News & Blogs
Knicks Celebrate Their N.B.A. Title on ‘The Tonight Show’ – The New York Times
Knicks’ depth played huge part in securing New York’s first NBA title since 1973 – SNY
Jalen Brunson Trolls Josh Hart Missing Dunk Before OG’s Tip-In, Both Refuse to Admit They’re Friends – BleacherReport
Jalen Brunson, Hart & Bridges Predict MVP of Knicks’ Parade in New Video Ahead of Title Celebration – BleacherReport
Knicks Roster, Salaries, Cap Space, Available Draft Picks and More – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ magical NBA title run a once-in-a-lifetime event for New York fans – SNY
Dolan asked Knicks to sacrifice for title in April speech – ESPN
Knicks workout Duke shooter Isaiah Evans – Posting & Toasting
KNICKS NBA FINALS DEBRIEF Part 2: Jalen Brunson’s Legendary Game 5, Mike Brown’s Masterclass & More – Knicks Fan TV
YT News
165 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.06.16)”
Just to add to the Jalen Brunson clutch-ness question from yesterday —
Jalen Brunson 4Q stats for the whole playoff run: TS 68.9 on 38.9 usage, 7.4% TO rate.
Per 36 -> 40.7 points, 56.2 FG, 52.6 3P%, 90.5 FT%. You just cannot do it better than that.
In the finals, which was an absolute rock fight by both teams –
Per 36 – 42.6 points on 51.4/42.9/88.2 splits
62.9 TS on freaking 42.1% usage, 7.7% turnover rate.
The best closer in NBA Finals history.
He is like the Terminator in that he just keeps coming and coming even though you feel like you’ve killed him 10x, except in this Terminator movie, John Connor has no chance.
(In comparison -> Deaaron Fox – 35.2% TS on 20.5% usage, 17.2% TO ratio. Dylan Harper 40.2% TS on 22.7% usage. Wemby 45.4% TS on 33.6% usage)
Other stats of note – blown layup notwithstanding – Josh Hart led both teams in 4Q rebounding% at 14.9% and 4Q net rating (+41).
Who taped Dolan’s speech, and who gave the tape to the Post?
It was posted to the Roommates pod YouTube channel, so I assume it was all done with Dolan’s permission.
I have to think Dolan consented to it, in the condition that it could be released if we did the damn thing. Otherwise, yeah, we have a bit of a mess on our hands. Nothing new under the sun!
Not surprisingly the NY Post is crediting Dolan’s speech with inspiring the Knicks playoff run
“Win one for the nepo baby!”
I was sort of thinking Dolan had it taped himself, for just this purpose.
It might rain on our parade.
Are you talking about the Dolan thing, or literal rain?
If I didn’t mean literally I would have said literally. Duh.
IFC Center loves our team! https://bsky.app/profile/queencityjamz.bsky.social/post/3mofwl7h3kk2e
Help me answer a couple of questions for the Knicks video mailbag I’m doing:
1. Since Brunson’s dream is to be on Law & Order: SVU, what kind of character should he play? I’m thinking “guy in office who continues working on his filing while talking to the detectives,” but am open to more ambitious suggestions. I’m just not sure he has a ton of camera presence when he’s not hooping.
2. Which Knick (current or all-time) would have been best suited to play themselves on a series—and which series would you want to see them on?
3. if you were going to pick tv shows that would best encompass this Knicks team, what would it be?
Brunson strikes me as a no-nonsense person. I would do a business/store owner that is inconvenienced and tight lipped when questioned. He’s annoyed by the cops butting in. He looks like a suspect & maybe is arrested. But new evidence shows he’s innocent.
Kicker – he was vindicated because even though he’s tall, the criminal was super tall, like 7 foot plus. The criminal seems jovial, but secretly has a nasty temper.
Clyde.
That’s the answer.
Given the persistent purgatory debates about this collection of players and the front office who assembled them, the show that comes most readily to mind is “The Good Place.”
I am somehow seeing Brunson being the janitor in the detective’s area, who casually solves the crime puzzle with an off-hand comment while mopping the floor that crystalizes everything and makes everyone else feel stupid.
I think Sprewell is a perfect detective.
OMG The Good Place! The entire team…
Does that mean Thibs plays Michael? And maybe Dolan plays Shawn?
Alan, I don’t watch much TV, and I’m not good at those sorts of questions, but they are intriguing, so here is a thought. Besides Clyde, one Knick that has a personality with a presence is Charles Oakley. He could be himself on a show and be interesting. Of the present Knicks, I actually have the intuition that Clarkson coukd carry off a TV role (but I don’t know why I think that).
By the way, this new feature that you can’t load the website or post anything while in VPN is really a pain. Almost every link posted here is blocked in China (Twitter, Bluesky, the athletic, the NY Post and so on) so I have go into VPN to read a link and back out to refresh the site. I suspect it’s some sort of “security” feature recently implemented by word press or some entity in the internet chain. But it should be undone.
It’s been posted previously, but a Prop Joe type of character, low key, never gets fazed, go to for everything and anything you need…..
don’t know if he’s want to play a drug dealer, but maybe someone who can get info where no one else can
Brunson and Hart play rival food truck owners and each is convinced the other did it
Lady Raven insists that Clarkson is an Elf Prince in the TV version of the Lord of the Rings…
I’m not having a problem with my VPN …
He’s already a serial killer – the fourth quarter killer – call him Kyle and throw a fin-bro vest on him and he’s the insufferable son of the team owner planning to take over the arena when daddy chokes on some pig gristle cuz daddy just loves chawing on pickled pigs ears. Murder in the Garden
Jalen’s guest shot would certainly have to include the obligatory heartfelt hug with Mariska at some point in the episode. That would pretty much rule out any villain role. A grieving parent, perhaps?
“If I didn’t mean literally I would have said literally. Duh.”
Why would you have written “literally” if you *didn’t* mean “literally”? Huh. 🙂
Why not have Brunson play himself and the episode is centered around some sort of crime that happens near MSG?
You could get the classic interviewing a witness scene where they are busy doing side work but it could be Brunson doing a shoot around.
Did you guys hear about this parade on Wednesday just for kids?
https://x.com/gussaltonstall/status/2066885389323792825?s=46
I’m thinking of going, do you think they’ll be checking IDs to see if you’re young enough? (-:
I want to add, not Carmelo Anthony. I watched his interview with Jeremy Lin, and ‘Melo is about as interesting as the crypto guy at the bar who wants to tell you about about his new Rolex.
Don’t follow college hoops at all. In years past, I’ve come to depend on this site to bring me up to speed as it’s usually deep into draft analysis mode by now. For some reason, that’s not been the case this year. Not really sure why that is.
