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Knicks Mailbag: How can NY address lack of frontcourt depth? – SNY
All the dumb moments that make this title so much sweeter: Part I (1974-89) – Posting & Toasting
Sunday Posted & Toasted Notes: Back to Mexico – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ Jalen Brunson to host 52nd season premiere of ‘Saturday Night Live’ – SNY
Why the Knicks are impossible to game plan against 😤 #nba #knicks – Hot Hand Theory
Best 20 Knicks Games of the Leon Rose Era | #3: Knicks 104, 76ers 101 (4/22/24 – Game 2, EQF) – Knicks Film School
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64 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.09.22)”
I grew up in a household where baseball was the only sport anyone cared about. My childhood best friend Mike got me into Knicks and Giants fandom (Rangers fandom never quite took, though I did enjoy the 94 run to the Cup), and I would say his fandom is probably ranked 1)Giants, 2)Yankees, 3)Rangers, 4)Knicks. Last night, he was texting me very depressed at how quickly things unraveled for Big Blue, and I replied, “But Knicks in Five, though.” It didn’t comfort him as much as I had hoped.
Last year, John Hollinger selected five personnel moves he expected to age badly. He got several right, but one call of his has aged badly. To quote:
This comes from https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7585946/2026/09/22/nba-offseason-moves-questionable-donovan-mitchell-cavs/
None of the moves he pans this come from the Knicks.
I meant
None of the moves he pans this year come from the Knicks.
Hollinger’s not wrong that were all freaking out about the extension, especially during that stretch prior to Atlanta game 4 where it seemed like Mikal was completely mentally checked out on the team.
Now, though? Fuck dem picks, and fuck dat extension. Banners hang forever.
To Doogie’s question yesterday about how things will be different this year, I doubt we’ll never criticize or be frustrated, but everyone has proved themselves so they’ll all be afforded patience.
Bridges is a great example. When he sucked for long stretches last year, it was reasonable to consider permanent options like trading him. Same with KAT, Mike Brown, and Leon Rose.
But now that there’s proof of concept, we might get mad at some of those guys, but gone is the idea that any of them aren’t good enough and need to be replaced.
So if KAT bitches and moans this January like he did last January, we’ll probably still bust his balls about it, but we don’t have to wonder if it means we can’t win with the guy like we did before.
Mikal might actually blow up next year (in a good way). He’s always had great stretches of basketball but that dude was clearly under pressure. His head was holding him back.
“Hollinger’s not wrong that were all freaking out about the extension, especially during that stretch prior to Atlanta game 4 where it seemed like Mikal was completely mentally checked out on the team.”
Not all of us…
Let’s be honest with ourselves, guys. There will definitely be days (weeks?) where, say, Hart is in the middle of one of his periodic slumps, and a bunch of us decide that he’s past his prime and should be traded ASAP. We are who we are.
I would disagree with Hollinger on what Mikal’s market would be if he was a UFA now. That contract seems just about right, if not a slight overpay. He’s a complementary player, not a star, and he’s clearly a notch or two below OG, especially when positional scarcity is considered.
For me, the issue with Mikal was always the cost of acquiring him. My position was that only a championship would validate the cost of that trade. And now, here we are, so fuck dem picks!
Since you mention it… 🙂
I’m not exactly in a rush to extend him. We have him under contract til the end of his age 33 season.
If I had to guess, going into his age 34 season Josh Hart is probably going to be worth the vet min or the TPMLE.
The only reason to pay him now for those future years is vibes. (And I’m all for vibes, but vibes means paying Mitch & KAT & Deuce, and we already chose business instead.)
Polar Bear with numbers 39 and 40, now leading the AL with 108 ribbies.
I only peripherally follow the Mets these days, but worst transaction ever? At least has to be in the running…
I mean, the Mets traded Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi.
Obviously the KAT and Deuce situations are not only the most urgent, they also have implications for future decisions. While folks are free to wishcast otherwise, the only assumption at present is that Dolan’s second apron edict will remain in effect indefinitely.
