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Knicks Morning News (2026.08.17)

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  • Why this is the most important season of Miles McBride’s Knicks career – SNY
  • Knicks Notes: Jack Kayil to play overseas this season; what’s next for Tyler Nickel – SNY
  • Saturday Posted & Toasted Notes: Scheduling, Angeleno sale, Hall of Fame – Posting & Toasting
  • Important quirks, dates, and games in the Knicks’ 2026-27 schedule – Posting & Toasting

    • YT News

  • 20 years of Knicks buzzer-beaters #NBA – Knicks Film School
  • Amare Stoudemire Inducted in the Hall of Fame | Oakley vs MSG Drama | Knicks Weekly – Knicks Fan TV

    • 36 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.08.17)”

    It’s pretty clear these title-winning teams weren’t facing severe trade restrictions. They were facing huge tax bills.

    I tend to agree with this. Previously owners focused on capping player salaries, and now they’re essentially capping team salaries (with a steep financial penalty that enriches other owners if you ignore those benchmarks). Meanwhile they’re making more than ever from rising ticket and merch prices.

    So I can’t help but think the apron trade restrictions are secondary to the bottom line.

    It’s a clever ruse, but the players are just now waking up to this built-in owner excuse of a flexibility they don’t actually care about. It will probably come to a head in another year or so.

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    Secondary is different than irrelevant. The notion that the trade restrictions and draft implications are just window dressing is simply wrong.

    I’m torn on this. Instinctively, I always side with players over owners. But the players get 50% of the revenues no matter what. The fact that a successful owner doesn’t want to reach into his pocket to pay the less successful owners, or uses the aprons as the main excuse not to reach too deep, doesn’t really bother me. The real harm is allowing 30-35% of cap space on a single player. The owners probably don’t care that much since it allows them to keep their “star” and quell the fanbase. But the players as a collective should care because it can trickle down in unfair ways. The players need to divide their half of the pie up more equitably.

    The players need to divide their half of the pie up more equitably.

    Most of the players don’t believe in that nonsense, or should I more accurately say most of the best don’t. They put in the hours to become great and they want to be properly compensated. They don’t want Mamdani as their GM.

    But unless I’m mistaken, the player’s union has a one-member, one-vote system. As such, the majority of players are not the ones making top dollar. So making it such that more governors are going to balk on supermax deals (or players like Wemby are going to sacrifice) is by extension spreading out the wealth.

    It wil be interesting to see how the next round of veteran supermax extension talks pan out. KAT, Brown, Jokic, Giannis, AD, Markaten, Sabonis, Siakam…all of these guys will be test cases. It’s becoming very apparent that winning a championship with a 35% player is dicey. Cleveland went all in on Spida, and when that kicks in, I don’t see how they can maintain a contender around him.

    “The hard cap itself has already cost us more than the penalties likely ever will.”

    This is false. You can continue to bend yourself into a pretzel trying to prove that it is true. But it isn’t.

    So far we’ve had to give up Mitchell Robinson, the 25th pick, and the 31st pick to squeeze under the apron.

    That’s quite a bit of value.

    I don’t think we’re likely to get more than that back by packaging Deuce, Dadiet, and cash, but you are welcome to disagree.

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    Amazing how effectively certain media outlets get regular folk to embrace welfare for billionaires.

    But this isn’t Politicsblogger, so that’s all I’ll say about that.

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    Although you have to imagine if there were no cap at all, the astronomical price for top stars would just be passed on to the fan/consumer instead of the players.

    Owners need to make money. If the nba wasn’t a lucrative investment, basketball would just be an Olympic sport like bobsled.

    It’s a clever ruse, but the players are just now waking up to this built-in owner excuse of a flexibility they don’t actually care about.

    I agree that’s it’s a clever ruse.

    The Thunder had a $400M tax bill behind door #1.

    They had the inability to do something they haven’t done in ten years behind door #2.

    And Hartenstein’s out here saying “it was door #2 that got me!”

    The original point was that Strat believes major change is coming bc the players are waking up, and he held up Hartenstein’s quote as an example.

    IMO Hartenstein’s quote showed how far the players really are from waking up, and that major change is unlikely.

    And as aside, I wondered if Dolan is actually being the consummate team player for Adam Silver and the owners, an idea that seems preposterous but when you look at what he accomplished…

    Amazing how effectively certain media outlets get regular folk to embrace welfare for billionaires.

    I commented on the players, not the owners in this last bit of jousting. The players’ and owners’ shares are collectively bargained in the CBA.

    The problem is of the 8 players Z mentioned above only Jokic and Giannis were true max players. Markkaten, Sabonis, Siakam, AD, Brown and KAT until his last 17 games were no more max players than me.

    Unless you really want to dummy down the definition of a max player.

    “So far we’ve had to give up Mitchell Robinson, the 25th pick, and the 31st pick to squeeze under the apron.

    That’s quite a bit of value.”

    We didn’t “give up” the picks. We traded them for picks that have equal, if not more, strategic value.