With the 24th & 31st picks, the Knicks would appear to be well positioned to select a useful player(s) in what has been touted as a deep class. It sure would be nice to pick up another ball handling guard to take some pressure off Jalen; an upgrade over Alvarado. Or, possible NBA-ready replacements for the Mitch/Landry roles if one or both end up leaving.
Provided the picks aren’t tossed into the furnace per usual, is there anyone available in the range of the Knicks selections who fit those descriptions?
Quite honestly, Jalen (as much as I love him) is not very interesting in postgame interviews or when at the podium by himself. He is much, much better playing off of others surrounding him when speaking (such as in his podcast with Josh).
1. jalen as a jaded mta subway conductor giving sardonic half sentence answers to investigators about why no one reported anything suspicious while mainly focusing on his subway conductor routines
2. dean pelton recruits jr smith to matriculate and make greendale the best community college golf team in the nation. or story arc where president bartlet develops a deep rift with a cabal of powerhouse dem senators and brings bill bradley on as ombudsman.
3. maybe slow horses — ragtag group discarded by others made good, headed by a retread leader who comes off less clever than he is.
It sort of seems like Zuby Ejiofor is destined to be a Knick, as he has that “dog” in him, as it were. He hustles, rebounds, passes, is generally switchable, he’s a Johnny, and he’s big, though not extremely tall for a big. Not sure which pick he’s most mocked at, but I wouldn’t be against him, although Jeremy So-HAN/So-CHAN is basically the same player.
As for a bench ball handler upgrade, I would love to nab Stirtz, but he won’t be available in our range. I was thinking we could package our picks to move up (maybe to 18 with Charlotte?), but I’m guessing Leon doesn’t want to add a larger contract to the payroll. Plus Stirtz would probably mean the end for Kolek.
There are a lot of useful wings in our range (Swain, Evans, Karaban, Jefferson), so that would be an easy way to go, but we don’t like to do the easy thing when drafting. I expect trades culminating in a player we never considered in a range we won’t expect.
Those are great insights, ess-dog. Thanks! (What is a “Johnny”? I looked it up, but didn’t find anything that works for the context you are posting about.)
Just walked home up Broadway from the Ferry. Its really starting to bubble down here.
Oh, he went to St. John’s. Got it. I’d never seen/heard that term for their players before. (My lack of knowledge regarding anything having to do with college basketball is huge.) You learn something new every day. 🙂
If we manage to re-sign Diawara, I actually think this would be a good year to punt on 24 if there isn’t someone we really love.
And no, I’m not trolling. Hear me out.
We have a pretty full roster right now. And the going rate for a pick like that is a lottery-protected first.
If we’re over the second apron, we won’t be able to package any players and we’ll have no tradable picks. But if we have a lottery protected first in ’27, we can package Landry (or Deuce or Alvarado, etc) with a 1st for an upgrade during the season if we need to. And if we don’t need to, we have a pick in ’27 that has a chance to be better than 24.
It gives us more flexibility than selecting two players. If we select two, we’re going to have to cut someone.
The downside is it takes time for players to develop, and it might increase your chances of having one rotation player two years from now if you take two swings now.
It all depends on who is available. If they don’t love anyone at 24, punt away and use the 31st pick, which will have a more favorable contract.
Of course the important thing is to actually get the going rate for the pick.
You gotta love how the narrative shifts SO quickly. Now the whole thing is, “Since eight different teams have won the title in the last eight years, none of their titles mean much. You have to win two now to stand out.”
It’s fucking MORONIC.
I mean, sure, you need more than one for a “dynasty” or whatever the fuck you want, but winning an NBA title is still fucking AMAZING and it stands on its own. Dirk Nowitzki, Chauncey Billups, these dudes are all known for being CHAMPIONS. It doesn’t matter if it was only one. It’s just a stupid ass argument.
nbadraft.net mocks Joshua Jefferson to us at #24, Dailyn Swain at #31, and Ugonna Onyenso at #55. That’s basically a PF, a wing, and a center.
Again, I know zero about any of these guys. But you guys probably know about ’em.
I also think we established ourselves as the ultimate destination for any player looking at the vet minimum this year and should be able to pick up at least one quality ring chaser, making it even harder to fit two rookies.
Knicks draft picks are like the guys in Star Trek in the red shirts. You shouldn’t get too attached to them. I’m gonna go ahead and not learn anything about anybody in this draft.
Which is totally fine! Leon Rose has my blessing to go ahead and incinerate them shits.
I think I read if they trade that 24th pick for a future pick (maybe with Dadiet included), we could save like 8 million in cap space, which would make it a lot easier to resign Mitch and Shamet.
My crazy idea is to do a three way trade with OKC and The Bucks where we trade Mitch and Deuce. Mitch and Giannis go to OKC. Deuce goes to Minny (plus one of OKC’s good players and some of their picks). We get back iHart.
Then we sign and trade Shamet to Minny for DDV. Maybe throw in a second.
Brunson/Alvarado/Kolek
Mikal/DDV
Hart/Clarkson
OG/Diawara
KAT/iHart/Huk
It’s going to be impossible to sign Landry and Mitch without going over the apron.
It’s actually going to be hard to sign one of them without going over the 2nd apron. I suspect Landry may require the full $11M we can offer, and Mitch is going to make at least the MLE.
I know the thread is different, but I was thinking about one thing: who was the last lefty being named NBA Finals MVP? Is it possible that the only lefties in that list are both ours?
I have been eyeing ways to get Donte back for a while. This one won’t work because the average salary (according to EB) is going to be $11M and that’s the most we can offer Landry. Donte makes $12M.
There’s two ways we can get him:
1. The maybe far-fetched way: Donte makes a sacrifice, lets Minnesota buy him out, signs here (we can sign him bc he makes less than the MLE), then signs for the vet min next year. Then we can pay him the following year with EB rights.
(I say maybe far fetched bc is a 30 y/o Donte coming off a missed year really going to fetch a multi-year contract in free agency? I don’t know.)
2. The way that might work: sign Alvarado for the exact dollar amount Donte makes and trade him to Minnesota in December for Donte. We’d be trading a healthy player for an injured one, but it might be worth it in the long run.
“So here’s the scene, Jalen: You walk in to the ground floor of a building only to find two of your agents hovered over a bleeding man. Pulse check, negative. One of them looks up at you and plaintively says, “But we weren’t trying to kill him.”
Your line is — right here: “I know you weren’t trying to kill him. If you were trying to kill him, he wouldn’t be dead.” Really sarcastic on the “trying.”
And … ACTION!”
