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Preseason Game Preview: Knicks vs. Wizards, October 8, 2026 – Posting & Toasting
5 Knicks questions for this season: Biggest storylines? Identifying the X-factor? – The New York Times
Knicks struggle shooting in first preseason game, fall to 76ers – SNY
James Wiseman makes strong first impression in bid for final Knicks roster spot – SNY
Knicks Bulletin: ‘I heard that all summer’ – Posting & Toasting
Steve Popper: Mike Brown tries to light fire under Knicks in preparation for upcoming season – Newsday
Knicks Starters Ramp Up vs Wizards + Wiseman Watch | Rapid Reaction – Knicks Fan TV
Will Knicks & KAT reach extension this season? | The Putback with Ian Begley – Begley Putback
WIZARDS at KNICKS | NBA PRESEASON FULL GAME HIGHLIGHTS | October 8, 2026 – NBA
Knicks vs Wizards (PRESEASON) – Recap & Reaction | POSTGAME SHOW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
The Run.down Knicks vs Wizards Preseason Postgame Show – The Strickland
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71 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.10.09)”
Just read Alan’s piece on the Twilight Zone. Great work as always, Alan!
Expected roster:
PG: Brunson, Alvarado, Kolek?
SG: Bridges, Deuce, Clarkson
SF: Hart, Shamet
PF: OG, Diawara?
C: KAT, Drummond, Wiseman?
Dadiet has to go, so that would leave another roster spot to fill. Bruce Brown seems to have the lead rn, but I’d love a bigger guy in that slot.
Mo is looking borderline un-usable, for some reason. Deuce not looking much better.
Knicks have issued a statement:
Ian Begley
@IanBegley
Statement from a New York Knicks Spokesperson: “As an organization, our entire focus is on preparing for the upcoming season and delivering another year for our fans to be proud of. As a result, we will not be negotiating contract extensions until later in the season and will remain solely focused on preparing for the start of the season.”
Fine with me. Not going to make KAT too happy.
James Dolan’s gift for killing vibes is nearly as impressive as his unwavering desire to do so.
First, it’s clear Towns wants to stay in NY.
Best guess as to what his market value would be if he became a free agent given his age?
What’s to stop us from allowing him to become a free agent. allowing him to determine his market value and then giving him that?
Normally, there would be some risk in losing him for nothing, but he wants to stay. That mitgates the risk.
I generally find it useful when trying to ascertain what powerful blowhard idiots like Dolan, Trump, etc are really thinking to pay attention to what narratives their sycophants are pushing in the media. And yesterday Alan Hahn was on KFS pushing this dandy:
“It’s SO not fair that when you go over the second apron you have to pay a tax to small market teams, and then they get to use that money to try and beat you. How unfair is that? Don’t you think it’s unfair? I think it’s so unfair.” And he repeated it as nauseum.
I honestly think this is what Dolan’s mandate is really about — it tracks with many of his public complaints and it’s coming from someone inside the organization. And it’s so stupid that I can’t possibly imagine Alan Hahn actually came up with it himself.
Nothing helps small market teams beat you more than acting like one. And the biggest gift you could have given to OKC and SA isn’t a check, it’s 12 mpg to attack Andre Drummond on defense instead of Mitch.
That is significant and not something I was aware of. I could see how that would lend an edge to KAT’s comments to the media.
nicest thing i could say about this is that it isn’t a wise tactic. because i doubt it’s a tactic at all.
Nothing, but it will likely cost a lot more to retain him that it would now.
I’m starting to get ‘98 Bulls / Last Dance vibes.
Dolan seems willing (perhaps even eager) to destroy this team out of spite.
They did win the title, tho.
Obviously I can’t read his mind, but I think Dolan’s priorities have shifted a little.
He was extremely determined to win a championship. He did a terrible job at times, but he finally hired a good management team and for the most part allowed them to build the team as they saw fit without interference.
We won the championship.
I’m sure he’d love to win another one, but not necessarily at the same cost as before we won last year.
I suspect he feels that if he tightens the purse strings now he won’t take nearly as much heat as if we lost to the Spurs and he abandoned the all out pursuit of a championship.
However, I think he’s also concerned with the longer term flexibilty issues, long term pick issues, paying “fair” salaries, hates paying taxes to other teams (as opposed to just paying the players more) etc…
He’s constantly whining about the league’s revenue sharing policies and TV deals. So we know that’s something that bothers him.
Where I differ with the consensus is that I think it’s about more than just money even though money is always a big part of it.
