included to some extent, but the logic does check out. We can of course always glue Sochan back to the bench if it’s not happening for him.
If Sochan plays like he’s shown he’s capable, we’re better off with him on the floor. We’re trying to win a championship this year, we should be using every incremental advantage we can get.
If it makes people feel better, think of Sochan as our move to stealth tank the market value of Diawara this off-season.
“Indiana went to the finals last year…and the team is full of flaws.”
Sure, and by extension, every team has inherent “flaws,” but the more important question is: to what degree can their flaws be exploited (or masked) in a 7-game series against a given opponent?
I would argue that Indy actually had a very flexible roster and a very flexible coach, and could “absorb” their flaws better than us. They could play with anyone in any style of game, on offense and on defense, from the perimeter, midrange, or in the paint, in transition or in half-court, etc. and they showed as much by being a Hali injury away from knocking off OKC. We lost to them convincingly in games 2, 4, and 6 in different ways.
The good news for us is that compared to last year, we definitely have a) a more flexible coach, and b) more alternatives on the bench. So there’s a couple of countermeasures we have now against a player like Siakam than we had last year. Huk and Kolek are a year older, and those two plus Clarkson, Mo, and Sochan gives the Knicks 14 players who could see positive minutes in a tight game where their particular skillset might be needed.
But the deepest flaw we have to reckon with is the Brunson-KAT conundrum. When the flaws of your two “best” players compound each other, you are putting the coach in an unenviable position of having to bench one of them in critical situations.
“We should field a team of great, all-star caliber players from 1 to 10. I bet we could win a championship that way!”
I can’t really have a serious conversation with you if you keep doing this kind of stupid shit.
Sure you can!
I’m all for humor, as you well know. I just don’t care for distorting what one is saying. You obviously know that I am pretty dedicated and positive as a fan overall, but there are some things that I think are worthy of criticism and that should be addressed in the offseason.
As for now, the team is set, and I’m just as fired up about possibilities in these upcoming playoffs as you or anyone else. This is really a conversation about next year. And if we don’t win a championship this year, that conversation will greatly intensify, as it should. If we actually do win, honestly, I will be so overjoyed that I couldn’t care less what we do!
Looks like OG is good to go….
so what does it all mean milo?
162m expands non-deductibility of public company salaries over $1mm beyond the C-suite for up to 5 highly paid employees. since msgs is public, this would hit 5 nyk players and turn something like $170 million in normally deductible salary nondeductible. that’s obvious a material annual cost, though it’s marginal-rate dependent.
it has never been easy to see how doland/msgs will attempt to skirt this hit, given his relatively modest economic interest in msgs and his supervoting shares that give him control, a dynamic that doesn’t really exist in private markets. it’s possible to imagine a creative take-private deal that gives dolan an unusually long guarantee of control, sort of like the lakers deal but on steroids (only because i find it hard to imagine he would give up control after a few years). in any case, the split off announcement this morning is the sort of thing you might wonder could be prelude to something like that.
Shams:
How many more stars on tanking teams are gonna go on the shelf like this over the next week or two?
LOL. Shams followed with this:
Who is even left?
“How many more stars on tanking teams are gonna go on the shelf like this over the next week or two?”
Dunno, but hopefully more of them will be in the East. Then again, if a team is tanking, we should beat them regardless of the players they have out there.
Glad to hear that about OG being good to go; I was hoping that would be the case. LFG in the second “half”!
If we’re having any trouble with the Pistons offense tomorrow night, let’s hit ’em with our Mitch/Sochan/OG/Hart/Alvarado lineup.
Pt, Are you sure that NBA players are ordinary at will employees covered by 162(m)? For example, if they are considered independent contractors, the rule would not cover them.
You’re going to give us trouble if we sit players during games, Adam? Here’s our answer to you!
If they really are covered employees maybe this is why MSG is reported to be considering spinning off the Knicks and Rangers as separate companies which would apparently enable them to then go private instead of being publicly traded. If they become private the 162(m) doesn’t apply.
See this article about the spin off possibility. At the bottom it talks about the possibility of going private.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7054843/2026/02/18/madison-square-garden-sports-knicks-rangers-spinning-off/
Think they should sit Brunson towards middle of next month for a 2 week stretch when they’re facing cup cake tanking teams. Wonder how many more games he can miss to qualify for all NBA teams.
We have 27 games left and Brunson already has 50 games played, so he needs to play 15 more and can miss 12.
The thought just occurred to me that we really have 2 Wingstops on the team. Name brand Wingstop in OG & Mikal, then we can go to the bench and throw Equate brand Wingstop in there with Sochan and Diawara. That’s nuts. Both sets have the ability to guard 1-5 and are wing-type players. I can’t wait to see Brown play with the lineups once Sochan and Alvarado are acclimated. And then we’ll have Deuce back at some point? That level of depth in today’s NBA is FILTHY. We may not score like we should at times, but Brown and O’Connor should definitely field a good defense down the stretch run
Really? You think La Vine and Sabonis are having unnecessary surgery to spite the commissioner?
The most likely scenario is they are both injured and need surgery and waiting another 2 months to the end of the season will likely worsen their conditions and move their rehab into effecting next season.
Sitting a healthy Markkanen is a different issue.
That’s perfect. Thank you. They should sit him against all cupcake teams playing for ping pong balls during March
“They should sit him against all cupcake teams playing for ping pong balls during March”
Not great if you have an 8-year-old son who is a Knicks fan primarily because of you and who can’t wait to see Jalen play. (Oh, and by the way, you paid full price for those tickets.)
I hear you…but I would say to sell those tickets and take him to a playoff game instead.
These freshman are really good. Watching some College Ball . I can see why the tanks are in full force .
Fuck I’m bored today:
(1) James Nnaji sucks even for a college player
(2) Westchester re-signed TJ Warren
20 years from now, when the 8-year-old will be telling his son about the heroics of Brunson, that lead the Knicks to a championship, he’ll know it was all worth it.
And of course, he’ll be on KB debating with Hubert’s son if we should trade for the last season of 42yo Victor Wembanyama!! LOL
Ewing is the most underappreciated Knick of my lifetime.
I listened to the Sochan Press Conference today. I am certain we’re going to confuse the hell out of our opponents.
At Power Forward, we are fielding a British guy who speaks English with an American accent, backed by a Polish guy who speaks English with a British accent.
Talk about putting your defender in a blender!
cyber and TheRant making me spit up my tea!
I don’t know about that. He was well regarded by those who saw him play. For an 8-9 year period he was among the top 5 players in the game. Unfortunately there were always centers (Robinson, Hakeem and Shaq) who were clearly better and a group like Jordan, Magic , Bird, Barkley, Stockton, Malone, etc that were generally better.
He never had a single top complementry player to play with which didn’t help and shooting his was out of Dodge City at the end when he was done didn’t help either.
But no one doubts his overall greatness. There were just always a couple better every year he played.