No other team incinerates first round picks or punts on them. Why? Because it’s stupid.
“But they won a championship even though they incinerated and punted some picks.”
Yes, but the argument was never, “Every single last move you make in a six-year build has to be non-stupid or you’ll never win a championship.”
It won’t be the end of the world if they incinerate/punt and it probably won’t really even be worth much discussion given all that’s happened around here in the past few weeks. I’ll probably let it slide myself.
But it will still be stupid and — *at the margins* — make them less than they could have been. (Or worse — it’s possible to get a superstar at 24.)
I’ll also note in advance what I see as a disconnect between (a) putting KAT on a make good basis and wait for his contract extension; and (b) incinerating picks. You’re either bringing the band back or you aren’t. If you aren’t, you draft.
I think we might have to let Landry leave, assuming we are trying to stay under the 2nd apron. Mitch would have to be the priority, and he will probably also be amenable to a slight discount in order to stay where he is.
In theory, Deuce can do most of what Landry can (along with Clarkson at close to the vet min). It would suck to lose Landry, but keeping him doesn’t seem possible. I also can’t imagine bringing Donte back unless he gets stretched and he signs at a massive discount (very unlikely).
So if Landry is gone, you need a 2/3 that can handle the ball, play good defense, and shoot the hell out of the ball. In the draft, maybe de Larrea could fit that prototype one day. Maybe Maleek Thomas, but these guys won’t be ready next year. Maybe Dadiet gets there, but I don’t see it now.
There will also be other vet mins who slip through the cracks, but it’s hard to imagine us finding one as effective as Shamet has been.
Teams trade current picks for future picks all the time, E. And this is actually a smart time for us to consider it.
I wouldn’t assume we are trying to do that. The cure costs more than the disease.
A lot of the apron situation and what we should think about what their plans are going forward comes down to whether they extend KAT. We’ll know a lot more come July 6.
Me personally, I think they should just draft the best basketball player they think is still available when the 24th pick (*) rolls around the night of June Whatever.
(*) And 31st pick.
Love Zuby. Sign me up
According to Sportrac, they’re only $19M under the projected 2027-28 second apron, assuming KAT opts in and club options for that year are exercised on Josh Hart, Kolek, and Dadiet. That’s before any of the summer 2026 business goes on the books. Kolek and Dadier’s options are barely over $7 total, chump change.
Deuce and Alvy are UFAs.
TLDR: Absent something like saying bye-bye to Josh Hart, or making other moves, or Mitch inexplicably going only one year, going into the SA this year means being in the SA next year. It’s not inconceivable that they’ll be effectively already over the 2027-28 SA by the end of July (again, assuming they don’t wave bye-bye to Josh.)
The system really isn’t designed to allow long windows of Vets at Retail on your books.
If we duck the 2nd apron, the roster-building reward is:
– access to the TPMLE
– the ability to trade our 2033 pick
– the ability to aggregate salaries in a trade
But those last two are kind of useless to a team that doesn’t want to break up its core. Who are you going to package the ’33 pick with? Which two salaries do you want to aggregate?
Every time you say “stay under the second apron”, what you’re actually saying is we should give up Mitch and Landry so we can use the TPMLE on one player worth $5M. Or we should give up Mitch and Landry so we can package Deuce and Kolek with our ’33 pick and give up 4 players for someone who makes $7M.
There needs to be some turnover and new blood or the team is going to stagnate. (*) Going over the second apron would be fine if they had all or almost all their 1s, but they don’t. Realistically, they front-loaded *a lot* of their future to get this LO’B. Worth it, obviously worth it — but still has to be dealt with.
(*) Between ’70 and ’73, they added Pearl and Lucas, two relatively massive moves. The ’70 team did not stay stagnant. It turned over significantly. Going over the SA means no this generation Pearl. At least.
Trust me, Hubie, I’m all for blowing by the 2nd apron… I just don’t think Dolan wants to pay those penalties. I could be wrong though.
My guess is that Dolan obviously will do what it takes to keep this core around, but if avoiding the 2nd apron only means cutting ties with a few peripheral players, I feel like he’d prefer that.
As is often the case, I disagree with the consensus.
Previously, imo it made perfect sense to roll out picks because we were building a team of guys in their mid to late 20s guys that was going to be ready to compete for a title now now.
We needed ammunition and cap flexibity for trades. We didn’t need a highly paid rookie that would be peaking years later.
Now we have our team. We won the championship in the 2nd year of that mostly completed product (we needed Alvarado and got him). However, a few of them are at the tail end of their peak. This team probably has another 2-3 good runs left. So we should start focusing on replenishing the cupboard of young players to be ready for the next build. IMO we should use both picks this year.
The idea should be to pick up a couple of players that can step into starter rolls in a few years and keep building from there the same way we did this time.
You draft players, try to sign decent quality players on attractive contracts, sign free agents and ulitmately use those assets to considate and trade UP like we did with a pick for Hart, RJ/Quickly for OG, Donte/Randle and a pick for Towns, a pile of picks for Bridges, steal Alvarado, draft Kolek, Deuce, Mitch, Diawara and so on.
You use all means available to accumulate assets and then try to roll up when you can. At at the end, overpaying a bit doesn’t matter. It’s more important to get the right players.
But we lose flexibility by staying under the apron.
The Knicks couldn’t have added Lucas if they didn’t keep Cazzie.
I suspect it was Alvarado and the 24th. But we’d need to replace them with actual players, which would only be about $3M in savings vs 2 vet mins.
Dadiet is slated to make ~500k more than the vet minimum, so moving him doesn’t save much money.
You’re underestimating the ability to aggregate salaries. Practically every association trade involves salary aggregation. With no 1s to trade, the ability to aggregate becomes relatively even more important.
Just to make sure we’re all talking about the same thing: Are Deuce and Josh Hart part of the “core”? Or can they be sacrificed? If there’s going to be sacrifice and guys thrown overboard, why would you throw them overboard, rather than Mitch and Shamet?
Absolutely Josh Hart is part of the core! You don’t trade him to avoid stagnation. You trade Landry or Mitch or Alvarado. That’s why you need to go over the second apron to avoid stagnation.
The Knicks got Lucas by trading Cazzie. You’re suggesting we let Cazzie walk so we can trade DeBusschere for Lucas instead.
I think they are going to blow through the 2nd apron to keep this team together. The main question for me is whether someone is going to wildly overpay for Mitch or Shamet (like OKC did with Hartenstein) and make it really tough for either of them to say “No” and for us to pay that much. The other possibility would be finding another player that can replace their full production or more cheaper (no easy task). There’s no way we should be taking even a small step backwards. My feeling is that both will want to stay, both will be willing take a hair less to do so and the Knicks will go through the 2nd apron and then move off it the following year if need be.
