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Jordan Clarkson, NBA Champion – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ Karl-Anthony Towns Reveals His Top NBA Big Men Ever During Golf Showdown vs. Diana Taurasi – BleacherReport
Knicks NBA Draft guide: Prospects for New York to consider with all three picks – The New York Times
Latest Knicks Rumors on Every Player Connected to NY in Trades, Free Agency Ahead of 2026 NBA Draft – BleacherReport
Jose Alvarado, NBA Champion – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Draft Preview 2026 – Knick of Time
Knicks Offseason Guide 2026: Ian Begley Breaks Down Free Agency, Draft & Extensions – Knicks Fan TV
REACTION: @JCMacriNBA’s quick thoughts on the Knicks re-signing Mo Diawara – Knicks Film School
Pod Strickland Episode 605: Lessons From Leon – The Strickland
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233 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.06.23)”
I’m officially worried about the Knicks offseason. Judging by yesterday’s trades, these aprons have teams shook. Randle was an obvious salary dump, and Milwaukee clearly took the lesser package between Miami and Boston. I thought for sure they’d wanna retool around a star, but they smartly went for flexibility in this apron era. But who’s gonna want to play for them with the roster they have?
Julius has been a negative asset or negative asset-adjacent for quite a number of years now.
Re Giannis trade – I for one am a bit worried about the Heat. Spo is obviously an awesome coach. Their defense should be absolutely elite with Davion Mitchell, Wiggins, Powell, Bam, Giannis. Mitchell/Wiggins/Powell all shot about 40% from 3 last year, and while Bam is not a great 3 point shooter, I imagine Spo will figure something out to make the spacing tenable. Wiggins has turned into a really good 3 point shooter (~39% from 3 over his last 1900 attempts). And I still don’t understand the Clippers trading Powell to the Heat for.. John Collins?!?
I think their depth is… ok? Even without whatever vets minimums they can convince to live in Miami and play with Giannis?
Pelle Larson is ok
Fontecchio is fine off the bench
Portis is a proven player
Jovic seems to have had a bad year last year but was a promising player at one point.
They probably need another ball handling guard they can trust – someone like Braden Smith in the 2nd round as a high floor low ceiling guy who can just play basketball and annoyingly turn into Peyton Pritchard.
Re: Diawara – this is absolutely a home run. Allows us to in theory stay under 2nd apron if that’s what Leon wants although it probably means one of Shamet or Mitch are gone. tbh I love Mitch but the injury thing is always going to be there in addition to whatever mental health stuff was going on this year, the hack-a-mitch stuff… have to wonder whether the 15 min he gives you could be mostly covered by Hukporti + someone. I thought Huk looked very good in the limited minutes he played.
Of course I’d love Mitch back and to retire a Knick, but if we have to choose between him and Shamet I might choose the latter.
Re the apron, the difference between us and those teams is that those teams are still trying to get their rosters to championship level. Ours is literally already there. Running it back doesn’t guarantee a repeat, but we know that this combination of guys can get it done. So if we lose flexibility for a year or two, it matters much less to us than it does a Minnesota, who still don’t quite have the right group of players around Ant.
Offline points to Frank. This morning, I sent him this video of Julius’ son Kyden (who, when he was much smaller, was seen in a video sobbing over how much he hated the Nets):
https://x.com/NetsKingdomAJ/status/2069277524073292012?s=20
His reply: “Hostage video.”
So any guesses as to how many picks we actually end up making?
How many at our current draft slots?
If Giannis is healthy the Heat are going to be very good. Betting Spo and Riley will load manage him, banking that they can still be a lower seed team and have him healthy for the playoffs.
Did they? If you really love Brown sure but I like Miami’s package better. More picks and players I can develop or package in a trade later.
Do teams still do draft and stash? I feel like I’d we make more than one pick it’ll be for a foreign player not expected to come over right away.
I’m expecting some sort of mild char tonight with 24. Something more than a quick, hot, 20-second-a-side, sear; something less than an incineration.
I just think Brown is the better player to build around. He and Myles Turner can draw playoffs Milwaukee. Now they have to find gems in the draft AND hope some team loves guys like Herro, Porter, and Turner.
Actually, let me amend that. I think what we do in the draft tonight will speak to the team’s plans the rest of the off-season regarding the second apron. If we make 2+ picks tonight in players that we’d have to sign I think it means that we’re not going over the apron and Mitch and probably Shamet are gone. If we select 1 or 0 players we’d have to roster I think we’re willing to go over the 2nd apron.
Even if he is, how quickly does Milwaukee think they can rebuild around him? He’ll be 30 before next season, they were getting less draft capital (and don’t have any of their own picks because of the Lillard trade), and they have no cap space. If you’re Milwaukee, are you willing to take the chance that you’re in a worse position in a couple of years trying to trade a 32 year old Jaylen Brown who’s demanding out?
2 picks
Neither at a current slot
If I’m Milwaukee I’m happier with the Heat deal for sure. They are not a player away, so more picks plus more players who also can be turned into picks makes sense. If you take Brown, that’s the core of your team – and it’s clearly nowhere near enough.
I don’t care how many rookies we draft. I’d like to see Leon using the picks, and other assets on the bench, to produce a 6th man who pushes either Hart or Mikal for a spot in the lineup. A DDV or iHart type triple.
A prediction that’s guaranteed to make me look like an idiot: I think we’ll make a first-round pick.
My reasoning is that this draft is regarded as deep through right around our first-round pick (and I concur), and then has such a steep drop off my second-round rankings are nearly interchangeable. I think we have a better chance to get a good player with this pick than we’ll have in the draft for a while.
While projecting future drafts is quite the imperfect science, next year’s is not well-regarded as this one and NIL seems likely to only further spread talent out across classes. In other words, it’s impossible to say when the next time there will be a class with bona fide options on the board in the mid 20s will come.
There are also no particular salary restraints. We’re either going over the second apron to keep the team together and the #24 rookie scale contract is mostly irrelevant, or we’re not and that contract doesn’t put us over.
So I think we make at least a first-round pick, and I kinda think, with very low confidence, that it’ll be Zuby.
It’s pretty remarkable that this shit keeps happening to Riley. He once got Shaq for Lamar Odom. He got Jimmy Butler for Hassan Whiteside. He got Norm Powell for Kevin Love. And now this.
How he got them to throw in Portis instead of taking back Kuzma, I’ll never know.
That said, this version of the Heat is not worrisome.
Isaiah Evans appears to be on the move as a Knicks pick at 24. Looks like teams are scared off by Quaintance’s knee and Peat’s potentially irredeemable bricklaying. Philon will probably fall no further than Detroit.
Zuby’s mocks are about half available at 31, half gone by 31.
In what is probably a distinctly minority opinion, I want some new blood on the roster. For non-stagnation reasons, proper team-building reasons, and plus I don’t want to just watch the same exact guys again next year.(*) Life moves on.
(*) Or even worse veteran minimum type replacements for them.
We came back from offering KAT for Giannis. It was bumpy, but not impossible.
On the Bill Simmons podcast today they suggested that this might actually have effectively scared Jaylen Brown straight. He wanted his own team, he almost got one. Now he got to experience all the feelings of being traded to Milwaukee to have his wish fulfilled. I doubt he was excited.
I thought the Celtics handled it pretty well. They offered Brown for Giannis straight up, which would have been a heist. When Milwaukee wanted more, they never budged. They weren’t desperate for Giannis, they were just willing to steal him.
The Wolves operate under the tax line, not the apron. They’re financially strapped.
I don’t think they did. What were they gonna do with Jaylen Brown? The Miami package sucks but at least it offers some high standard deviation outcomes.
I concur with Frank that the Heat’s opening night roster doesn’t look bleak, and between Spo Magic and the sheer force of Giannis I bet they can get to 50+ wins.
That said, I’m not exactly shaking in my boots. They are badly vulnerable to age related decline as well as the kind of volatility inherent to the role players they’ll be relying on. Much better outcome for us than Boston getting him for Jaylen effin Brown.
I feel bad for Randle. On a really good Knicks team. The best one in a decade. We were on a crazy win streak after we got OG and Randle was beasting out. We looked like title contenders. Hurts his shoulder when we’re up 19 (thanks Thibs), doesn’t recover in time for the playoffs and then gets traded to Minny, never getting to see this through with us, which he helped start.
Then he settles into Minny and, by all accounts, loves it. Team ends up still being pretty good and getting back to the WCF. But next season injuries and now the team wants to go in a different direction so he’s sent back to NYC but to one of the worst teams in the league and now he has to be in the city across the river from guys he played with who are now idolized as heroes and champs.
I mean, that fucking sucks. Sorry, but it’s a bum rap for him.
I’m only half joking when I saw the Nets should hire Thibs.
Nets love Jordi Fernandez. No chance they move him out for Thibs.
I used to be “Mr. roll the pick out”.
I didn’t care about losing 5 cents on the dollar. Picks are easier to trade later than players you selected in the draft. Previously we needed picks to trade.
Now we need some quality youth and preferably a big man for the future or if we lose Mitch.
Unlike the past, IMO, it would be a mistake to do anything other than make a selection with the 24th pick in a quality draft when we are already set with veterans.
Seems less ideal for the Heat, even if Powell cooled off after last season’s hot start.
Is this Heat team measurably better than the post-championship Bucks teams? I’m not really sure.