Almost all of us want to keep Towns, but paying him a fair salary at his age and long term pick value should also remain a priority unless we are we are willing to throw the long term out the window completely.
Throw long-term the fuck out the window. We could win another championship within the next 2-3 seasons. Flags fly forever. Fuck dem picks. Fuck dat cap space. Go. For. It.
1. Great essay Alan! Have you ever considered penning IP for TV or streaming? Your sophistication and writing chops would auger for that.
2. Hubert, great take re Dolan’s true SA apron rationale. Couple that with his, I’m the smartest in the room explaining the ” suicide” explanation to the public and expecting them to swallow that like Jim Jones Kool Aid *
3. Non-negotiating during season moratorium. It’ll be interesting to see KAT’s response. He’s an emotional dude and could go into an early season pout as he did last year. OTOH, maybe he goes into I’ll show those MOFOs mode and the Knicks get playoff KAT for most of the season.
* The NYC media has not really seemed to question this take, at least that I’m aware of.
I forgot to mention my feelings on the first two games.
There’s always the Play In. 😉
Seriously, the best basketball handicapper I know loves the “over” and loves this team’s chances at a repeat, but I have an uneasy feeling that we are what’s called in horse racing “a bounce candidate”.
In horse racing, a bounce is a significant regression in performance or speed figure immediately following an unusually strong, peak effort
I think we all agree on that, actually.
No one really knows what’s driving Dolan right now.
The real dispute among us is there’s one group that takes him at his word and thinks it’s all about the team building restrictions that come with being over the second apron. And there’s another group that looks at those restrictions and believes they are minor compared to what we have to give up to gain them, so it must be about something else.
What that something else is… we just have to guess… but I think you hit on all the top theories.
Not what the statement said, a point that struck me upon reading, since “we won’t negotiate during the season” statements are not unusual, coming from management or player.
The statement says that extensions will not be discussed “until later in the season”. That means they won’t be discussed now, even though the season hasn’t started yet. But they may well be discussed “later in the season” at a time of the Knicks’ choosing.
Edwards’ comment about how KAT has to decline his player option for 27-28 to be eligible to discuss extension during the season gives the statement’s phrasing a particular significance.
I honestly don’t have the emotional bandwidth to care about how any of these people choose to conduct business. I just want to field a winning team, and although we again have a tremendous starting lineup, I’m not fully convinced that we’ve filled out the bench correctly yet.
It might be too late to make an ideal trade before the season starts, though, so I’m hoping Kolek, Diawara, and maybe Deuce can be showcased throughout the season, so we can flip them for a very good 4/5.
It’s always been the case that the most logical thing to do was to go over the second apron in 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 to keep the championship team together for Brunson’s age 30 and 31 seasons.
After that, KAT and Hart are, as of now, set to be free agents and Brunson and OG have player options. If the team didn’t justify incurring the draft pick penalty, or we needed to open up trade flexibility, it would’ve been very easy to get under the second apron.
Anyone trying to convince themselves that this wasn’t the obvious course of action from a purely basketball perspective and/or that there might be a more sensible time to go into the second apron than Jalen Brunson’s age-30 season, following a championship, is reasoning backwards.
All this to say, everything from letting Mitch walk to the hard line on a KAT extension to the not even broaching Deuce and Hart extensions points to the same thing: the second apron as a hard cap, not something we didn’t want to go into in 2026-2027 for any particularly logical reason.
the statement seems to be strangely suggesting that “later in the season” is a better time for the team to lose focus.
Agree, so why isn’t the media, Katz, Edwards, Hollinger et al not putting this in the public domain?
I think plenty in the media are, Bo. Zach Lowe’s been killing Dolan lately. And Ian Begley was on KFS making sure everyone knows “this is a voluntary cap, not a hard cap”.
Two things. One, I’m not so sure you can go over the second apron and then just decide to be under it a year or two later before the long term consequences of being over it for multiple years occur. At that point we would have a bunch of large long-term contracts on the books and would probably have to sacrifice assets to lower payroll. Two, how can it possibly be that they can’t talk without KAT waiving his option? Even if the rules say no negotiating, there’s bound to be talking.
TNFH,
Overall I agree, but Mitch specific I think is a much closer call.
It’s probably around 50-50 or 60-40 or at best 70-30 that Mitch is available and 100% for the playoffs for Boston this year and we already know, even if he is, he’s unplayable at times due to his free throw shooting.