Although it’s murky, looking beyond the KAT and Deuce situations, I could see the team negotiating with Hart with the goal of declining his team option and extending him for something in the low teens AAV. If he refuses to take that, it’s on him.
Josh has a team option for next season. If you can get him to take a lower year 1 salary in exchange for accepting a multi-year guarantee, then it could trivialize keeping Deuce. Even if KAT keeps his $61M payday.
Niiiiiice, Alan. That’s the kind of ammo I was hoping for! So worst transaction in the last half century?
(By the way, still have to violently disagree with you re your comment and pod cast regarding Reacher and humor. To me the thing that separates Lee from his brother is that Lee is full of wry observations and amusing thoughts or incidents, even if it’s in Reacher’s head or happening to him. His brother writes dry, boring prose with no sense of playful humor, even if the action’s all there. I can always tell who writes what chapter in the later books. Admittedly Richson delivering jokes doesn’t really work, but that’s partly wooden acting combined with bad writing — for all the Tom Cruise horrorfests, he had numerous amusing moments [done in deadpan] in both movies that corresponded to how Lee Childs writes).
Alan, did you see that NYT is creating a list of the 100 greatest TV shows based on the votes of 500 “influential stars, showrunners, and other notable names? “
https://youtu.be/cUwSxqnRW-8?si=ku__BM3H8n8tfykr&t=15
Not to be pedantic but if he reduces his salary in that final year to help keep the team together I’d call that a renegotiation, not an extension.
The chatter I found when I googled indicated we were rumored to be extending him at his current salary:
The talk seems to be centered around the idea that the “discount” is off his max eligible extension, which is 4/132.
Alan,
I had this thought last night and I felt that you might be the ideal person in the world to evaluate it.
Allan Houston was the Ioan Gruffudd of basketball players.
Thoughts?
My list
1. Babe Ruth
2. Kawhi Aspiration contract
3. Phil Jackson as Knicks POBO
4.-7. Knicks other POBO contracts this century.
8 . Ryan for Fregosi
Ioan Gruffudd was the lead of two Fantastic Four movies, and was looked at for a hot minute as the Next Big Thing. Houston was never considered anything more than a really good secondary player.
I’ve heard of it but haven’t read any of it yet. I may noodle with my own ballot down the road. One of the things they did was to make any show that debuted pre-2000 ineligible, even ones like Sopranos where the great majority of the show aired in the 21st century. I don’t think I would do that.
I will argue that Houston’s big contract was equivalent to being cast as the lead of two shitty Fantastic Four movies, and being expected to be the Next Big Thing, at least in MSG circles!
Much like Houston, his best work came before the great expectations, in his run as Hornblower.
Ahhh, Ken Phelps.
Phelps could genuinely mash, and was a darling of baseball stat nerds at the time, because he was a power-and-OBP guy at a time when that wasn’t valued as much as it is now.
Unfortunately the Yankees traded for him right as he hit his decline phase, and now he’s a punchline. You deserved better, Ken Phelps. Some of us haven’t forgotten your career 133 wRC+.
How do our resident Mets fans feel about losing Alonso? It doesn’t seem like one of the worst decisions of all time.
He seems like one of those guys you hate to lose in the beginning and are glad to not have on the books by the end (maybe even the middle).
40 homers is a lot of homers. First guy to lead both leagues in rbis possibly. Which is a silly stat of course but whatever.
Not having both Alonso and PCA is what really hurts
I really lover Pete and would have greatly preferred if they had worked things out, even if it meant some dead weight at the tail end. But my love for baseball, particularly in the “Dodgers winning it all is a foregone conclusion” era, is a fraction of what it once was.
That playoff HR a couple of years ago was as close to an OG tip-in as I have had as a Mets fan in many years, so there’s that!
Given what the Mets have at first, not paying a relatively young Alonso seemed really dumb. But whatever, not my team.
From a distance, I can’t figure out why they vacillate between lavish and prudent. But not my team, either.
I usually pull for them to be good, but then Ras had that period where he was so obnoxious it made watching them fall apart kind of fun.