Is the injury stuff maybe slightly overblown? He’s only 28 years old, and he’s really had just one worrisome injury. OG Anunoby had a worse injury history than Mitch and we don’t fret about him anymore.
His ankle injury was horribly mismanaged by Thibs and a terrible training staff. Not to mention he was subjected to one of the dirtiest plays in NBA history. Since coming back from it and working with our competent medical staff, he’s been fine.
Everything else he’s suffered is quite random — a broken hand, a broken thumb, a broken pinky.
“Re Giannis trade – I for one am a bit worried about the Heat. Spo is obviously an awesome coach. Their defense should be absolutely elite with Davion Mitchell, Wiggins, Powell, Bam, Giannis. Mitchell/Wiggins/Powell all shot about 40% from 3 last year, and while Bam is not a great 3 point shooter, I imagine Spo will figure something out to make the spacing tenable. Wiggins has turned into a really good 3 point shooter (~39% from 3 over his last 1900 attempts). And I still don’t understand the Clippers trading Powell to the Heat for.. John Collins?!?”
Powell isn’t going to be on Miami anymore unless he agrees to a substantial discount. Stay tuned.
Re; the Heat, the defense will be elite, but the offense will be stagnant. Also wake me up when Giannis is healthy for a full season and the playoffs, the last time that happened was about 5 years ago, and he’s only getting older. I think we need to prio bringing back Mitch and Shamet.
Can’t imagine Riley made this trade without knowing that Powell would be back. Maybe Wiggins opts out and comes back on lower salary to clear some apron space for Powell although that’s sort of awkward- literally asking Wiggins to pay Powell. Is there enough cap space out there in the league for Powell to get a big offer? And this is where the zero state tax is such an unfair advantage for Miami
Powell could stay and take a huge pay cut because he might just want to live in Miami full time. Him leaving is obviously better.
Idk..Jaylen Brown made me a believer last season. If he were in Milwaukee, they’d be a playoff team with picks to throw at depth. Unlike our Knicks who don’t really have the cap space to throw at depth without touching that 2nd apron. I think the problem in Milwaukee is gonna be that they’re gonna be bad this season, but not bad enough to get a top 3 pick. At this point, it looks like it’s gonna be a lengthy rebuild for a team that was a recent champion. Turner and Kuzma are gonna have to up their usage for them not to be bad, but at the same time- aren’t they worse off if that happens?
[Krawczynski]
Remember when even Zach Lowe thought that the Wolves had won the KAT trade?
All reports are the 2027 draft sucks . Drafts really only matter for bad teams if game changing talent is available.
But Miami on the other hand..
That defense is gonna be HELL. I do expect Pat Riley to work his magic and add cheap shooters who won’t hurt the team as much defensively. If the refs allow them to play extra physical a la Detroit, they have 2 players who do dirty shit in Bam and Giannis, so it’s gonna force teams to stay out of the paint. I wonder if they dangle Bam out there for better fitting pieces?
I don’t think the Nets are done yet. Randle on the Nets is probably at the same stage he was at when he came to the Knicks, but Brooklyn has more assets.
I think they wisely threw in the towel on the tank rebuild and are moving more towards a hybrid build to be more competitive now at the same time as they develop young players, make more draft selections and trade some picks for players.
How much yal wanna bet that Anthony Edwards is PISSED? No PG, no true 2nd option on offense, and no playable size on the 2nd unit. Unless Reid or McDaniels are better than we thought, Minny is in trouble too. At the moment lol. It’s still super early in the offseason. But now I fully expect a TON of moves across the NBA this summer. Those damned aprons…
Well the Wolves just gave Ayo 112 million so he better be the PG.
Same as it ever was.
Pissed because they just dumped a guy who played like raw ass in the playoffs again this year which allowed them to re-sign Ayo? I don’t think he’s pissed because of that.
It is wild to watch all these moves by teams this summer and not be like “oh no! What are we doing????”
I mean, I’m curious what we will do but every summer before this one whenever these big moves were made, you always felt like “well, I hope we can make one too so we can keep up” and now it’s like “yawn, don’t think that’s gonna be enough to be us.”
Oh man, did Leon really do The Roommates show? I need to check that out.
Re: the draft, my guess is that Leon will zag this time: #24, #31, and Deuce to trade up into the teens for Morez Johnson.
The Nets are a dark horse team to me now. If they come away from the draft with a PG(Acuff maybe) and a playable big man (Quaitanance or Reed?), with Randle and Porter to handle the scoring(bad matchup for us btw), they are gonna be much better than expected with the coach they have.
I kinda think that if there’s a chance we can retain Mitch and Alvarado at minimum, and we can get Ejiifor at the top of the 2nd, we should trade back and pick him and 2 cheap 3 &D players in the 2nd roud- provided we get an additional 2nd in this draft. I’m not up to speed on how the cap works, but I’m hoping we can pull something like that off because Shamet might be too expensive. I think we can negotiate another team friendly deal with Mitch
Pissed because they made it a choice between Ayo & Randle when it didn’t have to be.
Pissed because they let NAW leave for nothing.
Pissed because Joan Beringer all they have to show for KAT.
ARod & Lore aren’t rich enough to own a basketball team. It’s only a matter of time til he asks out. Might be today.
Having listened to the KFS episode on their cap room, I’m increasingly convinced that the Knicks will let Mitch go and bring everyone else back plus possibly draft a big.
I find their argument compelling: it’s very unlikely that the Knicks can duck under the 2nd apron in the 2028-29 season when the extensions kick in, so you can keep your flexibility until then and not have to work without your early 2030s draft picks that would be frozen if they go over the 2nd apron for 3 seasons.
i would have done the randle deal if i was minny even if there was no tax avoidance pressure from the owner
Randle has his flaws, but I don’t really love whatever the Wolves are doing. Ayo is good but not a full-time pg. Gobert is old as hell now. And Naz doesn’t really seem like the answer anymore. The bench is basically Shannon Jr. They have a lot of work to do.
“Re: the draft, my guess is that Leon will zag this time: #24, #31, and Deuce to trade up into the teens for Morez Johnson.”
Morez comps are Gafford and Capela. I guess that could be…….helpful? I’d rather get the actual Gafford.
If I was Edwards, I’d be pissed at the original KAT trade and all those cost saving trades since but I wouldn’t be pissed at this trade.
More likely Tarris Reed is in play, not sure how I feel about him as a player.
Except Morez shot 40% from three and can play perimeter defense, Doogie. He can also play the 4 or the 5. Would be a great fit. Plus, he supposedly had a great workout with us, although he could go as high as 11, so we might miss out.
You take Julius Randle’s shots, but also Julius Randle’s assists. And in a team with PG issues (Conley’s age, Donte’s injury), that is going to be a problem. Dosunmu isn’t a distributor. In the end, you will have Ant handling every possession in the minutes he is in, and a lot of trouble when he is out. That is going to be very tough if they don’t move for a solution at PG.
Agreed. He’s probably the best 1 to 1 replacement for Mitch in the draft, although he can’t move like Mitch defensively. But, like Mitch, dude is strong as a fuckin ox! And he can box out really well. So..while that’s not my preferred path, I wouldn’t be mad at it.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be mad at Morez—didn’t mean to insinuate that I would be. I would miss Deuce if what was mentioned above comes to pass, but he probably *is* our best trade bait out of Mitch, Shamet, and him. I’m emotionally overattached to Mitch, the big goofy country music-listening, truck-driving lug (and softie who let his high school coach live with him for a summer after his wife passed away) who can change important games for us with just a few minutes on the floor.
The Aaron Wiggins pick-up is a sneaky good one for Atlanta, and isn’t get much attention here.
I found it full of hubris and stupidity.
First of all, they’re wrong.
Second, that’s three full seasons from now.
It’s extremely unlikely — to the point that it’s almost guaranteed — that the Knicks’ title window will be as open in three years as it is now.
It makes no sense to sacrifice anything today for the 2028-29 season.
Nothing in the NBA is more sacred than a wide open championship window. You don’t diminish it to preserve flexibility. You sacrifice flexibility to preserve the window.
Every team — every team! — that has gone down this path has regretted it: the dynastic Warriors with their two timeline bullshit, the Lakers when they got cocky and thought they could replace KCP and Caruso, the Nuggets when they thought all they needed was their great starting 5 so they decided to let their bench go. It’s hubris.
Got to say that I really like Isaiah Evans’ pedigree.
Neither Zuby nor Reed are good rim protectors. Zuby has a crazy motor, very good passer and projects as a shorter Isiah Stewart , not the worst thing for a bench piece. Both are tough as nails. Reed has a more refined offensive game.
It’s a good pickup, he’s just not the same caliber of player as the guy in the big news story (Mo Diawara)
Once again I am in complete agreement with Hubert, which is becoming a frightening norm, and I’m just going to copy and paste Alan’s excellent description from early on as it says exactly what I would have said, but more clearly and soundly:
“Re the apron, the difference between us and those teams is that those teams are still trying to get their rosters to championship level. Ours is literally already there. Running it back doesn’t guarantee a repeat, but we know that this combination of guys can get it done. So if we lose flexibility for a year or two, it matters much less to us than it does a Minnesota, who still don’t quite have the right group of players around Ant.”
Worth pointing out the CBA expires in 2030 and we don’t even know if these stupid apron penalties will even still be around.
We should also be talking more about https://www.nbadraft.net/players/henri-veesaar/, very gettable at #24.
