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Jalen Brunson Attends Fat Joe’s Birthday Party in Photo, Celebration Included Knicks-Themed Cake – BleacherReport
Picking the NBA moment that defined the 2025-26 season – ESPN
Why this is the most important season of Miles McBride’s Knicks career – SNY
August P&T mailbag invite – Posting & Toasting
OG Anunoby took his Game 4 winner to Times Square – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Notes: Jack Kayil to play overseas this season; what’s next for Tyler Nickel – SNY
NBA Front Office Rankings (Part 1): Knicks soar over Celtics after winning title – CBS Sports
Fired 4 Times To NBA CHAMPION! 🏆 (Mike Brown’s Knicks Legacy) – Knicks Fan TV
Best 20 Knicks Games of the Leon Rose Era | #16 – Knicks 137, Hawks 127 (4/21/21) – Knicks Film School
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62 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.08.20)”
This was one of those mornings where I woke up and immediately started thinking about how unbelievable it is that we won a championship.
Thanks to his dad, my poor son has been suffering from KnicksMetsJets-itis since birth. He has known nothing but a merry-go-round of seasons that either begin with no hope or end in bitter, gut-wrenching playoff disappointment. I remember, among many other horrors for me as a dad, how inconsolably hard he cried when Beltran struck out in 2014.
He would often ask me over recent years if we would ever get to see one of our team win a championship together. We would talk about which team had the best chance to do it. I would generally default to the Mets because of Steve Cohen being so rich and the lack of a salary cap in baseball. Yet while there would have been a glorious sense of Dayanu if the Mets or Jets won just to get us off the dad-son schneid, the Knicks winning one was always the ultimate dream. And for us to be together when it happened was such a great gift, I can’t really express it in words.
He told me the other day that not having any anxiety that he would go through his entire life without ever experiencing a championship has made a huge difference for him. To know that I can go through whatever time I have left and never have to put on a brave face and console him again with the disingenuous platitude, “It’s okay, son, it’s only sports” is such a big deal. Only now can I say that all the pain and anxiety was worth it.
Bobby Marks writing that the Nuggets are both over the second apron and hard capped at it bc this was a S&T 🤔
Or is he saying they’re allowed to be over the second apron as long as they don’t use the trade exception to go over it (which is true, but has nothing to do with it being a S&T)?
https://x.com/bobbymarks42/status/2090227777844679006?s=46
His wording is confusing, but pretty sure he’s saying Denver can’t use the TPE because doing so would hard cap them at the second apron and they’re already over it (sending out a player in a sign-and-trade doesn’t trigger the hard cap, receiving a player does).
The Dodgers situation with Walter in trouble and Shohei due lots money a long time from now makes me ever so slightly more hopeful about the Mets
The Nuggets have one of the greatest players off all time and they can’t seem to put (or keep) the right players around him to make it work. IMO a couple of their moves were clearly boneheaded.
TNFH has it right. You can make a s&t but can’t take a player with the exception they generated. He’s just noting they have it.
Nuggets have the pieces. Jamal Murray needs to not suck in the playoffs and Aaron Gordon needs to stay healthy.
Idk, I don’t think Watson is even as good as RJ yet at the same age. Honestly it was probably the right move by Denver. And now they have picks to trade for real help.
Denver’s biggest issue is that they just haven’t drafted well enough. Watson and Braun are both decent, but not good enough to help really.
Meanwhile, Johnson and Gordon were both perfectly cromulent choices at the time, but they’re both starting to age out.
They probably need to trade Gordon with picks for another good player, maybe at the deadline. But they’re both starting team is still good, especially if they get bounce back years from Braun and Johnson.
Even the non-elite version of Peyton Watson is a really solid role player who can help plug the hole at the 3 they’ve had forever.