They aggregated players to get Pearl. (Pre-cap, but basically the same thing). They’re out of that market if they’re over the SA. Maybe you bite the bullet for a year. (I wouldn’t, but it’s not ridiculous.) Beyond that, too rich for my blood.
The Celtics didn’t plan right for the T+1 and T+2 years and wound up hastily flinging critical pieces overboard.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be 100% shocked if Josh didn’t retire a Knick, but I would at minimum be very surprised. Jalen is retiring with this team. Josh is his guy, on top of being a huge part of the culture. The hope is that his next contract, when he’s fully out of his prime, will be for cheaper than his current one (which he has earned every goddamn dollar of), but he’s going nowhere for a long time, if ever.
In building this team, Leon successfully drew to an inside straight. Not sure if that’s something easily repeated. With the current roster shortly due to age out, become more expensive one would think now would be a good time to start shuttling in younger, cost controlled talent via the draft.
If we:
* Trade pick 24 for a 2nd Rd pick
* Re-sign Shamet at the vet min
* Trade Alvarado for a vet minimum
* Sign all three 2nds to minimum deals
We’d have just enough to give Mitch $12M (a pay cut) and stay under the 2nd apron.
In other words, we’re not keeping Mitch and staying under the 2nd Apron without a lot of moving parts.
And you’re grossly overestimating it.
If I have Mitch on an $18M salary I can trade him for any player making $18M or less.
Same with Landry on an $11M salary.
I don’t need to aggregate.
But you want us to incinerate Mitch and Landry, so we can aggregate Deuce and Hart, so we can avoid stagnation? A four-for-one deal where two of the players were straight up sacrificed for nothing but the ability to aggregate the other two?
“If we:
* Trade pick 24 for a 2nd Rd pick
* Re-sign Shamet at the vet min
* Trade Alvarado for a vet minimum
* Sign all three 2nds to minimum deals
We’d have just enough to give Mitch $12M (a pay cut) and stay under the 2nd apron.”
I consider incinerating 24 as “throwing pieces overboard.” It’s not “throwing Jrue Holliday overboard” level, but similar principle.
Nobody any good makes $15 million or $11 million. That’s far below a Lucas or a Pearl.
If you’re just shooting to identify undervalued players in the $15 million market — which no one really does — you might as well just draft.
But there’s an Earl Monroe out there just waiting to be had for Josh Hart and Deuce McBride?
Stars always shake loose in the NBA. Deuce and Josh aren’t the only guys you’d want to be able to aggregate. Giannis is out there as we speak. There will be a parade of others as we move forward.
I hope the idea isn’t that Mikal is now untouchable or somesuch.
They’re not trading Jalen Brunson in this decade and probably beyond. Every other salary on the books appends to a tradeable player.
EPM for the playoffs
KAT!!!
https://x.com/knarsu3/status/2066952567880360406?s=46&t=0wqff4cNt-sCGcDs-uMExw
E your proposal is four birds in hand for one in the bush.
So does everyone else.
Teams tank for 5-10 years and never get a true franchise player. The Spurs drew to an inside straight when they won lottery in the year Wemby was available.
OKC has admittedly been brilliant, but they also drew to an inside straight trading for Shai and watching him turn into a MVP. No one expected that, but without that they’d have their starting PG but still be building.
Every team that won with Lebron drew to inside staright because he chose their city.
No one knew Curry would be one of the greatest players ever. We just missed picking him.
A lot of it is luck. Brunson was supposed to be our PG of the future, but he improved beyond expectations which allowed us to change directions and build around him instead of trying to get a 1A star.
The starting 5 is untouchable until such time they start deteriorating.
The biggest lesson of this championship was that part of team building it getting the right pieces to maximize TEAM output. That means they have to fit and compliment each other skill wise, like each other, be willing to make sacrifices to their boxscore stats and potential earning power to win and so on. Every team in the NBA should have learned that lesson this year. You don t break that up.
I give Dolan more credit than that.
If the Knicks stay under the 2nd apron it will be because Leon & Co wanted to avoid the roster penalties, not because Dolan wanted to avoid the tax.
Sounds like the proposal is that they aren’t going to draft and they aren’t going to be in the star/superstar market. Seems excessive. Definitely inside straight territory.
No championship team, even the elite of the elite ones, has ever taken that position.
The last repeat champion, the dynasty Warriors, turned over their sixth and seventh highest minutes players between 2017 and 2018. By 2019, half-ish of their top 10 had been turned over.
These teams do not run things back.
We haven’t even had the parade!!!
Yes! We should be 100% out of the superstar market three days after winning the title.
I can’t believe anyone on planet earth is crazy enough to consider taking a step backwards to have some extra flexibility to make trades. The goal should be to NOT change anything except perhaps at the back of the bench. There’s not way we should b e looking to move any starter or key rotation player. If that requires going over the second apron you do it. If for some reason next year is a big disappointment then you make a move to get under the 2nd apron for the following year.
The reason the Celtics did what they did was because Tatum was expected to be out for the year. So it was seen as a good time to start a reset.
I have no idea what they’re going to do, but to be honest, I don’t give a shit. If I had to guess, I’d say that they are definitely going to go into the 2nd apron to keep the core together. They’ll probably risk losing Diawara if he won’t cut a Brunson-inspired haircut deal so that he can stick around, i.e. take the absolute minimum with the promise of a bigger deal down the road.
As to the picks, again, couldn’t care less because in Leon I trust, like, forever!
Not judging anyone for feeling differently, at least not beyond judgments I’ve already made.
It depends on the age and role of the players.
The Warriors didn’t touch their key starters until they starting aging out of their peak. Then they looked to replace them. The only player on this team on the downside is Clarkson at age 34 which is why I said yesterday I was Ok with moving on from him to make room for a draft pick. He was a rotation player, but not a key player and he’s 34.
C’mon! Josh isn’t going anywhere! (Nor would I want him to.)
Net points for playoffs:
Offense—
#1 OG
#2 Jalen
#4 KAT
#7 Mikal
Defense—
#2 KAT
#3 Josh
#4 OG
#9 Mikal
Overall—
#2 KAT
#3 OG
#4 Jalen
#7 Mikal
Idk Hubie, if my rough math is correct (it probably isn’t), that would be paying roughly an extra $150-200 mil in tax penalties to keep Mitch/Mo-D/Shamet/Clarkson/Alvarado on board. Sure, that’s not so much for Dolan, but idk if he feels any sense of loyalty to those guys (except maybe Mitch) as a reason to pay that price.