NBAdraft.net:
NBA Comparison: Kelly Olynyk / Walker Kessler
Strengths: Veesaar is a skilled modern big man with an intriguing blend of size, touch, and floor-spacing ability that fits seamlessly into today’s NBA game … Measured 6’11.25” barefoot, 227 pounds, with a 7’2” wingspan and massive 9’3” standing reach at the 2026 NBA Draft Combine, possessing very good size and a large frame for the center position … Broke out after two seasons at Arizona to become one of college basketball’s most productive and efficient big men during his junior season at North Carolina, averaging 17.0 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 1.2 blocks while shooting 60.8% from the field … One of the more intriguing offensive centers in the class due to his ability to stretch the floor at a high level … Knocked down 42.6% from three on solid volume (1.3 made threes per game), showing legitimate shooting ability rather than simply theoretical upside … Added a consistent and efficient perimeter jumper as a junior, significantly improving his offensive versatility and making defenses respect him beyond the arc … His potential as a floor-spacing seven-footer gives him real intrigue as an offensive fit in NBA spacing systems … Shot closer to 70% from the free throw line during his two seasons at Arizona, creating optimism that his junior season dip may prove somewhat anomalous … Shows solid face-up ability with a reliable jumper from the mid-range and can comfortably attack slower defenders off straight-line drives … Possesses very good dexterity and coordination for a player his size … Runs the floor well for a near seven-footer and consistently plays with strong effort … A legitimate rim-running lob threat who uses his size, reach, and good hands to finish effectively above the rim … Highly competitive player who brings good energy on both ends and emerged as an emotional leader for North Carolina during his breakout campaign … Plays with a bit of a nasty streak and physical edge that shows up in competitive moments, helping set a tone with his toughness and energy … Good hands allow him to finish cleanly around the rim, catch difficult passes, and operate effectively as a screener and finisher … Employs a nifty jump hook around the basket and has shown polished low-post scoring ability … Can operate effectively on the block, creating offense while keeping his head up to locate cutters and open teammates … Displays solid feel for the game and generally makes smart reads offensively … Excellent anticipation, court vision, and passing ability for a center, averaging 2.1 assists per game and showing advanced instincts facilitating from the elbows and high post … Passes particularly well out of double teams, often making quick recognition reads and reacting decisively when defenses collapse … Has shown some decent post moves and touch inside, capable of scoring over either shoulder and using his size effectively near the basket … Quality rebounder who averaged 8.7 rebounds per game and consistently impacted possessions on the glass … His 9’3 standing reach and large frame also give him the ability to affect plays around the rim on both ends of the floor … A steady and productive performer who scored in double figures in 30 of 31 games during his breakout junior campaign … While not an elite athlete, he moves well enough and possesses adequate functional athleticism for the next level … Projects as a dependable frontcourt contributor who can add quality depth to a winning team while bringing a relatively high floor as a skilled rotation big.
Weaknesses: While highly skilled offensively, Veesaar lacks elite physical tools and athletic upside compared to many NBA center prospects … Defensively, there are still some questions regarding how seamlessly his game will translate at the next level … While capable of affecting shots around the rim due to his length and standing reach, he is not viewed as a true defensive anchor or high-level rim protector … Averaged a respectable 1.2 blocks per game but does not consistently impose himself defensively or erase mistakes at the level of elite NBA centers … Slow foot speed could create issues defending quicker big men on the perimeter and may limit his versatility in switch-heavy schemes … Can struggle containing faster or more explosive players in space and may have difficulty consistently recovering once beaten off the dribble … Gets knocked off balance too easily at times, particularly when defending physical players or absorbing contact in the post … Core and lower-body strength need improvement, as stronger opponents can dislodge him and impact his positioning … Needs to continue adding upper-body strength to better handle NBA physicality and improve his effectiveness finishing through contact … While he plays hard and shows anticipation, he can be late recovering defensively at times … A solid athlete who can get up and down the floor reasonably well, but he is not especially explosive vertically or laterally … Free throw shooting remains somewhat concerning … Shot just 61.5% from the line during the 2025–26 season, a disappointing number for a player whose offensive appeal is tied heavily to touch and perimeter shooting … While previous seasons at Arizona suggest it could be somewhat of an outlier, it still creates some concern regarding long-term shooting consistency … Turned the ball over too often for a player with good feel, averaging 1.7 turnovers per game, at times forcing passes or struggling when pressured by physical defenders … Viewed more as a high-floor, lower-ceiling prospect than a player with significant upside as a future star … May ultimately project more as a complementary offensive piece than a player capable of driving offense consistently …
Outlook: Veesaar projects as a late first-round pick due to his combination of size, shooting ability, feel for the game, and offensive versatility … Modern NBA teams continue to value floor-spacing frontcourt players, and his ability to score efficiently both inside and from the perimeter gives him a realistic pathway toward carving out a long professional career … Offers some immediate readiness due to his age, production, and polished offensive game … While he may lack star upside, he projects as a dependable rotation big with a relatively high floor who can contribute to winning basketball in the right system … Likely projects as a quality backup center at the NBA level, though he has a chance to develop into a lower-end starter in the right situation due to his offensive skill set and floor-spacing ability … His long-term ceiling may depend on whether the three-point shooting proves fully sustainable and if he can become a more impactful defender.
Notes: Henri Veesaar measured 6′11.25” barefoot, 227.2 lbs, with a 7′2.00” wingspan, 9′3.00” standing reach, 28.0 no-step vertical, and 32.5 max vertical at the 2026 NBA Draft Combine … Born March 28, 2004 … Native of Tallinn, Estonia … Began his college career at Arizona, playing in 2022–23 and 2024–25 while redshirting the 2023–24 season before transferring to North Carolina, where he broke out as one of college basketball’s most productive big men during the 2025–26 season … Averaged 17.0 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 1.2 blocks while shooting 60.8% from the field, 42.6% from three, and 61.5% from the free throw line in 31.5 minutes per game … Carolina Co-MVP and Most Improved Player … Earned Second Team All-ACC honors and was a finalist for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award as the nation’s top center … Became the first player in ACC history with 30+ blocks and 30+ made threes while shooting over 60% from the field … Played three seasons in the Real Madrid Youth Academy prior to college and represented Estonia internationally, becoming the youngest Estonian player to appear in a FIBA qualifier with the senior national team …
Aran Smith 6/4/26
I agree, hubs. We have a chance to repeat. We have to go for it. All of our starters and bench pieces are in their prime.
We can unload players after next year if we come up short.
Or beyond.
If we have to trade KAT or Mikal or OG in three years, so be it. We might actually want to at that point!
The Pistons are looking to acquire Norman Powell, per
@TheSteinLine
&
@JakeLFischer
“
Chris Jent was apparently up for that job. And Nori was one of the guys we interviewed last year before we hired Brown.
I guess the question boils down to how much letting Mitch go decreases their championship odds this season, and whether that decrease is worth whatever lack of flexibility will come in a couple of years (because I think they can keep everything else minus Mitch). I’m torn on the questions myself.
I did feel that Mitch’s playoffs were somewhat disappointing. He had a really good regular season, but was regularly winded in the playoffs. The numbers bear this out. 3.5 BPM in the regular season; 0.8 BPM in the playoffs. There’s the Hack-a-Mitch stuff. And then there’s the issue of his availability: he’s played 3824 minutes in the last 4 seasons combined. Brunson played 2590 minutes this season.
Sentimentally I’d love to have Mitch back, but I think there’s an argument for letting he go.
Concretely, I wonder whether in 2 years we might regret not having the flexibility to trade a couple of additional first round picks for a guy that could improve the team and extend the window. I do agree that one shouldn’t take any window for granted though, so I’m peacefully waiting for a resolution to this thing and will find it hard to get annoyed either way.
Agree that Dolan was talking out of his ass. The guy likes to spend money (it’s mostly not his). Probably had many discussions with Leon about spending more and Leon defending the Aller moves and instilling in his brain that the second apron is suicidal. Four days after we win the chip–very, very, very likely not having a post season strategy session with Leon–he repeats the Leon mantra, not realising it has been superceded.
That’s part of what I meant when I said they wouldn’t stand pat and pick where they are. The other option, is they can’t get Johnson, is to trade down, maybe even out of the first round, as that would really help them with the cap issues.
I get it, Marechal, but even though Mitch was disappointing he was also incredibly valuable. Swap him for Hukporti and those -11’s in 12 minutes are -17’s. When the margins are as thin as they are in the playoffs, that’s absolutely worth $15M/year. And every team that thought it wasn’t found out real fast.
No we shouldn’t
I think potentially we could lose Mitch and be just as good (or better), if we make it up in other areas.
But I also feel like even though his playoffs were “meh” he did contribute to us winning. He had some excellent defensive sequences to close out games in the finals, grabbed a huge offensive rebound to close out the finals (and had 6 offensive rebounds that game).
Draft? Tonight? What happened to the 2 month gap between the end of our season and the draft? I guess this is how fans of great teams feel 🙂
Randle to the Nets doesn’t bother me. Antetokounmpo to the Heat scares me.
Take comfort that we have a starting 5 returning. But here’s a reality check. The only players under contract are that 5 plus Kolek, McBride, Dadiet and supposedly Diawara. Leon’s got a challenge in the draft. We need a lot of players and don’t have cap space. I fully expect the Knicks to trade draft picks. We’re not standing pat there.