Given the risks, I’m not sure he’s worth what Boston paid and he’s likely to start for them. So he’s almost certainly not worth as much to us as a backup.
So the question becomes how much does losing Mitch this year hurt our chances the next couple of years vs. how much does paying him and starting the clock on the 2nd apron hurt our ability to retool in the Brunson window which IMO is probably longer than the current starting 5. I think Brunson is going to be very good for a long time given athleticism is not his calling card. We may see a new version of this team under Brunson eventually.
I think that’s a closer call, most importantly because if Drummond is not working out IMO they are going to upgrade the C position at the deadline, most likely using Deuce who is less critical with Alvarado as a solid backup PG and Shamet at wing breaking out into a consistent shooter that is much better on D that his previous reputation.
* Wizards have a lot of size and knew how to use it last night. 40% Orebs.
* Dadiet as Knox 2.0, giraffe on rollerskates, still very accurate.
* Wiseman looked alright. Clearly is the frontrunner for the 14th spot.
* Kolek & Diawara played with the 2nd unit in the 2nd half. Diawara made some nice passes but didn’t impress me otherwise.
* Drummond ran some KAT package.
I was wondering the same.
Also, preparing for the season probably doesn’t just mean training camp and such. It probably also means exploring trades that could make the team better. If they want to focus on finding good trades instead extending contracts until the season starts, that’s ok with me.
You can literally do this. The harshest penalty doesn’t kick in until after you finish your 3rd season in a 5 season period above it.
Until then, you basically just sacrifice the ability to alter your current roster all that much…something a team that just put up a better point differential in the playoffs than the ’96 Bulls and Kevin Durant Warriors should not be looking to do anyway, IMO.
I think Drummond will be more than adequate for the regular season.
My concern is that teams are going to repeatedly run sets to exploit his lack of foot speed in the playoffs. Teams are less likely to focus on a single flaw like that in the regular season.
Not having a dog in this fight can anyone precisely quantify the difference in salary and luxury tax savings Dolan makes not signing MR for 15M and signing Drummond for much less and staying out of the 2nd apron?
Machiavelli advised that you don’t have to kill a lot of people as long as you choose your people to kill carefully and kill them publicly. Dolan probably read the 80/20 debates here and thought “I can kill Mitch publicly to maintain the status quo”. He ain’t no ding-a-ling.
Think for a second about Ajay Mitchell and Jared McCain getting 12 minutes a game to attack Andre Drummond & James Weisman in the NBA Finals.
Now imagine KAT’s in foul trouble and give SGA 10 minutes to do it, too.
At our point in the win curve, a backup center is worth his weight in gold. That’s why every team that’s serious about winning a title spends so many resources on one.
OKC currently has $21M allocated to backup centers: Jaylin Williams ($8M), Aday Mara ($7M), Thomas Sorber ($6M).
San Antonio is spending $18M a year for Luke Kornet, Tarris Reid, and Jayden Quaintence.
The Celtics already had Queta and Garza, and they paid Mitch $15M and used a first round pick on Cenac.
You can lose a playoff series in which you were the better team simply because of your backup center.
They’re worth it.
Doesn’t this fact that I was not aware of put the Knick statement that there will be no negotiations during the season in a completely different light.
Isn’t it a “shit or get off the pot” signal to KAT to get this resolved by opening night?
Worth pointing out that’s literally what just happened to the Celtics, and that’s why they paid Mitch.
I think what he meant is people like us are too cavalier about this, that it might be much harder to trade those guys than we think.
That was a fair critique of our Mitch position. And I want to be very clear — I have an opinion on Mitch, but I see the other side, as well:
we could have gone over the second apron to sign him, then he busts his ankle in year 1 and we can’t trade him, and now we’re forced to trade someone we don’t want to trade to get under the SA.
That was a real concern, and not having access to Mitch’s medical records like the front office does, I think we have to accept this as a possibility.
But I don’t think that applies to anyone else. We’ve already seen the Thunder, Celtics, Cavs, Wolves, and Suns trade their way out of the second apron pretty easily. In fact they all gained assets doing it. And the Celtics had guys like Porzingis and Holliday who were much harder to trade than Mikal Bridges or Deuce McBride are ever likely to be.
James Dolan is a hyper-narcissistic bloviating idiot whose massive wealth has left him completely out of touch of anything related to reality. Trying to read his tea leaves is a totally worthless initiative. Especially as he is probably too stupid to have his own ideas of anything, so likely takes really stupid advice from other idiots and parrots them.
