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Knicks Morning News (2025.07.06)
07/06/2025 11:00:00
07/06/2025 11:00:01
07/06/2025 10:49:46
07/06/2025 09:34:17
07/06/2025 05:06:00
07/06/2025 02:31:00
07/06/2025 02:16:07
07/06/2025 01:17:11
07/06/2025 00:34:42
07/05/2025 22:43:08
43 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.07.06)”
So barring another UFA signing or trade, the next thing on the Knicks agenda will be summer league. Even without a first rounder to dream on, I’m sort of excited to see Diawara, and hopefully Kolek, Dadiet, McCullar and Hukporti. Oh, and Dink (he looks terrible, so less excited about him, but hey, who knows?)
I’m pretty settled on who Kolek and Huk are, but Dadiet is still so young that dramatic improvement is not out of the question. He has good defensive footwork, decent ball skills with both hands, and a nice (but not perfect) shooting stroke for a guy his size. Definitely had that deer in the headlights look, even in G-League, so hopefully he’s ready to make some kind of leap by putting the work in. It would be great if he could be at least serviceable as a situational player.
Same with McCullar, he’s got good size as a defensive wing, just needs to refine his offensive game.
Summer league is pretty helter-skelter so not expecting much revelatory stuff but it would still be nice to have something positive to think about.
I agree. I would add that since we need two more two-way players and have to fill at least one roster spot with a first year minimum salary, the summer league team has something to play for.
(I’m assuming that since the Knicks made McCullar a qualifying offer that he is likely to get one of the three two-way slots available.)
McCullar will probably get our 14th or 15th roster spot, since he’s eligible for the rookie exception deal that would keep us under the apron. It has to be used on someone we have draft rights to, so the options (ignoring all the random old guys Aller collects like it’s his fetish) would be him, James Nnaji, Diawara, or Rokas. And I don’t expect Rokas to ever play for us.
Alan, can you please explain a little further? The standard first year minimum salary is a little less than $1.3M. I don’t think you have to be a draft pick to get that. You just have to be a rookie. Does McCullar no longer qualify for it since he was a two way player last year? And I couldn’t find anything called the rookie exception, so I’m not sure what you mean by it.
It’s an exception, so the salary amount is not the issue. I don’t entirely understand it, but Katz and Jeremy Cohen and others have talked about it. The point is 1)Anyone we use the rookie exception on allows us to stay under the apron (which we have to), and 2)We can only use it on players we have the draft rights to. McCullar qualifies. Dink Pate does not.
With the final two roster spots, it appears that one will surely be reserved for a Brock Aller Special vet’s minimum.
As Alan pointed out, McCullar would have the inside track, and he’s not a terrible use of that spot. However, I’d like to see how far Diawara looks from being an NBA player. Nnaji looks beyond raw to me, i.e at least two years away, and Rokas is tuchas. I know that Diawara is more likely a stash candidate, but I’d rather see him develop in the G-League. His statistical profile is not good, but beyond his outstanding physical profile for a big wing, I like things that he shows in film…good defensive awareness, off-the-dribble finishing ability with either hand, rudimentary “unbroken” 3pt shot that has potential to be tweaked and refined. Plus he’s friends with Pacome and they can push each other in workouts, practice, and G-League stints.
Just looking over current rosters and man, most teams just played musical chairs with little or no improvement. In the east:
Cavs probably got better with Ball and Nance over Ty Jerome and Okoro…
Hawks got nice pickups with KP, Kennard, and Alexander-Walker, but lost Capela, LaVert, Nance, Niang, and Mann. We’ll see.
Celtics — whatever.
Nets — whatever.
Heat — whatever.
Bulls — lost Ball, got Okoro. Snore.
Pacers — Turner for Huff. No Hali. Whatever.