I suspect we may see Leon pivot tonight toward relying on the draft more heavily than in years past. I’m not as quick as others to write off the owner’s radio comments re the second apron as just the uninformed comments of an idiot. I believe he’s genuinely averse to paying a hefty tax to retain bench pieces, even important ones like Mitch & Shamet.
My guess is that tonight & tomorrow they actually use picks 24 & 31 for players, not firewood. Mo as the first signing out of the gate I read as a tell that they’re looking to transition to a younger, cheaper cast to support the core five. Of course, finding cheaper, useful replacements through the draft will require a skill set Leon’s never really exhibited before. It’s gonna be a very interesting two days.
With Miami bigs now added to Orlando, Clevelad & Detroit, Mitch and his defense becomes more valuable.
Do you really want Huk guarding Bam or Giannis in a 7 game series after KAT gets his quick two fouls?
Btw, I can’t imagine why fringe contending non tax teams that desperately need shooting and defense like Lakers won’t through the mid level exception at Shamet? – I would pay him 3yrs – $35m with 3rd year a team option as he compliments Luka perfectly. July is still another week away, but not hearing any Shamet rumors is very hopeful.
I still think that Dolan just said that as a negotiating move and we fully intend to go into the 2nd apron to preserve the team.
As an UNC alum, I’m a big fan of Veesaar and wouldn’t hate picking him up, but I don’t think he’d be my first choice big. While he has good defensive instincts, I worry about his slow-footedness, which was already an issue at the college level. Not to say he can’t get better (Jokic is slow-footed, can’t jump, and is still a good rim protector) but it’s not typically a thing you can compensate for in the NBA.
Jent returning is a nice under the radar move
My obsession with the NBA Cup has somewhat abated (Game 1 win against Atlanta was way more satisfying than the Cup Final), but Mitch grabbing 10 ORBs in a short stint to change the momentum and give us the win makes me want to keep him, even over Shamet if that is a choice we have to make.
It makes a lot of sense financially and strategically if they use the flexibility to bring in a better player or a player that fits better. If it was all about saving money then I don’t see how the T-Wolves are any closer to narrowing the gap between themselves and OKC and SAS.
I’ve variously defended and criticized Randle when I thought the consensus went too far either way, but he’s not a bad player and the contract seems close enough to reasonable to me.
It kind of sucks to have traded KAT for Randle as the centerpiece of a trade and now have to pay a small fee to move him.
The most notable comp for this discussion is the ’23 Nuggets. Their two most valuable bench pieces in their championship run were Jeff Green & Bruce Brown. They didn’t think either guy was that important, and they overrated their ability to replace them with cheaper players. The next year their bench sucked. They couldn’t rest any of the starters without the other team going on a run so they pushed everyone’s minutes up. And every time anyone got in foul trouble they were fucked.
Those seemingly inconsequential guys that you think you can live without are usually much more important and harder to replace than you think.
And I’ll tell you one thing: the whole league is watching us right now and praying we get cocky and think those guys won’t be hard to replace. It’s an own goal for 29 other teams.
One thing I think we can all agree on is that the 2nd apron stuff is utterly ridiculous. Screw you, Sam Presti.
I don’t know what he’s going to do, but imo that’s the right long term move even if they are willing to go into the 2nd apron this year to keep Mitch. Ultimately we are either going to blow through the 2nd apron or lose a good starter once Brunson and others get paid. We should be adding young talent now so when that inevitably happens we have young players ready to step in.
This is what often happens.
People learn something new or try to correct a problem and they overshoot in other direction.
Great comparison Hubert.
Denver is still trying to recover from that. I thought they might have last year, but I was wrong.
Nets getting Randle is one of the first clear signs of the impact of the new lottery rules. Being the absolute pits isn’t worth it, you should always strive to put a competitive team on the floor.
I am a fan of Julius and hope he makes that team better.
As for Giannis to Miami… IDK, Giannis is always scary but that team is getting old and thin, and mortgaged a bit of their future to get him. I’m in the camp of “Giannis is probably on the downhill slope part of his career” but also wouldn’t be shocked if we woke up with the Heat in the Conference Finals.
I also think Boston was wise not to break up Brown and Tatum.
There are teams in the East that can beat us next year. We can also beat all of them as things stand, so I like our chances. I hope we can keep Mitch and Landry but also trust the front office to put together a good plan. If you’re Mitch and leaving nets you an extra 20-30 million dollars, then god bless!
Just because we had a championship roster in 2026 doesn’t mean the same roster is championship caliber in 2027. I, for one, think that everything worked out perfectly for us this past year, and don’t expect that to happen again. I also think that standing pat in a league where everyone around you is improving (especially with tanking essentially outlawed) is analogous to getting worse. As such, I value flexibility a lot, and clearly, so does Leon & Co.
So, is all of the post-championship “In Leon we trust” happy talk completely out the window if he winds up moving on from Robinson & Shamet in favor of Cheaper & Younger?
These kids are all pie in tke sky, a dime a dozen, that show up on draft boards every year. You can’t compete for a Championship with young kids getting meaningful minutes.
Coaches and star players target them continously in a playoff series.
Look what we did to VJ and Bryant and to some extent Harper. You put these kids in different actions and cook them all night.
Brown & Brunson even used Wemby’s carelessness and indecivness on defense late in the game when he was tired during last two games by putting him through different actions. When you’re tired and young, probability of making poor defensive decisions increases is even higher than propensity to take poor offensive shots and make dumb turnovers.
That little split second hesitation and/or feet angle positioning caused by youth & inexperience is all Brunson needed to use the greatest defender in the history of the league.
While we all know that Mitch and his plays effects winning, -in reality he effects it twice as much as we all realize.
I think that would be more of a Dolan issue.
Wow – apparently Micah Nori signed a 1 year deal with team options for each of the next 2 years. This new Portland owner is not playing by the usual rules. I can’t imagine it’ll be easy to hire assistant coaches knowing that your boss is a lame duck even before the year starts.
Randle is very good value on his current deal if your goal is to significantly raise your team’s floor. I think he will help the Nets a lot, and that he can be flipped for decent value in the future. Minny is not going anywhere so I get the move, but seems like they sold low to me.
So was the hybrid approach, which Leon carried out at Dolan’s behest, much to the chagrin of many fans.
RE: Randle,
I think Ant’s overall toughnesss, lack of situational awarness, free speaking & humorous personality made him uncomfortable and he hated playing and being in a fox hole with a mentally weak and moody player like Randle. I don’t blame him either. Minnesota shipped Randle to east coast to appease Edwards and probabaly, Fitch too.
That said, its a good pick up for Brooklyn. His gravity will help the young kids develop.
The thing about our three guys that are “in play,” at least conceptually (Mich, Landry, and Deuce), is all three can go on heaters of one sort or another and win us games, even playoff games — they’re not just bearable back-ups that can burn a few minutes while our starters sit. Plus they are integral to our defensive brilliance, again in one way or the other (and I did not have Shamet as a key defensive piece on the ol’ bingo card…). Being a #1 defense in the league sure is nice…
I think some really don’t weigh their importance properly. And the ‘redundancy’ of Shamet and Deuce is a NICE thing to have, given that injuries happen — a lot, all the time.
Not as analogous as actually getting worse.
Clearly? He hasn’t had flexibility for two years. He gave it all up to make the Bridges and KAT trades.
So how exactly do we get better than a Mitch/Shamet/Deuce/Diawara/Alvarado/Clarkson bench?
That’s not that great a bench. They played out of their minds when the team caught the fever for six weeks. It’s a group that can certainly be improved upon.
As a general principle, pro sports teams should always be looking to improve their rosters. (And not pay for production they’ve already banked.)
nice, E with some morning jokey jokes to start the day…
our team kind of feels full at the moment…
really hard for me to imagine any rookie coming in to the team and being able to provide depth, or having an impact, during the next post season…
I’m happy to think of mo, huk, and even tyler as some older type rooks…
despite the injury risk, i’d prefer mitch back over landry…
mitch just feels like a one of one type player…
Would not be at all shocked if this contract becomes a template for first time coach hires moving forward.
If owners are now twisting themselves into knots trying to figure out ways to avoid paying the luxury tax, would it be all that surprising were they to adapt new ways to avoid making continued salary payments to inexperienced head coaches who didn’t work out & wound up fired before the expiration of their contract?
Mitch’s actual impact these playoffs is replaceable enough, but he also won’t have a broken hand next year. A healthy Mitch will be an upgrade over what we had on the floor, and keeping him will not actually be standing pat.
I think we should run it back with as many guys as possible because this team didn’t assume its final form until the playoffs. I would love to see what next season looks like with everything we figured out in the past 2 months. I see us coasting to easier wins, getting the 1st seed, and then benefitting a favorable draw in the playoffs. This battle station is fully operational. Turn it loose.
The Mitch lineups died a miserable death on the offensive end in the Finals. Those lineups could not score at all, had a 91 offensive rating. I do agree that would have been worse with a poor man’s version of Mitch like Hukporti.
Which is why if we’re going to lose Mitch, I wouldn’t necessarily be looking for a Temu Mitch to replace him. I’d be looking for a backup C who is not a complete liability on offense.
Z-Man’s theory appears to be that Leon himself, for basketball reasons, doesn’t want to go over the second apron. I agree more than disagree. (With Z-Man’s theory, I mean; in basketball terms I 100% agree that going over the SA is fool’s gold.)