But maybe Dolan doesn’t care? If not, great!
The roster penalties are also an issue, but less so (I trust Aller to work around them if necessary).
100% agree.
There’s always an outside shot Leon has something in mind to improve the team in a significant way and wants to retain flexibility, but I doubt it very much. You don’t mess with perfect chemistry on a whim.
Dolan has never been a penny pincher. Unless the bill gets totally outrageous, he’ll pay.
I hope that Mike Brown gets a lot of say in terms of who we keep and who we let go. Obviously he can’t do a lot about the money aspect, but he has definitely earned a seat at the table in terms of the team he wants to build.
I’d be ok with letting Shamet and/or Mitch go if it comes to that. Deuce had a bad playoffs but I wonder how much of that was coming back so soon from the hernia. He just never seemed to get into rhythm except for that one Philly blowout. But before the hernia, he was having the best season of his career.
Mitch got a huge O board but, overall, his impact in the playoffs was a lot less than I thought it would be. There is an argument to be made for getting a more reliable/available back up center who can shoot better from the line. But then again…would that center grab an O board off a missed free throw to help seal game 5 of the finals? Mitch comes with risks but the moments he comes up, he comes up BIG for us.
And it might just be worth it to resign the dudes, make our picks and hope we can start replenishing the pipeline with young talent as the core ages out.
I also am not convinced that our best play is behind us with this core. We just found this new offense after the atlanta series. A training camp with more focus on KAT running the offense…mike even said he thought we could be even better on offense now that we found this new level. Then we always have the Brunson Burner option when things go sour.
There aren’t really any to be made that summer, beyond “bye-bye Josh Hart and bye-bye Deuce,” and even that might not be enough depending on what happens this summer.
FWIW, when Katz was on Zach Lowe’s pod yesterday, he said that all the Knicks people he ran into after the title was secured were all beaming and very much in a “Let’s bring everybody back!” mode. Those people are of course not Leon, and it may that once the afterglow fades, some cold calculations will be made.
But given that all of our starters are in their primes, that they discovered The Beautiful Game together (even if Wemby made it impossible to play in this series), that the dudes all clearly would die for each other, etc., my guess is that their attitude is the same as mine: run it back with these starters, make improvements where possible with the bench, and if the pixie dust vanishes next season, then you consider more significant moves.
And if we have to roll over some/all of our picks in order to keep the band together, I’m okay with that. Whatever mistakes he has made in the past, Leon has earned the right. Fuck dem picks. Flags fly forever.
Wassup mi gente! Long time reader! I think last time I posted here was when Melo took the team to Puerto Rico and I gave you guys some insight of the visit! That team included Porzingis, Lance Thomas, Kyle Oquinn, etc. Anyway I just needed to come back and share my joy with all of you. I’ve been a Knicks fan from PR since 1989. My two sons who are 25 and 23 grew up Knicks fans like me. Lot of times I questioned myself as a father for raising them to follow and love the same team that broke my heart so many times. But this playoffs run, this Finals and finally witnessing our beloved KNICKS winning it ALL was so special. We screamed like crazy, jumped all over the living room and cried. To make it even more special, this Knicks team includes a fellow Boricua in José Alvarado!!! We are hoping that he brings the team to celebrate here in the island. CONGRATS MI GENTE!!! KNICKS 2026 NBA CHAMPIONS!!!!
Man the new CBA sucks.
I’m all for more parity but, IMO, dynasties (especially with big markets and marquee teams) are a good thing for the NBA.
Like it shouldn’t be THAT hard to keep a championship team together when all of the players are in their prime.
With the preface that I agree with the part you wrote that I didn’t blockquote, you actually can keep the team together if you’re willing to pay the tax. It’s just that if you go full-dog Vets at Retail, they don’t want you to be able to then trade up for *even better* Vets at Retail.
They’re perfectly happy letting you draft, at least for several years, even if you draft more superstars, and they’re perfectly fine if you get better that way. (But, uhhhh … yeah.)
I mean, to be fair, it’s not hard as long as you’re willing to pay the penalties. Hopefully they’ll do it because there’s no one I don’t want back (even Sochan!)
Edit: beat me to it, E
Going from the World Series into the NBA regular season was a bit too bathetic for me to handle and I never recovered, basically ignoring the NBA this year.
I can only imagine the way you all feel right now, going from games 4 and 5 into these 0-0 soccer games that are dominating TVs this week.
The tax line is $200M, and we’ve gone over it the last two years so we’ll be a repeater next year.
If we stay under the apron with a $220M payroll, the tax is about $95M.
If we blow by it with a $230M payroll, the tax is about $160M.
So he’s paying taxes regardless.
Dolan has never been a penny pincher. Unless the bill gets totally outrageous, he’ll pay.
reminder. dolan is not really paying. he owns the vast minority of the knicks. he just gets to decide whether others will pay, thanks to the world’s great platform shoe: supervoting stock.
(And, yes, I used that word to prompt Doogie)
I will repeat my discovery from yesterday: Pacome Dadiet very quietly had an outstanding year in the G-League. He averaged 23 and 5 with a .640 TS% across 15 games, and he actually did it the hard way by shooting 64% on twos. His 3PT% was .324, which is bad but also seems like the most likely skill he can improve on.
I point this out because it actually strikes me as plausible that two more years of Dadiet + his RFA rights are an equal or better value proposition for the roster than late picks this year, which is relevant because the two may well be directly pitted against each other. That also of course might not be the case, it all depends on who’s available and the like.
My credentials as a 2021 draft hater are well established and I’ve been begging the Knicks to invest more heavily in the draft as long as I can remember, but there’s no reason to view present draft picks as some sacred commodity that are intrinsically worth more than what an analysis of the players/contracts on the board compared to the ones you have would dictate.
All this to say, a 2026 draft trade out should be unemotionally evaluated on the merits. If we trade our pick(s) for a future pick(s) because we think our best 2026-2027 roster doesn’t have a 2026 draftee, that’s obviously a defensible transaction in a vacuum. We also obviously have to actually get commensurate value for it to be a defensible-to-good transaction.
2021 sucked because we got really bad value for what was guaranteed to be a first-round pick with good players on the board. I found our 2022 maneuvering to be much more defensible. Not picking a guy in a given draft is admittedly a draft night bummer, but we did, you know, just win the NBA finals, so if it’s pursuant to fair transaction I think everyone should be calm. You could even argue it’s optimal for us to trade picks we have now for picks in drafts we traded out of for Mikal!