Which is yet another reason I’m not so excited about having Thomas, I. back in the court of potential advisors.
Hate to say it but I knew KATs extension was going to be a problem.
Today’s statement basically means that he’s now on a trading block. You can blame Dolan, KAT or both but Leon now has no choice but to pivot and build a third variation of a championship contender.
Lastly, this team without Mitch is not a contender as is, where is.
I’m not a hater or anything like that…but this site was never about being a delusional, die hard, ignore facts and hyper optimistic fan. Cold beer and reality is always refreshing.
Count me as officially worried.
That Knicks statement was so un-Leon-like, who keeps everything in-house, especially as it relates to contract negotiations with a player he has a personal relationship with. But fits Dolan to a tee (ala releases after failed Durant signing and the 2-8 start).
Perhaps Leon sees this as the price to pay to allow him to convince Dolan of going over the apron as the season progresses, but perhaps this is Leon and Wes ceding control. In which case we are toast. Though newly appointed director I Thomas is available if needed.
I’m having a really hard time figuring out who issued this bizarre, panicky statement the likes of which I’ve never seen any other team issue. Was it:
1) Leon Rose, who has never said anything that couldn’t have been generated by the earliest model of ChatGPT
2) James Dolan, whose inability to shut up about anything is better documented than the theory of evolution
Again, the Knicks’ statement does not say no extension negotiations during the season. It says there will be no such negotiations from now “until later in the season.” How much later is left undefined.
Of course, as a self-imposed statement of intent, it should be taken for what that’s worth.
i will not let this current discussion weaken my: it’s knicks’ basketball again vibe…
ha, often when i read posts here – the main thing that goes through my head is vincent d’onofrio telling me over and over again how he does in fact live in a world of shit…
suppose the best thing to do is keep wiping it away i guess…
thinking of you mister al…stay strong and do your very best to stay positive…laugh about it as much as you can…it’s not like we sign up for a run at life, we just kind of show up…
continuous health concerns are simply torturous…seemingly never ending…causes some serious weariness deep inside…
gotta do a full stop, raise your awareness to really soak in the times when you actually feel okay…
lean on the folks around you al…
amazing job to still be able focus on helping to provide for your family with your work while god keeps throwing these health hurdles at you…
stay strong al…
It reads more like “you should have shit when I told you to shit, little boy, now I’m going to make you get off the pot so you can shit your pants and learn your lesson.”
Z-Man deserves credit for calling this. He predicted that any public posturing by KAT was likely to be met with Dolan’s characteristic, self-destructive spite and petulance.
I guess it only works for Carmelo Anthony.
It was pretty obvious from any perusal of Sportrac that KAT’s extension was going to be a problematic issue — not only for the money it would cost but more so because of the simple fact that he was eligible for one.
I’d be more optimistic about where this was all going if Dolan wasn’t still obsessed with Isiah, which is really, *really* weird. Not even another executive team acquiring premium name talent and winning a championship with it could make Dolan quit Isiah. Such a bizarre obsession.
I don’t really get the rationale of the option having to be exercised, and am wondering if that’s actually true. If there was a rule that a contract could only be extended in its expiring year, it would make sense because the option makes this not necessarily the expiring year — but contracts can be extended before the expiring year.
Melo’s part of Dolan’s inner circle, a made Dolan man, along with Steve Mills, Isiah Thomas, Glen Sather (and hopefully not Chris Drury). Once you’re in, nothing you do, right down to piling up losing season after losing season and getting Dolan hit with an eight-figure sexual harassment beef can get you out — and you’re higher on the org chart than even the real Knick and Ranger executives.
Again, super super weird, bordering on pathetic. Jim Dolan is an exceedingly strange dude. Don’t expect any rationality whatsoever from him. There was never any reason to, but now that he’s “won a championship,” it ain’t ever happening.
I don’t think anyone disagreed that KAT being vocal about the situation might cause James Dolan to say and/or do some stupid, irrational shit.
The disagreement was about who would be to blame in that scenario.
The Knicks were so bad for so long that Dolan seemed to have lost interest in them. He had a newer, shinier toy to play with in the Sphere. So he went and did that for a while and more or less forgot about the Knicks, until they won a championship.
Now the Knicks are the shiny toy that he wants to play with again. I wouldn’t expect good things to come of it.
Thanks, Geo. It’s especially dispiriting because this particular problem had seemingly resolved itself years ago. And then we were rushing to an emergency room in an ambulance on Sunday.
At least I got to be the one to tell Frank in person about the Knicks’ statement about extensions!