There’s obviously a very clear risk of not keeping Mitch (and Shamet to a lesser extent). But what I think people may be underestimating is the risk of keeping them and having them underperform, and then having no way to improve the team.
The Yabusele for Alvarado trade was super important for their title chances. If they go over the second apron, these trades are out of reach.
So assume Shamet or Clarkson (or Deuce, who knows) have a big step back this year, or Mitch is injured? There’s really no way to make improvements on the margins.
To the Denver ’23 comparison: they missed Brown, but Brown was also significantly worse in ’24. Keeping him might not have helped. That’s part of the fear here for me.
I’d like Mitch to stay. Re: “Mitch’s actual impact these playoffs is replaceable enough, but he also won’t have a broken hand next year. A healthy Mitch will be an upgrade over what we had on the floor, and keeping him will not actually be standing pat,” I’m not convinced that whatever happened with his hand seemed to be bothering him at all in the Finals. Seemed to me that he generally was just not playing all that well, but he definitely stepped up when the chips were down (pardon the pun), at least twice.
That doesn’t mean we should roll with the Hukporti lineup.
“It’s a group that can certainly be improved upon.”
Read the obituary yesterday of Alan Greenspan. A sentence like that right out of his lexicon. Of course certainly it is, but how likely or easily is the relevant criteria.
“To the Denver ’23 comparison: they missed Brown, but Brown was also significantly worse in ’24. Keeping him might not have helped. That’s part of the fear here for me.”
Wish I could give half of a thumbs up for this…….not because I partially disagree, but more because I’m not really sure how I feel about the situation.
Denver got lucky getting to play Miami in the 2023 finals. They won more games in 2024, had a better ORat in 2024, and had a better DRat in 2024.
Wonder how the 2025 off season moves–hitting a solid double with Mo at draft pick 51; striking out big time on Yabu; yes, ok, waive him, then yes on below market Clarkson–will affect what they do today. My thinking is they draft at 24 or trade up to get the player they want before 24.
Ok, but how should we improve upon it while staying under the 2nd apron? Hell, how would we do it regardless of the 2nd apron, just making smart trades/signings?
We don’t have a ton of tradable assets, and teams aren’t exactly lining up to trade their high-value, underpaid players.
That’s why I see NOT going over the 2nd apron as a bigger risk. We’d “actually” be getting worse not just “relatively” getting worse.
IMO we have two goals here.
1. Not getting actually worse.
2. Injecting some new young blood into the team so we have some upside surprise potential (imo that’s why Diawara critical) and we can prepare for the long term when we’ll have almost no choice but to let a significant player go. That’s why I want to use the draft tonight.
If Leon and Dolan are hell bent and staying below the 2nd apron and also want to prepare for the long term, IMO Mitch may have to be the one to go. He’s the most expensive, most injury prone, can’t hit FTs, has a minutes cap, no B2Bs and has mental health issues. We just won the finals despite him being subpar and around -36 in the finals according to a note I read.
I love him and see his value, but if a hard choice has to be made Mitch may have to go, we draft a big man and pray Huk is up to the task unless they have a better idea .
Denver’s regular season almost never matters all that much (kind of like ours this year). They step it up in the playoffs.
THIS.
Also, do not agree with Z-Man’s assessment at all that everything broke right for us and we should assume we just got lucky to win it all.
I mean, sure…I guess you could argue that we got lucky because Boston, Detroit and OKC all lost before we faced them.
But we lost 3 games in the playoffs! And 2 of them were in the first 3 games.
We won 13 games in a row! We swept two series. We only lost one game in the finals to a team that won more than 60 games!
That isn’t just getting lucky. Maybe if we faced Detroit, Boston and OKC we would have sweated out 6 or 7 games series, but you don’t do what we did in the playoffs based purely off luck.
And E, we didn’t “go on a heater.” That implies that we just got hot from three for 2 months. OG and Shamet shot really well from 3 in the playoffs but everyone else was pretty average. Hart shot 32 percent overall from 3 (although he did shot 40 percent from 3 in the finals).
They won because of defense as much as offense. This wasn’t a team that just got on a heater. This was a team that figured shit out.
If we had eeked out a chip winning a bunch of 6 or 7 game series, then I might be more inclined to think we got lucky. But I’m more inclined to think we finally figured out the starting 5 and that’s why we went on this run.
so yeah, run it back. I think there’s a balance with the draft tonight where we can roll a pick back to pick up another future asset while still adding some youth to the pipeline.
But letting go of Shamet and mitch to save some money? Why?
our best chance to win another championship is next season.
See, this is not even standing pat, this would be actively getting worse.
They’re not, though. We’d actually have more trades in reach.
That was a one-for-one trade. We could have made it if we were over the second apron.
And the most important part of that trade was having Yabu in the first place. We needed his salary to get Alvarado. We couldn’t have done Kolek or Dadiet for Alvarado. We needed someone making more money. Aggregating doesn’t help when the other team doesn’t want to cut someone from their roster.
That’s the other reason you want Mitch & Landry: they allow you to trade for players at higher price points. They increase your flexibility.
You’re not aggregating four $3M players to get one $11M guy. But if Landry is making $11M you can trade him straight up for one.
This whole idea that you have more flexibility is a myth. You gain some and you lose some. It nets out about even.
One thing is certain: this team will never have another opportunity to add tradable salaries at these levels
I would rather keep Mitch and go over the second apron if necessary (I’m sure he could be talked into a descending deal to make it easier to get back below the apron in the future), but I agree with JK47 that if we’re moving on from him the move should be to get a different style of big instead of Temu Mitch.
A lot of people saying standing pat is getting worse, but none of them explaining how losing talent is getting better.
Right now we can go into the season with 4 good bench players.
Your proposal is to go into next season with only 3 good bench players. And if that doesn’t work, maybe a team will let us acquire a 4th.
Fun video from Thinking Basketball: Smartest Plays of the Finals
Mostly talks about the Knicks and the #1 plays is unsurprising.
I’m not going to explain to folks how being under the second provides more flexibility than being over
It.
As to whether losing one of Mitch or Shamet makes us worse, we shall see. Players develop, opportunities come up.
Having Mitchell Robinson gives us more flexibility than not having Mitchell Robinson, because it means we can play Mitchell Robinson.
To be clear, as I tried to explain, I don’t feel strongly one way or another. I’m just saying that the decision is not as straightforward as it might seem.
The case for letting Mitch go is that the short-term benefit of keeping him is outweighed by the long-term benefit of having additional flexibility to add to the team. It’s ultimately a matter of how you weigh those two things.
There’s a very real scenario in which Shamet is a net negative (there’s a reason why he was picked up the scrap heap for two consecutive seasons). If that happens and you are above the second apron, you just have to live with it.
You can always get some talent. A team literally just let us acquire our 4th good bench player and key contributor in the 4th quarter of the pivotal game in the finals for a second round pick. I don’t know that I want to close the door for those opportunities.
The case for keeping Mitch is that there are very few bench players as good as he is.
Kind of strange to hear there are no avenues to improve the bench and team on a day when they have the 24th and 31st pick in a top notch draft.
This draft lost of a ton of value with players going back to school for NIL. The depth has thinned out .
Swiftly, I think we were excellent this year and very deserving champions. But yes, I also think that we beat three weak and compromised teams in the EC and as young and inexperienced of a team (both players and coach) to ever appear in the NBA finals. I don’t put much stock in running up the score in sweeping the likes of the Sixers and Cavs after they slogged through bloodbaths and played us on no rest while we had 9 days to recharge and prepare…twice!
I am very confident that next year will be a LOT different, both in the EC and the finals. Obviously, there’s no way to prove that now, but I’ll be happy to revisit this thread next year during playoff time.
Strong case to be made that ducking the second apron gives us less flexibility in important ways. Assuming we’d use the TPMLE, we’d be hard-capped this season. We’d also have basically no realistically tradable salary on the books. We’d be losing significant talent without opening up realistic means of replacing it, outside of the “I would simply find the next Landry Shamet/Neemias Queta” fanciful deflection you sometimes see.
The alternative is we keep the talent, keep the tradable salary, and incur almost no non-financial penalties (literally just the inability to trade our 2034 first-rounder, something no one is exactly clamoring to do) unless we do it two more times in the next four seasons.
The larger point is that I’m not going to make judgments until I see how things shake out. Some folks feel the continual need to do that, even though they’ve been shown in retrospect to be misguided time after time after time after time.
I have way more trust and Leon and his team to do a version of something that will make the team better than I do in the folks here who continue to be skeptical about him. Yeah, I’m appealing to authority. Whatever. Leon built a championship roster doing things his way, which was trashed by the same folks trying to tell us what he should do now.
You’re still allowed to trade Landry Shamet if he sucks next year. If he gets paid $11M, you can trade him for a player worth $11M or less.
If you don’t have Shamet or Mitch, you would be allowed to aggregate Deuce, Alvarado, and Dadiet. But you would not get an $11M player.
The only part of the Alvarado trade sequence that would be illegal after the 2nd apron is sending out money.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but the only way you can do trades if you are over the second apron is if you find a player with exactly the same salary, as (i) you can’t add contracts; and (ii) you can’t send more (or less) money than you receive. I think that’s how the Cavs were able to do the Garland/Harden swap – their salaries were virtually identical.
Edit: nevermind, EBW explained it above, I’m wrong.
One thing I have learned about Leon in the last 2 draft nights. Don’t judge what happens in a vacuum-something else is brewing.