Building and maintaining a true contender with a player earning 35% of the cap is a tall task, no matter how good that player is. Even with all of his advantages, when SGA’s supermax extension kicks in next year, even Presti is gonna have his work cut out for him. That is going to be the biggest development going forward for the Knicks. Brunson surely deserves to get paid, but if he does, say goodbye to the championship window. More generally, if he and KAT combine for more than 60% of the cap, things are gonna get tough for Leon.
Thanks, EB & Noble. The wording was very confusing.
The Porter trade really killed Denver. They turned him into Johnson, Valancunias, Brown, and Hardaway, and had to pay a 2032 unprotected 1st to do it! Three of those guys are off the team now and Johnson doesn’t seem to fit.
If I were them I’d be calling Dallas about swapping Murray for Kyrie.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7521394/2026/08/20/knicks-josh-hart-extension-eligible/
Edwards on a potential Hart extension. I’d be shocked if Josh tried to leave. He wants to go into broadcasting when he retires. A lot easier to do that if he’s a Knick for rest of his career.
I believe he also said, on the Roommates Pod, that this will be the last extension he signs. He isn’t planning on playing well into his later years.
Hart should get somewhere between $15-20M AAV for 3-4 years, with the assumption that he opts out. Anything more than that would be a mistake. I love the guy, but if he wants to stay in the fold he has to compromise.
That used to be the backbone of the NBA! Bird rights made the league what it is.
Imagine how the 90s would have gone if the Bulls had to trade Scottie Pippen 1992 in order for Michael Jordan to get paid. (You don’t even have to imagine, just look at how Steph Curry’s career is ending.)
Curry, Luka, Jokic, Giannis, Tatum, eventually Brunson… who came up with the great idea to make it impossible for the league’s biggest stars to compete for titles?
The league is hot as fuck right now, and Silver wants to break up all the teams that made it this way. The Warriors? Long gone. The Celtics? You had two seasons. The Knicks? Better hope KAT doesn’t like money or you’re next.
And who’s coming up? All the small market teams that tanked and won the lotteries. How fortuitous.
Silver should be ashamed of this; instead he’s running victory laps.
The NBA is not the NFL and I don’t think parity is going to work long term.
(Also who are we kidding? There’s not going to be parity for long after Wemby took a pay cut.)
Speaking of the Roommates Podcast, I listened to the one that had Leon as the guest. I have to say, I wasn’t impressed at all. I understand that perhaps he isn’t comfortable with microphones (despite it being part of the job for the 31 other teams) but he didn’t really come across as eloquent and said “you know” in between each sentence.
I defy anyone to listen to that and explain to me how in the hell this dude could be the kind of agent that can land a marquee star like Lebron.
Then I heard Dan LeBatard interview Pat Riley the other day. In it, Pat dropped this nugget. On the famous day when they had the “not one, not two, not three…) celebration, the players had yet to sign their contracts and literal minutes from hitting the podium. Leon pulls a fast one on the Heat and demands that LBJ receive extra years and player options on his contract. In order to do that, Riley had to give up 6 draft picks that he had earmarked to acquire other unnamed players to fill out the roster. Riley credited Leon with taking advantage of the leverage he had and forcing his hand. Apparently that was his play the entire time and played it masterfully. He actually respects him to this day and was the only reason he wasn’t filled with venom when the Knicks won.
It shed some new light on how Leon maneuvers in the cut and explains what kind of a balls of steel you need to have in order to do that job.
“The league is hot as fuck right now, and Silver wants to break up all the teams that made it this way.”
If the league is hot as fuck right now, then it’s due to the current teams, not the ones of the past. I think there is the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic versions of the NBA. Silver has worked a lot of magic since the bubble days.
Adam Silver believes that the best way for the league to remain hot as fuck is for every team (and by extension, fan base) to believe that it has a shot at competing for a championship sooner than later. Being that 27% of the teams in the league have won a championship in the past 8 years, and 43% have gone to the finals, seems like he might be on to something with this parity thing.
As to the Spurs and Wemby, it’s possible that they go on to be dynastic, but it won’t be because they are hoarding talent, it will be because they have the closest thing to a one-man team in NBA history. But the league benefits from competition even beneath the finals.