As for the Knicks, I remain convinced that Deuce is going to get a contract for multiple years around the mid-level ($12 mil I think at the moment?), and we know that, and we’re likely to trade him because that is what Leon does with secondary pieces. If so, I really hope we get Bitadze, or, smoking crack, Tari Eason, who might make sense given the Rockets’ needs for shooters and ball handlers. Could maybe do two year extension for Deuce, or third year team option, for $15 mil/year, and the Rockets make the trade for positional need and future financial flexibility. That team could be really well-positioned a couple years from now.
Alonso is 8th in MLB in wRC+, and is having the second best overall season of his career at 4.5 WAR. He has four more years left on his contract and they’re well in the black in surplus value for him this year. He’s getting paid $21M and gave the Orioles $36M worth of production, as he has been a top 20 position player in the league this year. The Mets got negative WAR out of 1B this year, paid $17M to Jorge Polanco to do absolutely nothing, and will owe $23M next year to Polanco. That’s 2 years and $40M of sunk cost negative WAR wasted salary.
Back of napkin math, Alonso would have been worth 6-7 wins to the Mets this year, because of his own production and the utter black hole he was replaced with. Still leaves the Mets short of the playoffs, but swapping out Alonso for Polanco was a complete unmitigated calamity.
David Stearns’ cute short contract plays have almost all flamed out badly, and the generation of young players who should be stepping into starting roles like Baty, Vientos, Mauricio, and Alvarez have been godawful-to-disappointing.
The good news if you’re a Mets fan is that THIS crop of young players, the guys who are rookies this year, looks strong. McLean, Ewing, Benge, Scott, Thornton, and Lavender are all essentially rookies (Scott technically doesn’t qualify) and the Mets acquired a MLB-ready top 50 prospect for Clay Holmes at the deadline who can play 2B and 3B well and hold his own at SS in Jefferson Rojas. I’d expect that the high floor Rojas should be in the mix for an infield gig next year. So you look around the diamond… and they look pretty decent at most positions:
C Alvarez/Torrens
1B ?????
2B Rojas
SS Lindor
3B ?????
LF Soto
CF Ewing
RF Benge
Then in the rotation they’d have McLean, Scott, Thornton, and whatever back end guys like Manaea are still hanging around. The young bullpen arms look reasonably good.
They don’t seem miles away from contending. They need a 1B, a 3B if Bichette doesn’t return, and probably two rotation pitchers, and I’d say they’d contend next year.
Figuring out Deuce’s market value is tough. He probably gets a bump from being a core member of a championship team (the DOOOOCE chants in opposing arenas don’t hure either), but he’s basically a 6′ 3-and-D wing with limited guard skills.
I think somewhere in the $10-12M AAV range is more than fair. Anything above that makes it tough to justify when guys like Alvarado and Shamet are making considerably less and might actually be better.
I guess if he doesn’t extend, it becomes a contract year for him and maybe the additional info will help make a prudent decision. Not the end of the world either way.
Joe Foy for Amos Otis deserves honorable mention.
Someone called Pelle Larsson got 60m for 4 years from the Heat. Seems comparable to Deuce, no? Gets a bit more rebounds and assists but much worse shooting 3’s. He’s 6’5” and has clips of defending wings and even centers, like KAT for example.
Belle got 4/60 on top of 1/3, so it’s really 5/63 for Larsson to avoid free agency.
The max we can offer Deuce to keep him trade eligible is 3/55, which puts him on 4/59. That seems like the sweet spot to me. That’s also what Bey just signed for.
If we’re going to be a cut throat organization that prioritizes aprons over contributions, I’d rather pay for Deuce’s age 27-30 seasons than Josh Hart’s 33-36.
It’s kinda crazy how perfect it would be if we just let everyone who is over 30 finish their contract and decide what they’re worth when it’s over.
Is that not an option?
Aaaaaaand…….they are now saying that Dart’s injury last night could be a season-ending one. So much for this season, eh?
First it was a playoff basketball game, then a playoff soccer game. Now the starting quarterback. I’m seeing a pattern…
I can’t even see the pattern of your post. What the heck are you talking about?