Bucks — hot mess. Wild turnover, hard to predict any improvement. Got Turner, Harris, Micic, lost Dame, Lopez, Connaughton. Did sign Sims for two more years…
Pistons — got LaVert and Duncan Robinson, lost THJ and Shroder. Maybe an upgrade…
Magic — got Bane and Tyus Jones, good pickups, but lost Cole Anthony, Caldwell-Pope, and Gary Harris. Maybe better?
Hornets — Kneuppel might be the big get; lost Nurkic and Williams, got Plumlee – eck; got Sexton, Dinwiddie, and Connaughton, so some improvement there…
Sixers — lost Yabu, got Watford. Love their mad backcourt (Maxey, McCain, Edgecombe, maybe Grimes), but man oh man.
Raptors — got Mamu. Whole lot of nothing, sorry IQ.
Wiz — massive turnover, could be fun, but not breaking .500.
Magic are definitely better. Hawks are definitely better. Bucks probably got worse, but Turner is a big upgrade on what Brook Lopez was giving them last year, and Dame wasn’t really Dame with them. Celtics obviously worse. But feels to me like the top 4 in the East in some order will be us, Cleveland, Orlando, and Atlanta.
Yeah, Alan, I tend to agree with you. Although some of those ‘betters’ are definitely health-related, even if that’s always the case, just a bit more so with, for example, Ball and Nance. Or KP.
Interesting to compare us to the others, as we lost nobody, but gained Yabu and Clarkson. Although I presume Precious is wandering off…?
Alan, can you please explain a little further? The standard first year minimum salary is a little less than $1.3M.
that rookie minimum bumps to the 2 year minimum for tax and apron purposes if you didn’t have draft rights to the player. it’s called the tax variance rule.
“Cavs probably got better with Ball and Nance over Ty Jerome and Okoro…”
Not sure I agree. Nance is not all that good, Ball is a season-ending injury waiting to happen and kinda sucked last year anyway, and Jerome was a huge reason for their regular season success. I think the Cavs will continue to have injury issues as well, with guys like Hunter breaking down at some point. Even Spida always seems to have something nagging come playoff time.
“Hawks got nice pickups with KP, Kennard, and Alexander-Walker, but lost Capela, LaVert, Nance, Niang, and Mann. We’ll see.”
They have a good young core but are they ready for prime time? I don’t see it, but as you say, we’ll see. I personally think they are being overrated and would put the Pistons ahead of them until I see more.
“Pistons — got LaVert and Duncan Robinson, lost THJ and Shroder. Maybe an upgrade…”
I think their success will be totally dependent on further development from their youngsters…Cade, Ivey, Ausar, Duren, Holland…don’t see them being good enough to get past second round at best, but who knows?
“Magic — got Bane and Tyus Jones, good pickups, but lost Cole Anthony, Caldwell-Pope, and Gary Harris. Maybe better?”
I think they most certainly got better, and they have enormous room for internal development of young players.
I don’t expect much from the Celtics, Pacers, or Bucks. The two unheralded teams that I will be watching closely early on are the Sixers and Raptors. The Sixers obviously are entirely dependent on Embiid’s knee holding up (a very bad bet) but if it does, they have enough theoretical talent to make the playoffs and scare anyone in the first round. The Raptors will have a projected opening day lineup of Poeltl, Ingram, Barnes, RJ, and IQ, with a bench of young players with upside. That seems like a borderline playoff team to me.
The Bulls, Nets, Wiz, and Heat all look pretty terrible. The Hornets maybe a bit less so but despite some young talent they seem low on b-ball IQ. And who knows what the Bucks, Celtics and Pacers have in mind?
Having like a center or even a center to start the season is a good thing. Having like a four or even a four other than KAT is a good thing. having like fresh papaya juice or even papaya juice is a good thing. We got better and younger fresher minds up top. Barring a hero dose of penis envies we were not going to improve without a coaching change. The drama is going to drip this season.