    We gave up Mitch, but there is a trade-off in flexibility to keep the rest of the core together for longer, and to more replace players in the case of injury. Mitch is an oft-injured, flawed, and mercurial player who was locked up on a 3 years market-rate deal with a player option in the 3rd year. When physically and mentally healthy, he’s a much better player than Drummond has been. But he also nearly cost this team a championship, and there is a lot of time between now and the playoffs to close whatever gap now exists between this year’s and last year’s roster to the degree that makes the loss of Mitch marginal at worst.

    The “we gave up something and got almost nothing in return” mindset is all contingent on maximizing the possibility of repeating. That’s fine, so long as the implications for the future are fairly considered. I don’t believe that your statement above even comes close to doing that. While I would have liked for Dolan to have allowed Leon to run it back, it definitely could work out well that he didn’t, both for now and in the future.

    Hubert, I re-read all your posts on this, but I still don’t get your POV. To me the issue is simple-the players get 50%. If they are getting hosed and need to wake up, that number is too low—nothing else. What aspect am I missing? (By the way, tennis players get c. 15%, different economics, but in context 50% is pretty good).

    I’m actually pretty optimistic that a viable 3rd C is going to materialize before the season starts. And if not, then before the trade deadline.

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    So if everything the Clippers did was “legal”…

    Brock Allar, do your thing.

    (I wish we had known this at the start of the summer so Radio City Music Hall could have signed Mitch Robinson as a spokesperson for $20,000,000 a year).

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    Seems very rare that an internal “independent” investigation that takes close to 2-3 times longer than anticipated comes up with a conclusion like that. Next up, no problem with gambling, these guys are outliers, and we caught them…(no you didn’t, the feds did).

    Sounds like the thought of a protracted, messy arbitration scenario with no guarantee of “winning” was enough to bail and move on.

    Fair question, Bernie.

    The players get 50% of BRI but they get 0% of franchise valuations and expansion fees, and those are the numbers that are exploding.

    Some of that is attributable to the perception of a hard cap and parity.

    In a hard capped league where anyone can win, the small market teams are worth a lot more money. That’s partly why NFL valuations are fairly close (the cowboys are worth 2X the Saints) while MLB valuations are wide (the Yankees are worth 6X the Marlins).

    The other thing is luxury tax is separate completely. The players aren’t asking for more money. They just want to be able stay in one place.

    So when I said they need to wake up, I meant that if their goal is to end this system that’s forcing all the movement, they need to address the punitive luxury tax that came with the new CBA (not the second apron restrictions) because that’s what really drove the decision-making in places like Golden State, OKC, Minnesota, Boston, and probably NY.

    That ruling with the Clippers is fuckin ridiculous and just goes to show how the wealthy in our country now face ZERO consequences for their behavior and rule breaking.

    I mean, fuck…what is to stop every team from doing this? Sign KAT to the vet minimum but he gets a spokesman job for New York One that pays him 60 million a year!

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    I’m thinking that the Kawhi situation will at worst lead to new regulations and requirements. At least the Clips didn’t benefit much, they are a mess now and will stay that way for a while.

    I see that article a little differently from the way you guys are discussing it.

    Here’s the key part:

    The league presented initial findings of its investigation… to the Clippers in late July, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. In recent days, both sides have been negotiating a resolution to the investigation, the people said. Those talks … at times have been “spirited,” one source said.

    That doesn’t say to me that the league is trying to let Ballmer off the hook. It tells me that the league is trying to punish him without a smoking gun.

    Remember the NBA was only able to punish the Timberwolves for cap circumvention because they literally wrote it up in a memo! This article merely says that no such evidence exists here. (That’s not really a surprise… not everyone takes notes on a criminal conspiracy.)

    I see this article as coming from Ballmer. There’s likely more than enough circumstantial evidence for the league to punish him, and I think they’re trying to, but Ballmer’s saying fuck you because they don’t have anything like that memo.

    (I wish we had known this at the start of the summer so Radio City Music Hall could have signed Mitch Robinson as a spokesperson for $20,000,000 a year).

    That would be some chorus line.

    I hear Adam Silver and the investigating law firm have recently signed “promotional contracts” with newly formed business partners of Steve Balmer

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    And in other Los Angeles basketball team news, I Dream of Jeannie is contesting the latest sale of the Lakers.

    Independent Investigation is only independent in the sense they aren’t NBA employees. They will find whatever the NBA can handle revealing.

    Smh

    seems like they are close to a deal and the clippers and maybe the nbpa tried to leak a benign spin in advance. if so, and if the deal comes with real punishment but maybe milquetoast language (failure to supervise), I can understand Silver’s desire to go there over a prolonged arbitration that will feel lose-lose. but if it’s truly just a slap on the wrist (and if there’s no shockingly exculpatory evidence), it will be a big mistake in the long run. but the espn article despite being wildly pro clippers notably said nothing specific about penalties. so there’s still hope.

    Carson Benge with a 103.5 MPH outfield assist for the Mets tonight. He had another one clocked over 99 MPH. Fun player.

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