Between the Judge and Dart injuries and, well, everything going on with the Mets and Jets, we may just have to accept that we all sold our souls for the Knicks, which to be clear, is a fair deal that I’m sure I’ve offered numerous times in the past.
Shams:
Betting on Kawhi to be healthy enough to earn that money at his age…
Also betting on Kawhi to give a fuck about earning it.
That guy still terrifies me, though. Like he’s the one dude in the East I can see being better than Brunson in a playoff series.
Snoop-Dogg.gif
Not sure that works with all your players the same. Probably works best between minimum wage and $12-$15m aav player. Not so good with high value targets.
I’m good with this. ðŸ¤
And ducks for cover…
Shams:
Kawhi is a terrible risk at that price. But Toronto needs star power to fill seats in that arena.
I don’t think Masai Ujiri makes that trade or that signing, but hell, he shoulda just extended both of OG and Siakam and built around them.
If we did that, Brunson would likely be just as cutthroat and refuse any further discounts. Which may be the case anyway, but I doubt it. Take care of his and he takes care of you – that seems the vibe, despite any statements to the contrary.
100%. He’s great and all, but I’m very happy he isn’t our problem.
Hubert, just noting a tendency for a certain someone to get involved in sports events or players that turn to shit.
the hawks are both wing start and wing stop…
legit curious to see how that team performs this season…
wait now…doesn’t being a purist of anything – denote not slothiness…
oh wait, is that the joke…
I’m also happy he’s not our problem, but it’s a brilliant risk for them.
They were stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity. A perpetual 5-7 seed with no upside and not enough downside, either.
Now if he’s great they have a puncher’s chance at winning the East. And if he’s injured they’re in the new lottery where anyone can win.
It’s definitely high risk, but I think it’s a smart one for a team in their position. The future picks would freak me out more than the money.
they are cursed 🤬
toronto seems like a really nice place though…
espn released their 50 thru 100 top players for the upcoming season…lot of older guys in it…
both josh and mikal appear, both their rankings were worse than the previous year…
whatever, they’ll keep leaving other ballers’ career in the rear as they stack another chip or two…please please please please, one is not enough…
Are the options picked up or not in these extensions?
Player options are basically the end of the deal, so it’s two more seasons of Brunson, Hart (we’d definitely pick up the TO), and OG, and we make decisions on each of them after 2028 when they’re heading into their age 33, 34, 31 seasons.
The whole point of extension eligibility is to prevent small market teams from losing their stars by letting them sign two years before free agency.
Are we afaid of our stars leaving to go to a bigger market?
We’re trying to use these extensions to get them at a discount, and fine, if you can lock someone up at a real discount, do it. But “less than max” isn’t a discount. We shouldn’t be sitting here assuming 31 year old OG & 34 year old Josh are going to be max players, so we better lock them in now at 80% of their max because that’s a discount.
With salaries like this for aging stars, it makes the contract for Bridges look very reasonable.
Y’all might want to look at Kawhi’s stats this year. Dude was incredible.
If heathy, Kawhi is still a top-10 player in the NBA, and probably closer to #5 than #10. Worth every penny of that contract, and then some. But that’s a gigantic if.
He was closer to #1 last year. The only guys better than him were Wemby, Jokic, and SGA. And that extension is less than what we’re paying KAT.
I wouldn’t want the Knicks to hitch their wagon to him. But that’s a smart risk for a mezzanine team like Toronto.
I did not want that guy in the East.
Thanks a lot, Pablo.
Last I checked, #4 is closer to #5 than #1. And Luka was higher than Kawhi in MP, BPM, VORP, and MVP voting.
Playing only 2085 minutes is a demerit as well.
It’s a fine extension for Toronto, hell, a lot better than some of the big contracts out there even with the age concerns. But they also gave up a lot for him, and that roster looks pretty thin and clunky to me. I’m not the least bit worried about them.
I believe since they don’t have a first round pick in 2031, the Knicks will try to keep as much of this core together through the 30-31 season. Hart will surely be the first to go.
All the more reason to pay Deuce.
He might seem superfluous now, but over the next 4 years that’s a guy I want around.
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