Dolan technically answers to a board of directors and public shareholders. If he was more normal, that would probably be a deterrent to spending nine figures in shareholder money for thin air with no real economic return, other than entirely speculative (additional playoff gates, which basically have no chance of covering the nine figures anyway) — but of course he isn’t. We’ll see. I’d guess he’d pay them. But a buck-60 is a lot of money for a public company.
You missed a good year, Donnie. The Knicks were kind of like last year’s Pacers, except a thousand times better.
Last year OKC got a lottery-protected Spurs 2027 first for the 24th pick. And remember the Spurs missed the playoffs last year so no one assumed that was a late first.
If we came out of this draft with a player at 31 and a lottery protected first, I would be very pleased.
“I can only imagine the way you all feel right now, going from games 4 and 5 into these 0-0 soccer games that are dominating TVs this week.”
I feel fantastic! I haven’t watched a second of any soccer games; nor do I have any plans to do so.
The other thing that makes this different than 2021 is that we are in the middle of a championship window and you can make a legitimate case that using a roster spot on a vet min has more value than using it on a rookie. There were some really good vet mins last year, and I imagine all of them would want to join this team now.
Trading 24 for a lottery protected 1 from some team is entirely defensible. Not an incineration, not a char, barely even a punt.
You do, though, want to avoid a full-on Children of Men scenario.
Doogie gets us!
My guess is whether we bring everyone back will come down to one thing, and it won’t be the second apron or the tax, but a different conundrum altogether:
What will they do if someone values Mitch more than they think he’s worth?
Given the aprons of it all, can we even do a sign-and-trade with Mitch? Or are the only options to keep him or lose him for nothing?
I believe the g-league rules now give you credit for both FTs if you make your first FT. If you miss, you can attempt a 2nd FT for 1pt.
I also suspect they didn’t rejigger the TS% formula to account for a single FT giving a player 2pts instead of 1.
Anyway, the g-league TS% numbers are misleading.
S&T would cap us at first apron so only options would be to pay a price you don’t think he’s worth or lose him for nothing.
That’s what I figured, Hubert.
This is one of those situations where having the best cap guy in the business makes me feel very comfortable with whatever decision they make. If Aller sees an easy way out of the second apron if we keep the band together for one more year, then great. If Aller thinks it will be new deals for Mitch and/or Shamet will prove too burdensome in the long term to make up for the short-term benefit of having them, then that’s great too.
There’s been exactly one 0-0 game in this world cup and it’s probably been the best, or at least most hype to watch, game of the tournament, so…
What do you call NOR vs IRQ?
What I’m suggesting is a situation where Aller can make it work, Dolan will pay the tax, it won’t cripple us… but we just don’t think he’s worth what the market valued him at.
I have to think about the other ones, but #2 is easy. Melo should’ve been in an episode of the Wire. He’s from West Baltimore and should’ve appeared in an episode where he played for Avon Barksdale’s basketball team versus Proposition Joe’s East Baltimore team. Melo’s the right age for it too, it would’ve been around 2003 when he was college age.
Oh, I got #3 BTW:
Band of Brothers. Do I really need to say more?
Tonight would have been Game 6.
Okay, I got it. It seems obvious the best pick is that he plays a dead body, because he doesn’t have to act but they can use his image throughout the show’s investigation. His “character” will be source of the drama. He’s a high-profile Manhattan sports agent or a rising tech executive who was found face-down in his luxury penthouse.
The Spurs would have raced out to an early lead…
“What do you call NOR vs IRQ?”
I call it not worth watching or discussing any further at any future time.
Jalen Brunson had the highest FG% (.465) of any player in the playoffs who averaged more than 10 made field goals per game. Then again, he was the only player in the playoffs who averaged more than 10 made field goals per game.
This is why I love this blog:
In the year we break the curse we’re talking about draft value & TRADING JOSH HART two days before the parade lol.
In all seriousness, I can’t see another team with money that’s going to offer big money to Mitch where he would actually sign (hes not going to play in ATL after Dyson did whatever he did, we won a chip & our medical Staff is best in the league) outside of LA and I just can’t see Mitch being happy there.
Honestly a full run back is what’s probably gonna happen with some vets that are gonna wanna ring chase
FYI these are the ranked players we’ve worked out with their ages:
#13 Morez Johnson (PF, Michigan, 20-142)
#26 Meleek Thomas (SG, Arkansas, 19-314)
#27 Isaiah Evans (SF, Duke, 20-192)
#32 Zuby Ejiofor (PF, St. John’s, 22-57)
#40 Emanuel Sharp (SG, Houston, 21-348)
#42 Ugonna Onyenso (C, Virginia, 22-265)
#44 Izaiyah Nelson (PF, South Florida, 22-259)
#59 Rafael Castro (C, George Washington, 23-17)
#73 Wyatt Fricks (PF, Marshall, 23-211)
#74 Mark Mitchell (SF, Missouri, 22-289)
“Band of Brothers. Do I really need to say more?”
Was Normandy the Eddy Curry trade and 17-18 Bastogne?
Oh wait, the Knicks are the Band of Brothers, not us…
Zuby would be a good fit in San Antonio, who draft before us, because we kicked their ass.
I continue to think that having your second best big be a Luke Kornet who is not doing his three point shooting thing but actually playing backup center, is a bad idea.
Brunson also had the highest points per game of anyone in the playoffs (28.4), narrowly edging out Cunningham (28.1) and Gilgeous-Alexander (27.6).
Brunson should play a Freddy Krueger type who gives primadonna NBA players recurrent nightmares of him ripping their guts out on the court while everyone laughed their asses off until they killed themselves.
…during which Wemby commits an obvious flagrant while defending KAT which is then reversed to an offensive foul following a cursory review
Rama, thanks for the information. Then I have to figure out what’s going on with my setup. It’s a very odd situation.
So who is going to the parade, and how are you doing it? I want to be talked into this.
I went to one parade — the Yankees in 1996. It was awesome, but I didn’t see anything, I just drank all day because I was a sophomore in college and that’s what I did. I want to go but I can’t see 48 year old me enjoying this.
I’m watching on TV. I am not a big crowd person, and I want to be able to see everything of the City Hall ceremony.
I’m not a big crowd person, either. But I have some fomo after going to bed early on Saturday. And I know like 50 people going. I don’t think any of them have any idea what they’re in for, though.
A great game so far with one of the best strikers of all time scoring twice in a half and a determined Iraqi squad playing them pretty even?
I didn’t even know that New Orleans had a football club.
Saw a clip of Desus on Pablo Torre referring tot the last five days as a reverse 9/11 and I am so sad to be out of the city. I have embarrassed my wife by high-fiving every Knick fan I have seen in London though and that has been highly satisfying….