I’m not fully convinced of this, but I’m going to frame the extension thing as a nothingburger, for my own sanity, but also because…
I’ve always said that the correct stance to take is not to “let the inmates run the asylum,” with the worst-case scenario being when Brooklyn basically handed the reins to KD and Kyrie.
Now, the big ol asterisk there is this statement only makes sense if Leon (aka the professional you hired to be in charge) is 100% calling the shots.
Unfortunately, it seems like Dolan is at least slightly influencing basketball decisions this year, but to what extent, it’s hard to say.
Hopefully, Leon’s very long and super-solid relationship with KAT (he wouldn’t have gotten his max if it wasn’t for Leon in the first place!) will prove instrumental in getting an extension done.
ah, so you do get it…cuz, that was pretty funny 😁
can’t imagine anyone in our front office being too receptive to getting input from that guy…
out of context, that makes no sense at all, sadly, reference to our team – that makes perfect sense…
Never thought I’d post a Stephen A Smith take but this one’s cathartic…
https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/50140615
Man, must really suck to be an owner/narcissist when your team makes a successful title run and it’s not about you.
That simply cannot stand. See Jones, Jerry who famously shitcanned head coach Jimmy Johnson for the crime of receiving too much credit when the Dallas Cowboys won back to back Super Bowls in the ‘90s.
Smith also reported in that interview that MSG earned $182M in playoff revenue last spring.
Well at least we won one title before Dolan goes back to F’ing up this franchise yet again.
Yabbut. We still need a young-ish, tall, defensive-minded backup center. Whether they are second string ahead of Drummond or third string behind Drummond doesn’t matter to me. Why aren’t we giving Eubanks a real look?
I’m trying to spin a positive light on this and just say that the statement really is at face value. They want to get through the season opener, which includes raising the banner, get the season underway, before they approach any contract negotiations. Part of this has to do with Deuce too and also how our back up center’s are playing (in relation to do we need to trade Deuce to get a better center).
So I’m willfully choosing to believe this just means we’re revisiting this at a later date and we don’t want to keep being asked about it at every press conference.
But hey, if Jimmy is fully back meddling the team, gotta think the culture we’ve laid down can survive for at least another season, right?
It’s not really like we have a black hole at backup C. Yes, Drummond is a downgrade from Mitch, but Drummond is, in my opinion, probably something like the 10th-15th best backup C in the league. We went from elite to league average at backup center.
Elite is definitely better! I wish we still had elite. But Drummond is passable. If we can upgrade, and maybe go with a young guy with some upside, that would be great. Would be nice to have a defensive-oriented big for when the playoffs roll around.
My gut still tells me Golden State’s gonna suck and old man Horford is going to get bought out and make his way here. But that’s not going to happen til February.
Aday Mara’s looked great in the preseason, and you have to wonder how many developmental centers OKC wants to carry. Maybe Sorber becomes available at some point.
I don’t want Horford anymore. I like the guy, but just no, at this point.
I kinda like the image of Leon Rose waking up, putting on his pants, and saying “today I feel like making a redundant public statement to create a maelstrom out of our normal business practices.”
There was questioning above of James Edwards’ post that KAT and NYK could not “discuss” extension in-season unless KAT declined his player option for next year.
Marc Stein (with Keith Smith as source) articulated what I would take to be a more accurate statement of the rule:
I believe everyone expected these options to be negated if/when extensions were agreed to, so, although Stein still calls this point “important”, I’m not seeing all that much significance myself.
Who had the first post here after the final buzzer sounded on Game 5? I’m fairly certain that many people know the answer to that question. (I don’t.) That poster is kind of historic.
Doogie, even “at this point” Al Horford is light years beyond James Wiseman and Drew Eubanks, and marginally better than Andre Drummond. That guy getting bought out is our best case scenario.
Al Horford’s career is sort of legendary at this point. Guy is 40! It’s unreal he’s still playing let alone decently.
Is Al Green available?
Let’s Stay Together, Leon.
Do you guys WANT preseason game threads? I don’t recall doing them in the past, but I’d be glad to do them if people want ’em!
I love the fact that this offseason is pretty meaningless since the Knicks are the DEFENDING CHAMPS.
There he is! It’s all coming together now….
valkyries versus dream for the women’s chip…
reese was pretty smart to force her way out of chicago…great landing spot in atlanta…
valkyeries made it there in their second season…
if the management team for this new nba vegas squad does things right, no reason for them not to come out winning…
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