You can receive less money than you send out. You can even take back multiple players if the salary adds up to less than the outgoing.
You just can’t aggregate your own players or increase your salary burden by any amount.
The Garland-for-Harden swap was legal because Harden made a little less than Garland, so it was perfectly legal for the Cavs to do even as a second apron team.
Good grief! I thought winning a championship in dominant fashion would validate us, but even to our own fans it appears that us winning a championship in dominant fashion has invalidated winning championships in dominant fashion.
If it’s so easy to sweep multiple pretty good teams coming off long, tough series by record-breaking margins, why have we been the only team to ever do it? Why haven’t the dozens of incredibly dominant teams in history, many of whom played significantly worse competition, done the same thing? Were they stupid?
The rational inference to draw from this postseason is that this team in its current form is incredibly fucking good. I’ve never seen a team get so little credit for doing so much.
I honestly believe that if we bring back the band this is a 65ish win team with strong odds (25% or better) to repeat. This is Pagliacci talking, so you know it’s not fanboyism. This is the rational conclusion I draw from the evidence I have seen. Let your fan trauma go! We don’t need it anymore!
If the other team is over the salary cap, but haven’t been apron-penalized, the salaries have to be within the 15% (*) rule for standard-issue trades. If the other team takes on more than that percentage, they have to have salary cap room to do it.
(*) Or whatever.
“This is Pagliacci talking, so you know it’s not fanboyism.”
No, it’s the excessive optimism mirror image of the excessive pessimism of the 36-ish preceding months. Same act, different spin.
But the additional flexibility is a false assumption .
For decades teams have been dealing with this. Even before the apron era, the death knell of flexibility has always been the lack of mid-range salaries to trade.
The Pacers once gave Bruce Brown $20M just so they could trade him! Without that salary, they wouldn’t have gotten Siakim.
Having salary to trade is the key to flexibility.
No one here has the foggiest notion as to what Leon is thinking going into tonight. Dude is so famously tight lipped that most of us had never heard his voice prior to his brief podium comments following Game 5. Anyone stating “Never mind Dolan, Leon and Brock will tell him which way is up” have no basis for that belief outside of some vague tea leaves from the beats and good ol’ wishful thinking.
In fact the only insights the public ever gets into the team’s thinking come from statements by the owner. Shortly before Leon was hired, Dolan gave an interview in which he said,
So when Leon comes in and unsurprisingly hires Thibs to win as many games as possible while the front office rebuilds at the margins, it’s Leon, not Dolan, who is widely castigated for taking the hybrid approach. It was damned as short sighted and having no proven track record of success. Until it did… 8 days ago. Then it was all “In Leon we trust.”
Since then the owner has publicly stated that going into the second apron is “suicidal.” Fan response is that the owner must be too stupid to clearly articulate what the front office really intends to do. Seriously?
In the wake of the owner’s comments, we’re seeing the same level of “never been done before” skepticism that was directed toward the hybrid approach, i.e. “No championship team has ever had any success replacing its rotation players with cheaper alternatives.” But if we take the owner’s words at face value, that’s exactly what Leon will attempt to do. Should that be the direction the team chooses, then let Leon cook.
That argument assumes there will never be something that shakes loose that you’d be fine moving a “core” piece to get. Knowing what we all know about the NBA, that’s a faulty assumption.
Mikal plus Josh Hart (*) is $54M. That’s a sweet spot for a possible upgrade, possibly even a massive one.
(*) To pick one of many possible combinations.
Why is optimism excessive when we have just received pretty much the strongest possible indicators for optimism over the course of several months?
What set of facts would you require to render my optimistic prognosis not excessive (*)?
(*) Other than us trading OG Anunoby for Dejounte Murray straight up, of course.
Yes, that reason is that many NBA GM’s are dumb and half of the league tanks and the new cap makes it where very valuable guys like Shamet can turn into journeymen easily.
It’s not because Shamet isn’t good and is easy to replace.
I’d say it’s more because NBA GM’s think they can get a guy that’s 80 percent Shamet for the vet minimum so when they have Shamet and he does well, they think “we don’t need to pay this guy, we can find another one” and then they let him go and the guy they replace him with is not as good.
Those are the mirror image questions you were demanding people answer during your pessimistic phase.
Landry Shamet was out of the Knick rotation for wide swaths of the season.
You should be able to draft a guy better than Landry Shamet at 24. Certainly a guy with much higher upside.
I absolutely agree.
That’s why I want to go over 1st apron, draft 2 players (one big man). make sure we bring Diawara back (done!) and run it back.
I don’t want to take a step backwards.
I want some surprise upside potential from young players, to prepare for the long term and have a chance to repeat.
This team does not have a long widow. A few key guys are 30 or rapidly approaching it. We have 2-3 years if we are lucky and probably less once Brunson gets paid.
It’s great that we finally won, but if we want a chance to win another we can’t be messing around worrying about aprons. You go through it this year and if it’s obvious other teams have passed us by, then we retreat the following year, retool and allow the young players to keep developing, become good players or potential roll up trade assets and keep moving towards the next version.
So you’ve no actual answer, just classic E contrarianism. Got it!
Leon is on the Roomates Podcast tomorrow.
Begley conceding that his theory of Dolan being mistaken/confused is not the case and that Knicks do appear to be operating on the principle of not going into the second apron:
SNY Knicks
@sny_knicks
The Knicks are operating at the moment as if they will NOT go into the second apron, @IanBegley says
Ian provides more details on The Putback with @IanBegley
E wants to trade four championship-winning birds in hand for one imaginary bird in the farthest bush.
LOL, no he wasn’t. He was out with a shoulder injury. When he wasn’t injured, he was in the rotation.
You’re thinking of last season when Thibs refused to play him.
And even if he was “out of the rotation for large swaths of the season” he certainly wasn’t out of it for the playoffs, which is what matters.
The chances of Hart being traded are a lot lower than is typically the case because of his relationship with Brunson. I’m less sure about Mikal, but his reationship with them doesn’t hurt him either.
Personally, the scenario I think is more likely than Hart getting traded is Diawara developing into a solid starter at a much cheaper price than OG and that making OG expendable if they are desperate enough to get off money or to make a trade. But neither of those things will happen any time soon if at all.
If the right player is available, it could be worth sacrificing our depth. But that’s also a move you do today and not go into the season with the hope a perfect fit comes along.
Agree.
He was critical in the playoffs and outplayed Deuce in the finals.
Given that Deuce is going to get a big raise soon, a case can be made to trade Deuce for a draft asset and hold onto Shamet because he’ll be cheaper and not a huge downgrade. That would be one way to address salary without it being devastating to the team. Not that I want that to happen, but it’s something to consider.
Precisely.
And if that move comes along, you can still make it by trading Mitch for less salary to get under the second apron during the season. So you get an asset for Mitch, and you still get to make the trade.
E’s not thinking anything through.
You can still do everything he wants to do if you sign Mitch and Landry.
Well, shit.
The name of that bird?
Dejounte Murray
For the record, my 65-win prognosis is contingent on us bringing the band back. Looks like we’re not doing that, which likely tilts us down to the 55-60 range.
Somehow Dolan only ever stops spending when we want him to spend on nice things.
lol ironically I might like DeJounte Murray right now as a 6th man.
Of course the only way we could ever get him without breaking up the starting lineup is to sign Mitch.
He’s a good reporter, but this is the second time in like 15 months that Ian has made inferences that didn’t make sense on their face and turned out not to be the case. (I think the other one had to do with Thibs being fired and who was responsible, but I’m not 100% sure on that.)
Leon was digging in the couch cushions for stray quarters last year to stay out of the second apron and the Knicks guy for Newsday said Dolan and Leon met about it the day before Dolan went on the FAN. Dolan briefly mumbled something about basketball but then quickly shifted gears and said unambiguously that he wasn’t cutting a check for the SA. The inferences and guesswork trended 99.5% in the other direction.
Interesting.
He’d of course be an excellent fit for this team — as he always would have been.
“Of course the only way we could ever get him without breaking up the starting lineup is to sign Mitch.”
He makes 32 and change next year. He’s ungettable now. Looks like his Achilles has healed up ok, but that’s also a risk.
Leon operates like the old Soviet Politburo. Don’t believe anything you hear and see until six months after the smoke clears. We don’t want 65 wins anyway. Home court doesn’t matter at all and wearing our starters out before the playoffs is not smart.
You can’t aggregate Bridges and J. Hart into a $54M player — the financial land where many a star resides — if you go over the second apron.
You sign Mitch for 1 year, $33M. Wait til December. Trade Mitch straight up for Murray. The Pelicans would likely have to throw in a pick because they’d be saving $32M next year.
Like I’ve been saying, you don’t get it. The best way to improve isn’t to throw your assets away.
I have no energy whatsoever for all this speculation and doomsday scenarios. The Knicks just won the fucking NBA championship while absolutely dominating the competition during the playoffs. None of us here expected this and most of us spent all of the past 2 years bemoaning the fact that we weren’t good enough despite going all in.
Knicks have their entire starting lineup in tact for at least next couple of years, as long as they’re here we are championship contenders. We could have a letdown next season and whatever who cares we’ll always be 2026 NBA champions!