Don’t know if anyone’s posted this but here’s a pretty funny video of Clyde talking about the Knicks goat: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZf8VgVS_kA/?igsh=and6OGhmc2lqaHRv
Wish I could go but I’m halfway across the country for with and there’s zero chance I can call out. FWIW unless you’re willing to camp out the night before there’s no way you’re getting even close to the parade route.
I read it was most watched Finals since 1998. You are welcome NBA.
I have a few friends doing the whole shebang–getting to Wall Street at 6 AM, etc. The funny thing about being 31 is some of your friends do that kind of thing, while others are looking at schools for their kids.
Anyway, I’m not sure I see the benefit in doing all of that just to maybe, if you’re lucky, get a brief view of some players on a float, though I’ve never gone to one of these things so if the experience is actually cooler than that I’d like to know. I also sadly don’t have the kind of job that makes it easy for me to spend a morning doing that.
However a general day long celebration of the World Champion New York Knicks does sound like my jam, so I think I’ll try to find a good after party.
White Sox getting a nice reality check in the Bronx tonight…
Clyde is correct. The greatest Knick ever is Willis Reed. Clyde and Brunson can duke it out for second place. Ewing is a distant fourth. And there’s your Mt. Rushmore.
When all is said and done, Brunson might end up being considered the greatest Knick ever. But he’s got a ways to go to catch Willis. The “Willis Reed moment” is part of the universal American sports lexicon. He is still the only MVP the Knicks ever had. Folks can quibble over whether he deserved the finals MVP award in 1970, but he was dominating the series before he went down. In the first 4 games of that series (against Wilt Chamberlain!) Willis had 37-16-5, 29-15-5, 38-17-3, and 23-12-2. He won the series just by putting on his uniform and draining 2 routine jumpers in the opening minutes. And in 1973, while a diminished Reed didn’t deserve the award on its merits, the fact that they gave it to him anyway despite having four other HOFers in the starting lineup with him, speaks to his greatness as a leader.
“Okay, I got it. It seems obvious the best pick is that he plays a dead body, because he doesn’t have to act but they can use his image throughout the show’s investigation. His “character” will be source of the drama. He’s a high-profile Manhattan sports agent or a rising tech executive who was found face-down in his luxury penthouse.”
Almost — Jalen should play himself, transcendent and rising superstar NBA player who just won a chip for the ages but is found dead in his apartment, and eventually the culprit is found to be… D’Aaron Fox!
I was going to say Wemby but I’m struggling to imagine that alien moving silently through NYC and gaining access to an apartment building with nobody noticing…
It’s 5:43 PST.
KAT would have had two fouls by now
Doesn’t get old
https://x.com/JakeBr0wn/status/2066973793147359673?s=20
…and never will!
https://x.com/PageSix/status/2066861475994423397?s=20
I hope the nba actually is rigged.
I sincerely hope that KAT, although he played very well overall in the playoffs, will not be satisfied with his play in the finals. Specifically, he needs to work tirelessly on that stupid hook move from his repertoire. It’s clearly a deeply ingrained habit, so it might not be possible to completely eliminate it, but it hurts him so much in staying on the floor.
This team definitely has a chance to repeat. Whether they get there or not may hinge on individual players making improvements on the margins as much as it does on any tweaks (or non-tweaks) to the roster.
I don’t like all this greatest knick ever talk. And to be clear I don’t mean Z-Man’s post. In fact he’s one of the few people with enough authority to comment on it, and I put a lot of weight in his testimony.
I just don’t get why the media is constantly bringing it up. No one started a Paul Pierce vs Jayson Tatum debate when the Celtics won. If Wemby had won they wouldn’t have talked about how much better he was than David Robinson. Why are they doing it to us?
Patrick was a warrior. I loved that man. He got picked on his whole life, and this feels like another way to put him down. Let the man be. Fuck Bill Simmons and his stupid theory, which doesn’t even make sense! The knicks lost in 5 games to the spurs after Ewing went down, and the franchise went into a decades-long tailspin after he left. What are you even talking about? He’s influencing a whole generation of people with lies all because he grew up in a Boston community that hated him.
And fuck Brunson vs Clyde. It’s another great Knicks PG. When the Lakers won with Shaq it was about carrying on the tradition of Lakers big men. When we do it, you pit ’em against each other. Fuck off, media.
Yeah I kind of feel like that’s why Rick Brunson said what he said after we won about Ewing being the greatest Knick. Partly to just keep his son humble and hungry but also bc now that we’ve won a title inevitably some people are gonna use it as a reason to diminish Pat’s legacy.
Fact is if we’d somehow gotten Ewing spree and Houston (or their equivalents) a few years earlier Knicks probably would have won back to back titles when Jordan was retired instead of the rockets and might have taken out Jordan’s bulls at some point. Those Riley Ewing teams were awesome but they had zero offense. Starks was the freaking second option.
Ewing was and is a legend.
I guess these comparisons are happening bc we’ve had so few titles and only really three great “eras.” Whereas the lakers and Celtics have had so many titles and hall of famers it’s more about continuing the legacy.
That being said. I do hope in five years time it will be undisputed that Brunson is the GOAT Knick because that will mean we’ve won at least one more title.
I don’t begrudge the “who’s the greatest?” or “who’s greater?” talk, including in the context of this championship. It’s just harmless chatter, unless it becomes harmful because people present opinion as fact and call people who disagree with them stupid, especially in the press
Of course it’s subjective unless the answer is painfully obvious, which it almost never is!) Like, who is the greatest golfer since Jack Nicklaus is painfully obvious. But is Tiger better than Jack? Not so obvious. It depends on what you value most.
It does seem painfully obvious that there is a clear Knicks Mt. Rushmore now. Reed, Clyde, Patrick, Brunson. There are other greats, but the dropoff after these 4 is very steep. But there is no way at this point to rank these 4 in an order that will convince or please everyone. The case I made for Willis is subjective. I think it’s a strong case, but hardly airtight, or even stronger than the cases for the others. Again, it all depends on the things you value most.
As to Clyde vs. Brunson, I think it’s a great discussion…but agree that it doesn’t have to lead to a consensus conclusion, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Still, it’s human nature to want to rank things, whether it’s Jack vs. Tiger or Vanilla vs. Chocolate. So I’m not annoyed by it at all, and often find well-articulated cases intriguing and educational. Bill Simmons bugs the shit out of me sometimes, but I definitely enjoy hearing (or reading) what he has to say re: ranking players.
One thing we all can agree on: Fuck Becky Hammon!