Look at the East this year. Even though the Knicks are defending champs, I don’t think many fan bases are all that worried about us being unbeatable, like they were with the Heatles, the Dubs, the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, the Jordan-Pippen Bulls, etc. Ten teams are a few lucky breaks and career years away from giving their fans a season to remember. The death of tanking, the play-in, the IST (well, not really), the second apron are all part of ensuring that only the very dumbest franchises are boxed out of the playoffs for multiple years.
you’re not exactly wrong, but you are kind of wrong…
not gonna lie – I had the same exact initial reaction as you did…kind of wanted to turn my nose up a bit, look down upon…hmmmmm, maybe this guy ain’t really so smart…
however, like jalen brunson himself, leon has a pretty nice list of previous professional accomplishments…
my sense is – leon is a very strong one on one communicator, whom has a tremendous amount of experience in working/dealing with folks…
in more group settings, would imagine he ensures he has capable (eloquent type) folks with him to lead or back up his intentions…
eloquence, being well spoken, doesn’t always equate to establishing trust and confidence…which is what he’s most likely most concerned with…
yeah, leon could never sell used cars, but…
Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but the extremes of the CBA in the name of parity and the current appetite for expansion have got to be intertwined.
The last time the league “expanded” it was in New Orleans and it was a disaster. But then Stern (because the NBA owned the franchise–part of the disaster) intervened by rejecting a Chris Paul trade to the Lakers and in the next draft they won the lottery despite having the 4th best odds (and when there was a clear no.1 pick AD). Flash forward a dozen years or so and the most controversial trade since then (but for different reasons) happens, benefitting the NBA as valuations soar and the team that made the controversial trade wins the NBA lottery despite having the 10th best odds (and when there was a clear no.1 pick in Cooper).
And despite all the shenanigans, we win it all. Makes it even sweeter.
was thinking if I was an nba expansion franchise and could snatch one of our players – it would be josh…
My understanding is that part of Leon’s refusal to do interviews is classic Knicks media paranoia, but a good chunk of it is that he’s a super shy public speaker (as we also saw at the City Hall celebration) and hates doing it. Being able to speak commandingly in a meeting and being able to do it when there’s a microphone in your face are two very different skills.
Reading the article, a salary like that would be a severe underpay.
“Being able to speak commandingly in a meeting and being able to do it when there’s a microphone in your face are two very different skills.”
I can attest to this from personal experience. Never felt great doing speeches or being interviewed. Felt much more comfortable in casual conversations, and the fewer the people involved, the better.
Im not sure what the market will want to pay for a 6’4″ guard with a questionable 3pt shot. Everything Josh does well depends on athleticism and speed generally doesnt age well.
Yeah, and it’s true even in a one-on-one interview for print, not just for TV or podcasts/radio.
“Reading the article, a salary like that would be a severe underpay.”
It might, but what are the alternatives for Josh? Is he going to uproot his life with his young children and forego the media and endorsement opportunities here in NY, not to mention the opportunity to finish his career with his best buddy as a legend on the team he won the championship with.
If the Knicks are going to keep this starting 5 together beyond this year, one of two things is gonna have to happen:
1) all of KAT, Brunson, and Hart take less than what they are worth
2) they give up on contending for another championship
The only other alternative is to break up the starting 5. Until they won it all, it looked like KAT would be the one to go. Now it seems that it would more likely be one (or more) of Josh, Mikal, or OG.
We don’t know much about Leon’s personality. He could be abrasive or crude in a way that works well in a negotiation but won’t go over well in a public media appearance.
But really you don’t need to negotiate that well on the behalf of stars. Lebron’s agent has all the leverage in the world.
I don’t think you’re being cynical at all.
This is a short term money grab at the expense of the players and fans.
After that the deluge.
We’ll just have a $15M/yr announcer gig lined up for Josh after he retires.
Gary Trent and Kawhi Leonard say hi.