Admittedly the main reason I couldn’t care less about this Knicks offseason is because right now despite having the best record in the AL my main concern is the Yankees looking like they’re beginning their annual summer swoon…
Of course we shouldn’t pursue 65 wins at the cost of wearing out our starters, but we absolutely do want 65 wins. Being a first seed makes an easy path far more likely as you’re guaranteed not to have to face the 2nd or 3rd seed until the ECF.
More chances for your strongest opposition to suffer attrition before you face them directly increases championship equity. HCA of course is not as important as it used it be, and not as important for us as it is for other teams, but it’s still an advantage that further increases your equity.
I keep hearing that we only won this year because we had an easy path, so IMO we should try to maximize our chances for another easy path next year.
Know what he didn’t do last year? Jettison existing, productive members of the team to stay below the apron. He added to last year’s team by using the TPMLE which hard capped us at the 2nd apron.
:/
To me it is obvious the the best course of action is keeping this group together for 2 or 3 years more. I hope they are just bluffing to get better negotiating position. In particular, we need Mitch to have full 48 minutes of big and strong C play. I liked that our team is demoralizing in that we dont give an easy way to our opponents for the full game (except the first quarters, I guess, but then the opponent becomes exhausted).
Right, but now the ability to do that has reached its inevitable end.
The real question now is how long Leon has known that he was under this second apron mandate. Because now the front-loading of the future into the present looks even *more* pronounced.
No, he doesn’t. Leon is competent. This is a terrible comparison on so many different levels.
LOL, seriously! It’s almost as if certain people can’t help themselves.
I’m just eager to see how it all shakes out. Yeah, I’m on team “hope they figure out a way to run it back” but also on team “there’s probably some hard decisions to make and we may not like them in the short term but the front office has earned a lot of trust (IMHO).”
Are there people we love for our draft slots tonight? I don’t really watch college ball unless it’s seeing St. Johns lose in the tournament so… I’d love to see Zuby stay in the Garden! Otherwise… tell me who I should love. I sort of expect we trade the pick but also want us to continue investing in players for the future. God, I’m such a fence sitter.
Still can’t believe we won a chip!
I would like us to keep Alvarado. I think the Knicks need as many ball-handlers as possible. It was a big help when Jose played with JB in game 4. For depth purposes, I would like to keep Jose and Kolek. They both would get playing time during the year. See how Kolek keeps developing.
I would say this is the funniest double down in Knickerblogger history, but Strat still to this day regularly makes the case for Frank Ntilikina so everyone else is competing for second.
Maybe Knicks can find a way to get RJ back…
Director, secretive like the Politburo, not incompetent – Leon is great. But we usually can’t guess where he is going until the decisions start flying.
Can’t think of any team that has ever won back to back championships by not re signing their free agents.
We have this hyper rare two year window and we decide not to go all in because it will cause MSG shareholders a few extra dollars?
Why would KAT leave his money on the table if Guitar Jimmy wont?
Dejounte Murray I’d maybe take at a minimum salary. For 2/62, uh, that’s a big “no thanks”
This is neither speculation nor doomsday. It’s a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of going over the second apron, and a debunking of common myths promoted in the media. And as always, no one is forcing you to read it.
The funny thing about the DJM situation is when his lighting up of the Celtics in the playoffs was noted but then shrugged off and scoffed at as meaningless — and now the playoffs are the only thing that matters.
But in any event, moving on to the present situation, the old tried and true stock market adage, “Buy the rumor, sell the news” seems like a good general principle to work with here. The future and the present become the past mighty quickly.
Just went long Ghana vs England. Let’s GO!!!
“This is neither speculation nor doomsday. It’s a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of going over the second apron, and a debunking of common myths promoted in the media. And as always, no one is forcing you to read it.”
That, and the unavoidable Kreminology and questions raised, such as:
Wonder if Jalen Brunson knew that Dolan was never going over the second apron and whether that made him decide to take the cheaper extension.
At #24 I’d like Meleek Thomas as a guy who shoots threes at 42% and can play some point guard but is big enough to play strong guard.
At #31 I’m still pretty intrigued by Joshua Jefferson if he falls that far. Otherwise, Tarris Reed will do.
Pags, I’m also at 65 wins if we run it back properly. That’s pretty neat. My reason being that the KAT hub offense will lead to a clutch of easy wins against teams without enough size at the 5.
In the regular season some teams are just not going to deviate from their base defense, poor defenders get caught on backdoor cuts all the time. Most teams don’t have two good bigs like Cleveland or a bunch of psycho perimeter defenders like San Antonio. We could be big-time flat track bullies.
At 24, I’d like Philon but he’s not going to be there and there’s been no talk of him and the Knicks. I’m intrigued by Isaiah Evans and kind of prefer him now to either Quaintance or Peat. I’d be happy with them drafting him.
Zuby at 31 would be nice, so would Jefferson. Would be nicer if Zuby was 6-10 instead of 6-8, but if he was there would be no way he’d be around at 31. If either Q or P is there at 31, you have to take them over Zuby, IMO. Q would be a lottery pick if not for his knee, and it’s only an ACL. (unless there’s something unreported going on with it.)
Wait, are you talking about the same playoff series in which Dejounte Murray got suspended for a playoff game for verbally abusing a referee and also intentionally walking up to that referee and bumping him?
Yeah, let’s get that guy! He sounds like a winner!
“At #24 I’d like Meleek Thomas as a guy who shoots threes at 42% and can play some point guard but is big enough to play strong guard.”
Fact: Thomas is a great 3-point shooter.
Caveat: In college.
That was a 5 game stretch that will be 4 years removed from our next playoff run. Since, DJM has missed 119 games over the last two seasons and showed a steep decline in production when he did play.
Can reasonable people agree that playoff samples generally matter if they aren’t tiny, far in the past, and separated from the present day by catastrophic injuries, or do we need to straw man that position in service of old hobbyhorses?
I’m talking about the series where he averaged 23/7/7 and 2 steals against the Celtics, on 447/378/1000 shooting.
He would have been a great get at the ’23-’24 deadline. They should have gotten him. The ship has sailed at this point.
Yes, that one. The one where he had a DNP-Suspended For Being A Moron on his stat line
Oh you mean the one where they were 1-4 in games he played and 1-0 in games he didn’t?
DNP-MOR
If the Knicks can somehow figure out a way to keep Mitch and acquire Murray, Alec Baldwin has to be brought into the locker room to deliver the Glengarry Glen Ross speech.
I think even if Knicks bench gets depleted this offseason they’ll still have a chance to repeat next season but let’s be serious about winning 65 games if they actually run it back. You’re just setting yourself up to be massively disappointed next season with those type of expectations for the regular season.
I’d much rather we win 53 games again, be the third seed and have Stephen Smith and all the other idiot sports pundits call our title a fluke and then all the other teams don’t take us seriously again and then we smash them in the playoffs again on our way to a repeat.
I mean shit it would be awesome to win 60 games and get the 1st seed for once but this Knicks team has shown past 2 seasons they don’t exactly get fired up for all 82 games of the regular season.
Fun fact: 3 out of the past 5 champions won exactly 53 games!
Why is winning 65 games absurd? Do you take the position that winning 65 is harder than what we just did?
For reference, 22 teams in NBA history have won 65 games. Only 5 have matched our record in this year’s playoffs.
When you do a super hard thing, it’s reasonable to infer that you can do a less hard thing.
And why would I be disappointed? My starting point was that we would never win a championship in my lifetime. We did and it was everything I could have ever dreamed. Whatever happens from here on in is gravy. Nothing can ever take 2026 away.
Isn’t there enough information on Murray for people to realize he’s a loser? Aren’t there other good potential backup guards we could find who aren’t losers? I have to imagine so…
Okay, well, now that days after winning the NBA finals E is saying we should’ve traded for Dejounte Murray instead of OG Anunoby we really might have a new Dubious Double Down Award winner.
despite my desire to continue fellating leon (poor man must be exhausted from it all), hard for me to get past thinking about the coach hiring process last off-season…
it seemed strange when we kept wanting to interview already employed coaches, for other nba teams…don’t remember that ever happening at that scale in the past…
it really felt like we settled on Mike Brown…
maybe jalen, leon, jose alvarado or who knows, BC himself were simply fated to be champs this year…
in hindsight now, MB has a helluva resume…didn’t feel that way to begin the year…
the MB revenge tour was pretty spectacular this post season…
better to be lucky than good…maybe…probably yes…luck runs in to preparation…
optimal synergy in group dynamics is something to see, everyone watching the playoffs saw the knicks display exactly that this post season…so so satisfying to know the new york knickerbockers’ 2026 post season highlights will be playing forever on nbatv…
There was a stat I saw correlating winning forty before losing twenty to having a reasonable title shot. Knicks didn’t. They peaked at the right time. How’d they do it? Weirdly it was by putting Karl at the top of a triangle, lol.
I think Mitch and Landry were fantastic last year and deserve to find their spot somewhere amazing. They are very unique and were key to helping us win. We will miss them if they leave.
So stoked to see Leon cook tonight. He’s gonna trade all three picks for one he already has. Then pick a guy that’ll get minutes.
Both. Always both.
Old territory.
Same. I don’t care how many games we win next year.
around 55 wins serves just as well as 60 plus for winning a championship…
don’t remember us rushing any players back on to the court earlier than necessary following an injury…
someone mentioned it above already: we definitely do need to reduce our starters’ minutes…seeding seems to matter less these days…
How could the Knicks have traded for both when they overpaid for OG!!
By not overpaying for OG!!
With friends like Z-Man, who even needs trolls like me?