Re: Ewing, I think it’s fair to assume that he definitely could have been the best player on a championship team. But Brunson and Willis have that certain “it” factor that very few guys have. It’s a leadership/character thing that’s hard to describe….you just know it when you see it or feel it, more by the way that teammates respond to it.
Willis was absolutely revered by the likes of Clyde, Dave, Bill, Dick, Earl, Phil, Lucas. He is the spiritual analog to Bill Russell on the Celtics. I don’t know if Brunson is at that quite level, or at least was before Game 5, but he’s the closest thing to Willis since Willis, just in a different package.
Brunson doesn’t need another title to become the undisputed Knicks GOAT, he just needs a few more years of his usual regular season greatness to achieve that status. Another title or even Finals appearance would just be icing on the cake.
I think people are already forgetting how great Brunson has been with the Knicks during the regular season. Obviously his postseason career is what is gonna make him a surefire HOFer but his regular season stats aren’t too shabby either.
The whole thing would probably feel more normal to me if so many folks weren’t taking shots at Patrick. I don’t know why but I get triggered when he gets dumped on.
“Brunson doesn’t need another title to become the undisputed Knicks GOAT, he just needs a few more years of his usual regular season greatness to achieve that status. Another title or even Finals appearance would just be icing on the cake.”
The only thing that would make it “undisputed” is recency bias. Folks who are old enough to have savored the full Willis Reed/Clyde Frazier experience will eventually fade out and only Brunson, with all the highlight reels and social media posts will remain. No one will be all that impressed with grainy, spotty videos of Willis like this one.
.
I heard that KAT was going to be at Dicks Sporting Goods in the Newport Mall in Jersey City which I live near. So I went over to check it out
Hundreds of people in line for photos and autographs and by the time I left an hour later (he still hadn’t arrived) I would guess well over a 1000 people in the line.
I would guess that’s a harbinger of how mobbed the parade will be Thursday, so as much as I wanna be there I think I’ll watch on the telly.
I get what you’re saying but a huge part of the reason we don’t think Patrick had “it” is because he spent most of his career playing against the greatest teams and players of all time.
Here are the teams Patrick played during his prime:
25 (1988) – Bird’s Celtics (L)
26 (1989) – Barkley’s 76ers (W), Jordan’s Bulls (L)
27 (1990) – Bird’s Celtics (W), Isaiah’s Pistons (L)
28 (1991) – Jordan’s Bulls (L)
29 (1992) – Isiah’s Pistons (W), Jordan’s Bulls (L)
30 (1993) – Pacers (W), Hornets (W), Jordan’s Bulls (L)
31 (1994) – Nets (W), Pippen’s Bulls (W), Pacers (W), Hakeem (L)
32 (1995) – Cavs (W), Pacers (L)
33 (1996) – Cavs (W), Jordan’s Bulls (L)
34 (1997) – I don’t want to talk about 1997
94 & 95 killed him. It sucked that he lost to Hakeem. But 5 years in a row during his prime (90-94) he lost to a team that won multiple titles (10 titles, to be exact).
Maybe if he just played some ordinary teams instead of the greatest teams ever we might have thought he had “it”. He certainly seemed like he had it every time he played a schmuck like Alonzo.
I was at the Giants super bowl parade in 2008 and it was a pretty cool experience, even though I didn’t care as much about football as I did about basketball at the time. I was also 24 and in NY as an exchange student so I was really excited about anything.
For all the talk about Bill Simmons and his weird takes, I thought he had a pretty interesting argument when discussing Barkley: he said he doesn’t hold the lack of a title too much against him because he feels Barkley did as much as he possibly could to win it, he just didn’t have a team that could beat the 93 Bulls at that moment. He was saying this as he was discussing guys like Harden, who despite having incredible resumes and also losing to an incredible Warriors team over and over again, wasn’t able to perform his best in the playoffs.
I think this matters in the Ewing discussion too, do we feel like Ewing rised to the occasion as much as he could, and simply didn’t have the pieces around him to beat those great teams? Or was he part of the reason those teams didn’t win? I tend to have rose tinted glasses when remembering Ewing so I would lean towards giving him the same grace Simmons does to Barkley.
https://x.com/NykTerry/status/2067009010809659746?s=20
Great picture. But also funny that I had to blow it up to make sure KAT didn’t have a mechanical left hand, Jalen looks like he’s surreptitiously hiding a cigarette, OG is trying to smile but can only tilt his head back and grimace, and god DAMN does Mikal have long, gumby arms.
I was born in 1980 so obviously I never saw Reed and Clyde play but I’ll always respect them like crazy. However when looking at their career stats it’s not all that impressive, like not at all. I understand the team concept so the scoring numbers might not be that high but neither were greatly efficient shooters either.
Ewing had much better career stats than both of them but the titles arguably puts Reed and Clyde over him and I totally understand that argument. But Brunson has amazing stats plus now a championship too.
But yeah listen I don’t want to talk bad about Reed and Clyde. As I’ve stated numerous times before Ewing was easily my favorite Knicks player when I was growing up, hell he’s probably the main reason I became a lifelong Knicks fan. But I’m truly in awe of what Brunson has done with the Knicks, I honestly never thought I’d ever get to watch a player on the Knicks do stuff that only Michael freaking Jordan ever did to win a championship. Its freaking unbelievable.
Also, Fuck Mike Vorkunov.
Ewing was in an impossible position. The offense ran through him and defensively, he was tasked with defending a generation of supremely talented big men, down low, punishing his body and destroying his knees. He never had a real wingman. He became an automatic jump shooter from sheer determination. I used to come to the Garden early and watch Patrick work on his shot. I can celebrate Brunson and continue to admire Clyde and Willis. Ewing will always be my guy.
Patrick Ewing was my favorite Knick ever. He provided my confirmation name.
But his legacy will be marred by the fact that he shrunk at points in his postseason career. People blame Starks for that game 7 against the Rockets in 1994–but Patrick was outplayed by Dream the entire series. Willis was able to go toe to toe with Wilt Chamberlain to win two NBA finals. There was also 1995 where he missed that wide open finger roll against the Pacers.
Ewing was never a top player at his position and still felt entitled to a championship. When he couldn’t play in the ‘99 finals his motivational speech was “get me my ring”.
Don Nelson wanted to trade Ewing for Shaq and got fired for it, even though doing that would have brought Thursday here 25 years earlier.
Ewing was All-NBA 1st team in 1990.
Did he want to trade Starks for Penny, too?
The arrogance of Don Nelson never ceased to amaze me. Imagine Mike Brown telling everyone KAT’s washed up so we should trade him for Wemby, and then believing “I was right, tho!” when he got fired for fucking up the chemistry.
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