Injuries have been an issue, but so has depth. The champsionship team was deeper than the recent versions.
That’s what we have to be careful of.
We want to keep the starting team together plus a couple of key bench pieces, but you sort of need more than that the way the game is being played today and because a couple of injuries are almost inevitable where certain players are out or less than 100% in the playoffs. You just have to hope it’s not a major one.
“Meanwhile, Johnson and Gordon were both perfectly cromulent choices at the time, but they’re both starting to age out.”
Cam Johnson is only around 30, isn’t he?
“This is a short term money grab at the expense of the players and fans.”
If the players are getting a fixed percentage of BRI and that money grab includes an increase in BRI, how is this happening at the expense of players?
If a far greater percentage of players have the chance to play for competitive teams, how is this happening at the expense of players?
As to fans, they are having to pay more for tickets and TV because there is more interest in their teams because the product is “hot as shit”, and will only further improve with the anti-tanking provisions, how is this happening at the expense of fans?
I think your premise that “the very biggest stars should always have the best chance of winning a championship” is rather bizarre. The NBA finals represent a small fraction of the NBA season, in terms of revenue generation, fan interest, and star exposure. In fact, it’s the finals that helps turn secondary stars into household names, which is also good for the overall product.
The irony here is that the biggest stars probably have more leverage than ever to build a championship team. If three of them collude to join a team and settle for 25% of the cap each (something like $42M in 2026-27), they can build an unbeatable dynasty. Seems like Brunson and Wemby have sort of figured that out.
“After that the deluge.”
Please give us some details regarding the deluge to come. Then we can bookmark it and see how well that take ages.
I love how competitive the league has become and hate that it’s at the Knicks expense
The biggest mistake that Silver made was dragging his feet on the tanking problem. Last year was an abomination in that regard.
In a way, the second apron has mitigated tne need to bottom out for a high draft pick. Seems like free agency, which was declared dead right here a few years ago, is going to become a thing again. All rebuilding teams have to do now is have enough cap space to pay players a lot more than the apron teams can afford. The marquee ring chasers might not be willing to go to these teams, but you can build a pretty damn good team with some decent drafting anywhere in the top 20 and the acquisition of a second-tier star or two and a solid group of role players. The Hawks are a good example. Jalen Johnson is their highest paid player and he’s making 18% of the cap. Seems like rebuilding through the draft is not going to be a standalone strategy any more.
“This is a short term money grab at the expense of the players and fans. IIf the players are getting a fixed percentage of BRI and that money grab includes an increase in BRI, how is this happening at the expense of players?
Z-man, not one cent of expansion fees go to the players. The billions raised goes1/30th directly into the owners pockets. Maximising the billions is what this CBA is about. And parity is way more important to that than current dynasties or frankly anything else, other than having good teams in major markets. Leon and Nico helped there.
The players won’t see a penny of that expansion fee bc it’s excluded from BRI.
But you’re right to highlight my semantical mistake. I should have said it’s at the expense of some individual players (guys like KAT & Josh), not the players union.
So Hubert in New York uses penny while I in London use cent. Interesting.
haha I didn’t see your post when I wrote.
you guys don’t say shilling any more? 😉
“Z-man, not one cent of expansion fees go to the players.”
Seems to me that the players for the expansion teams are going to get paid, correct? So if there are two more teams, that’s around $400M in annual salary and thirty roster spots that wasn’t there before. The new teams are going to contribute to the BRI pie, which benefits everyone.
I don’t see a single problem with expansion. I’ve lived through several iterations, and whatever growing pains took place, it benefitted both the league and its players in the long run.
It’s been 22 years since the NBA expanded. The league is more saturated with talent than it has ever been, in large part due to the influx of international players. Back in the day, there were only 12 roster spots and most teams had unplayable scrubs in the last couple of spots. Now you have teams with very good players rotting on the bench. If anything, it’s overdue.
“BRI pie”
Yum.
Seems to me that the players for the expansion teams are going to get paid, correct?