It actually does not. Historically there is a very strong correlation between RS wins and championship.
65+ wins: ~75% championship odds
60-64 wins: ~35% odds
55-59 wins: ~11% odds
50-54 wins: ~3% odds
I know which group I’d like to be in.
I was so completely nonplussed by the news via group text from some old New Yorkers I used to know about the end of some 53 year drought that I went just kept on folding my laundry. The bewilderment didn’t just come from realizing that God was no longer trying to send Dolan back to the bottle, it came from the understanding that the Knicks outplayed Scott Foster in a closeout game 5 on the road. You can downplay the Hawks, Sixers, Cavs, and prepubescent Spurs all you want Z-Man, but the opponent NY bested transcended mere mortal basketball players. Drink it in. You earned it.
Oh noes we passed on the opportunity to enjoy 45 games over two seasons of Dejounte Murray putting up a .517 TS% for like $25M AAV and all we got was this lousy Larry O’Brien trophy
so so many bad Knick contracts given out over the years…took like 30 seconds to rattle off a handful of names…double yuck…
i can understand why KAT got what he got from minny…they were wrong to get rid of him, turns out it wasn’t ant who needed a better supporting cast – it was KAT, and a better coach…
conference finals 3 years running, in both the west and east…57 million is a bunch of the cap, 61 seems untenable…this version of KAT though, wow…king KAT now….
love how he bought in with the whole naive college all for one stuff, with coach Cal watching from the stands…
in one of the post games, josh accused him of never even going to college…
looks like guitar jimmy has already begun negotiating with both KAT and jalen…
Imagine having takes as bad as “we overpaid for OG” and “we should have traded for Dejounte Murray” then having it blow up in your face as badly as it did, then STILL standing by those ratchet ass takes
past is the past pags, don’t go back so far…
Nothing “blew up in my face,” that’s the problem with the theory.
They would have been a better team in the 2024 playoffs with both OG and DJM than with just OG. Still would be, even after the Achilles blow. Strange one to litigate.
DJM:
1. Sucked
2. Was hurt
3. Cost a fuckload of money
4. Is still owed a fuckload of money on his terrible contract
We should be thanking our luckiest stars that our front office didn’t trade for Dejounte Murray’s bum ass then give him a terrible contract extension. Thats what dumbass teams like the New Orleans Pelicans do.
The contract extension came after the relevant time.
More importantly, we should also thank our lucky stars that:
1. They realized that Thibs was a ceiling lowerer.
2. They shouldn’t panic and just ride out the KAT/Mike Brown situation.
In any event, all old news.
If we traded for Dejounte Murray at any point I am absolutely positive we would not have won the NBA championship, my god. Just slowly stop talking about this one, a la Frank Ntilikina, Cam Reddish, and the disastrous Josh Hart and OG Anunoby trades.
the spurs’ carcass isn’t even cold yet and we’re talking about djounte murray?
(alllen iverson voice) djounte murray?????
Silly to suggest that that team couldn’t have won the championship after what we just saw, but you should address this one to Pags — he’s the one that keeps bringing DJM up. (*) I haven’t mentioned the guy in like two years.
(*) And falsely to boot.
I saw a fun B-movie once about vampires and part of the vampire lore was that they can’t resist counting a large number of small objects when given the opportunity.
So when all else fails to escape the vampire one of the characters throws a bag of rice at him, and sure enough, he has to stop to count the grains. However, it turns out the vampire has supernatural counting abilities and after watching the rice sail through the air, announces the exact number of 371,292 or something like that within seconds. Then he resumes the chase and kills everyone.
The Dejounte Murray trade that could have been is E’s bag of rice.
Fright Night is not simply a fun B movie…cinematic masterpiece, i say…
Edit: oops, was it dracula 2: ascension…now that does sound like some weird shit…
If we would have had Dejounte Murray’s contract on the books, that means we wouldn’t have had space for other, actually useful players. We would have had a Dejounte Murray-sized black hole in his salary slot. This was money we used on a non-Dejounte Murray player or players. Since the actual Dejounte Murray stunk and was injured, this actually worked out well.
The lengths some people will go to in order to avoid saying “Yeah, I guess I was wrong about that one” is astonishing.
JK, the only thing to do in these situations is to do as I do and applaud E’s absolute unrelenting commitment to the bit. He never, ever breaks character.
The guy blew out his Achilles in year T+1 from the year at issue, so of course it wouldn’t have worked out well. Would have been only a 1-year window.
Not sure we’re getting a draft thread tonight, but the Knicks kicking everyone’s ass and leaving us with a week plus between series gave me plenty of time to make a big board this year.
As a reminder, these are my personal rankings with absolutely zero conscious care for where guys will actually be drafted. I even try to avoid looking at too many mocks, lest I get influenced into herding.
1. Boozer
2. Dybantsa
3. Wilson
4. Flemings
5. Peterson
6. Burries
7. Acuff
8. Graves
9. Philon
10. Steinbach
11. Wagler
12. Swain
13. Okorie
14. Johnson Jr.
15. Brown Jr.
16. Lendeborg
17. Mara
18. Carr
19. Lopez
20. Thomas
21. Jefferson
22. Quaintance
23. Stirtz
24. De Larrea
25. Cenac
26. Saunders
27. Ejiofor
28. Evans
29. Peat
30. Reed
31. Anderson
32. Nelson
33. Oweh
34. Gillespie
35. Copeland
36. Kayil
37. Bittle
38. Bilodeau
39. Lipsey
40. Ament
41. Castro
42. M. Brown
43. Thornton
44. Karaban
45. Reneau
46. Donaldson
47. Onyenso
48. Conwell
49. Tyson
50. Smith
51. Veesaar
52. Sharp
53. Miller
54. Nkrumah
55. Brazile
56. Wilkerson
57. Martinelli
58. Okpara
59. Lawal
60. Mitchell
-As far as the Knicks specifically go, narrowing it down to guys who have a prayer of being there when we pick of course, I’d be happy with Philon, Graves, Lopez, Thomas, Jefferson, Quaintance, and De Larrea in the first round, and Zuby, Saunders, Reed, Peat, Nelson, Copeland, and Nkrumah in the second or with a UDFA/two-way slot. That’s not to say I’d be unhappy with other guys, these names just stand out in terms of a combination of quality, and positional need.
-As you can tell, I am lower on Peterson than the consensus. I also think he has the ability to make me look very stupid. It’s just impossible for me to justify taking him over guys who flatly beat the brakes off him production wise against similar competition, and that’s without accounting for all the…weirdness.
-I think Nate Ament is basically Kevin Knox.
It’s very hard to know what to make of Peterson; I’d have to see all the medical stuff and the creatine claim. He just seems kind of flighty.
I do think Boozer’s being undervalued and behind him I low key wouldn’t be shocked if Caleb Wilson or Darius Acuff wind up as the best players in the draft, particularly Wilson. So I sort of trend in the TNFH direction (Boozer and Wilson better than consensus) with the rankings at the very top of the draft.
Graves is growing on me as a Knicks pick at 24 with Philon, Quaintance, Evans.
“I saw a fun B-movie once about vampires and part of the vampire lore was that they can’t resist counting a large number of small objects when given the opportunity.”
Like the Count on Sesame Street, right? 🙂
I really hope they just draft BPA at 24 and 31, with no extraneous bullshit, and put them on the roster — but I’m well aware that we’re getting to Lucy perpetually pulling the football from Charlie Brown territory with this one, with me as CB.
I would like to reiterate a point I made earlier, 3 of the past 5 NBA champions won exactly 53 games including most importantly the current NBA champions which is the team we root for.
“I really hope they just draft BPA at 24 and 31, with no extraneous bullshit, and put them on the roster — but I’m well aware that we’re getting to Lucy perpetually pulling the football from Charlie Brown territory with this one, with me as CB.”
Possibly, but there was one big thing that happened lately that might change the way Leon is approaching the draft this year.
Also not a fan of Ament.
I keep seeing Mara projected to the Warriors and I wonder if they’d rather have Deuce and the 24.
Mara being mocked around #14. Is Deuce plus our top pick too much? Deuce and our #31 would probably get it done.
Maybe now we know why Tim Bontemps was so skeptical of the Knicks throughout this playoff run: he’s in talks to join the Atlanta Hawks’ front office!
https://frontofficesports.com/tim-bontemps-hawks-front-office-espn/
What happens to Hoop Collective if this happens?
It gets better?
I’m fully expecting the Knicks to punt on 24, probably for a couple of seconds. They will more likely make the 31st pick or trade down for 2 later ones. Seems pretty predictable, no?
Wish Leon punted already…no reason to wait until the last minute unless he’s adding Deuce and trying to move up a few spots. Im perfectly fine with picking that spanish kid and stashing him down there for a couple of years.
lol Donnie, why does opining that this isn’t some dynastic roster, just a solid one with an outside shot at repeating trolling? I think we are squarely in the mix with all the teams going back to the Durant GSWs. And I very much doubt that any one of our current bench players is the difference between repeating or not. I expect that our bench will be fine, 2nd apron or no 2nd apron.
I want to weigh in on the Randle trade. He’s not overpaid for what he does. He did have a bad playoff series but e also had a good one. Trading a good, fairly paid player for nothing isn’t the way to improve your team. Of course cap space is worth something, but I think Randle gets a bad rap. Every team he’s played for has ended up using him extensively and gotten results.
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