Hey EB, what’s the most we could theoretically offer Deuce if we signed him before the season and, say, traded Dadiet and/or Kolek into space?

Really depends on Hart & KAT. If they both stay on their current deal, we could generate $8,081,817 based on spotrac’s projected numbers.

That’s with us using all three of our 2nd rd picks at the rookie minimum and assuming Nickel gets the 1 year of service minimum. Kolek stays because he makes ~$100K less than the vet minimum.

Keep in mind, for each 2nd round pick you replace with a vet, it costs around $1.15M. Realistically, we’re probably adding 1-2 vets instead of 3 of those guys.

If we could re-sign Hart for a multi-year deal at a lower number, that’d obviously make a big difference. Even a 3yr/60M (vs 1yr at $22.375M) increasing at 8% gets the team up to $11,757,097. That might get it done. On a 4yr deal that scales to ~$53M.

If KAT re-signs on a 4yr/180M deal starting next year, even descending, it saves over $9M and keeping Deuce becomes a lot easier.

So really depends on what happens with Hart and/or KAT.

On Sunday, timo posted this:

Last year, pretty much everything pertinent (or that turned out to be) was formally announced on September 16 (a Tuesday): Shamet’s Ex. 9, Diawara’s Ex. 10, Evbuoumwan’s Ex. 10, McCullar’s and Jemison’s two-ways…Shamet’s signing had been leaked by his agent a few days prior to the 16th…As of [September 6] last year, Knicks had 12 players under guaranteed contract for the upcoming season. Shamet’s and Diawara’s deals were guaranteed for opening night to fill the 13th and 14th spots. Evbuomwan’s Ex. 10 converted to a two-way, and he joined McCullar and Jemison as the Knicks’ three two-ways as of the opening of the regular season.

This gave me some pause about being overly-impatient during this relative dead zone. And even when it later seemed like Leon had screwed up by signing Yabujelly to a 2-year deal, he pulled a rabbit out of his hat with the Alvarado maneuver. And even when it seemed like he was doing the wrong thing, e.g. Mikal, we wound up saying F dem picks!

In other words, after last season, I’ve reached the point of feeling very Shakespeare In Love about the Knicks.

Is this your way of admitting that you were totally wrong, once again?