Yup From the BRI. Guarantee a first year reduction per player overall while the owners are figuring out how to defer their gains.
milo’s mortgage meltdown has finally hit my feed…not really a mortgage meltdown, but i like the way those 3 m’s flow together…
so, yeah, looks like the value of almost all goods, but my home, will continue to rise…yeah, okay, much worse than that actually…
at least training camp is only a little over a month away…interesting to see if there is competition in training camp for adding another back up big…
“Yup From the BRI. Guarantee a first year reduction per player overall while the owners are figuring out how to defer their gains.”
Even if that were true (I doubt it!) what difference does it make? If anything, it will be an insignificant amount. I don’t see how either players or fans are getting screwed.
$32 Million a year for Harden until he’s 39. Yikes.
I know he’s still got some juice left, but… that carton ain’t magically refilling. One of the main reasons I vibe-picked the Cavs taking a big step back this year.
How long until Spida requests a trade?
I don’t love the Cavs but I think we have to admit they have a really high floor.
And I think that’s a surprisingly good deal for Harden. He might even outperform it.
The dude is still a 4.0 bpm player every year. We’ve had a few of these guys lately (Paul, Durant, LeBron) that just don’t following the same arcs as the average player. I suspect he’s going to be one of them.
Mitchell at 4/$273M & Mobley at 5/$269M seem like bigger problems than Harden at 3/$97M.
Spida is an example of a guy with a very cap-unfriendly deal. How can you build out a team around that contract?
I wonder if the Cavs are thinking, hey, we’re a small-market team in a dreary city and need a star to sell tickets, maybe if we overpay Spida, even if he demands a trade there won’t be any takers.
Harden is a guy I wouldn’t want even on a vet’s minimum deal. He is the very definition of a ceiling-lowerer.
Even if that were true (I doubt it!) what difference does it make? If anything, it will be an insignificant amount. I don’t see how either players or fans are getting screwed.”
Not going to continue this argument, (well after this post) but let’s say the difference between 2 expansion teams paying 5billion each or 7. 5billion each, means 5billion. That’s what difference it makes. The owners are going to transfer a bit of it, some of it, all of it to the players or the fans? What provision of the CBA or their agreement as owners suggest this? That money earned by the association to advance the players and fans leaks out completely. Not insignificant and getting screwed by definition.
Honestly, BE, I don’t understand what you are trying to say and how much of it is real vs. hypothetical.
I love this video… the slo-mo, the zoom, the way it captures everyone watching Brunson, and especially the way the Knicks’ bench locks in when they know what’s coming…
https://www.threads.com/share/_snhLMcik/
My god we are so blessed to have this man and this team.
This one is less beautiful but I did not realize Brunson had 10 steals in the finals:
https://www.threads.com/share/_5Rk8R-QE/
That money earned by the association to advance the players and fans leaks out completely. Not insignificant and getting screwed by definition.
it’s a little more complicated than this. the bulk of expansion fees are about new owners paying for their share of the existing nba revenue stream they are effectively buying into. the immediate effect of expanding to 32 teams is revenue and cash-flow dilutive to existing owners before expansion fees. to the extent it works and the pie increases in the long run, you can think of that as shared between new and existing owners such that some tiny part of the expansion fee also reflects a split of that upside. it’s a very different for players.
30 new players get added and so this is technically dilutive. one obvious argument is that these new players are, in fact, “players” and thus players as a whole are not worse off and need no dilution compensation (you presumably don’t want to force new players to pay existing players compensation). and even from the perspective of existing players, it’s not nearly as bad as it looks. even with the minimum salary rules, the marginal salaries added to the league will likely bunch near the bottom of the salary scale both short-term and in equilibrium, leaving a very small effect on median player salaries. the outcome for existing players tends to look more like adding a roster spot to every team than lopping 6% of existing player salaries. median salaries will barely be hit and mean salaries will only be hit a fraction of the overall hit (with most of the 6% decline in average salary coming due to a higher quotient of low end players). and if the pie does increase over time with more teams then even the modest amount of dilution per existing player might be offset with bri growth.
the lurking complication isn’t really about expansion per se, but about what people like hubert are implicitly complaining about when they point to players not getting their fair share of climbing franchise values. in a normal business, the value of the franchise is roughly the present value of discount cash flows, so in the long run get a share of operating value (revenue, earnings) is theoretically isomorphic to getting an equivalent share of company value. but sports are different, because people believe that nba teams produce a huge convenience yield to owners, i.e. people suddenly caring about what joe lacob thinks about ai or what mark cuban thinks about ethereum, and there is no obvious resaon why those fake aura enhancers shouldn’t be considered economic rents that players can also share. a counterargument to that is that players negotiate their deals and maybe they did consider it. maybe they would have only gotten 35% of BRI without the extra trophy value. so the lack of direct participation in asset value increases isn’t itself dispositive.
pt, thanks as always for your insights. It should also be noted that players can, and mostly do, profit from their association with the league via endorsements, appearances, etc. Superstars can profit to an enormous degree, often way more than their salary. In that sense, my understanding is that star players do not get royalties on the sale of merch specific to them, e.g. sales of jerseys with their name on it. Maybe that’s a place where the next CBA can compensate those players who sell the most jerseys, etc. outside of the BRI/salary cap calculation.
Actually I see it a little differently, I just didn’t express the details.
The league and its owners devised this second apron/punitive luxury tax system to break teams up partly so they could jack up their valuations and increase the potential expansion fee.
They’re the only ones who benefit from that.
Guys like KAT & Hart get screwed because everyone wants them to take less money to keep the team together (which is bullshit… your team is worth $12BN… you should shut up and pay the men who won you a chip).
We as fans get screwed because the teams we love are being broken up by design.
Over time I suspect this will not be good for the league because team continuity has traditionally been something that drives viewership. Put more plainly: if this Knicks team only plays 1 more year together instead of 4 more years, I think there will be a lot fewer eyes on the Knicks.
Expansion will give more players jobs, but the average salary per player will go down. If two teams are added there will be 32/30 more jobs (roughly 6.7% more jobs). But revenues won’t go up that much because the national TV revenue won’t increase. Only the local revenue such as ticket sales will increase. A smaller percentage increase in BRI than in the number of players will mean less money per player on average.
I would think this will slow down the growth in the salary cap since the cap is determined as a fraction of the BRI divided by the number of teams.
My guess is that adjustments are going to be made to keep the salary cap fairly stable. Since there has been a steady a 5-10% increase in the cap every year, and adding 2 teams would result in only a 6.7% increase in the number of players, at worst, seems like it will be at worst a wash. I would guess that the players union can convince the owners to pay the difference between last year’s 6.7% increase this past year and whatever watering down of BRI the added 2 teams causes. A 6.7% rise from the current cap of $166M times 32 teams comes out to something like $355M total. I’m guessing that the NBA will be fine with eating that out of the $10+B that they will rake in.
But that’s not the issue, is it? Salaries are based on percentages, which rise as the cap rises. A 35% max will still be a 35% max.
Most teams are over the salary cap anyway, and quite a few are just below the tax line. the NBA can negotiate that tax line and aprons a bit to keep the increase in actual total salary paid out, rather than the cap itself. It wouldn’t probably take all that much of an adjustment.
That doesn’t make sense to me. My math didn’t account for the natural growth of the cap, but if you included that it would just mean the growth in the cap would be diluted by the expansion in the number of teams so that average salaries would still be less than without expansion. You seem to be suggesting either that no one will notice this or that the owners will voluntarily adjust the percentage of the BRI that they give the players upwards to compensate. I find both these possibilities quite unlikely..
The bottom line is that we are all speculating about something that hasn’t occurred in a very long time, and never under these circumstances. I think it will all be worked out amicably. Unions like membership growth. There will be bigger fish to fry.
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