Not sure if someone has mentioned this already, but Bondy is reporting that Yabu will take a haircut off the full TPMLE, allowing us to sign both a vet-min and a baby-min without having to play proration games during the season. That’s not a small deal, thanks Yabu 🫡
Nnaji is the baby-minimum candidate I’d trust most to give us NBA quality minutes in a pinch. He’s been productive in the second best league in the world and has some pretty ridiculous physical tools. But we’re pretty well-covered at center so it makes sense to just retain his draft rights and use it on McCullar, who fills more of a need.
We might want to hold onto the vet-min slot until the situations of best-case scenarios like Beal are resolved. The risk is some options coming off the board while we do that, but I mean, losing Landry Shamet may well be a risk we should be willing to take.
sunday fun day, hope you are all enjoying yours…
didn’t notice our summer league schedule…anyone notice when and where ours kicks off…
“Nnaji is the baby-minimum candidate I’d trust most to give us NBA quality minutes in a pinch.”
I neither agree with your threshold for “productive” and the premise that being a “productive” as a backup C for Girona, a 12-22 team in a league whose top C’s include Edy Tavares and Ante Tomic is the least bit meaningful. I don’t think he could provide a single quality minute beyond garbage time. He would be an absolute waste of a roster spot, imho. It also seems like the strictly shot-blocking/dunking C who can’t pass, shoot, dribble, or hit a FT is less in vogue in today’s NBA.
OTOH they drafted Diawara and have less depth at big, defensive wing than any other position. Using a roster spot on him seems to make a lot more sense.
But hey, we’re quibbling over which scrub is less scrubby, so there doesn’t seem to be a right (or wrong) answer here…beyond avoiding the Jacob Toppins of the world for that spot.
“We might want to hold onto the vet-min slot until the situations of best-case scenarios like Beal are resolved. The risk is some options coming off the board while we do that, but I mean, losing Landry Shamet may well be a risk we should be willing to take.”
Definitely with you on this.
Geo, I think first game is Friday against the Pistons at 6 pm.
Then every other day for four games total, Boston Sunday at 5:30, Brooklyn Tuesday at 6, Pacers Thursday 4:30.
BBA, you need to check the threads my friend. I’ve been offering you an o/u in the high 80’s since the beginning of the season. Your last response was “they aren’t going to win 88 games. They’re going to win a lot more than that.”
ps: I am a big Yankees fan. This regime has stunk for a long time. For every decent move Cashman makes he makes 2 bad ones. This isn’t hitting. You can’t have a .333 average as a GM. Or even .500. He stinks. Boone is worse.
Hugo Besson is another young player we have draft rights to.
Diawara is a waste of his rookie deal to bring over now. He needs 3-5 years and probably won’t be close to good enough to come over. I’d recommend watching his unfiltered video of all his shots, ptmilo posted it a while ago. He can’t play. He barely hits the rim on a lot of his shots and gets blocked on half of his drives. He’s not viable.
Are we sure McCullar qualifies? He played a couple NBA games. I thought that disqualified him. He’s obviously the best choice if he does.
Is Beal a best-case scenario??
Mets bunting the shit out of the Yankees…
I am surprised people are sleeping on Orlando so much. They directly addressed their biggest need x2 and were already good. Also, there’s less variance in defensively oriented teams than offensively, and their defense was already great. They are easily third in the conference.
Meanwhile, I don’t get the Hawks love. Maybe they won’t be a play-in team this year, but 6th seems their ceiling to me.
…Partially because, while it’s hard to imagine the Sixers being healthy, they were REALLY unhealthy last year. Even with Embiid and George each missing 20 games, they should be fourth or fifth. But certainly the highest variance team in the conference.
Detroit got worse, not better, and they were better when Ivey got injured, so him coming back isn’t necessarily great. Hard to predict an improvement this year, but with the Pacers, Celtics, and Bucks a mess, could still happen.
As for those 3 members of the ACL league, the Bucks seem likeliest to remain in the top 6. Tentatively, then, I’m looking at
Cavs (who got worse, btw, both those guys get hurt a lot)
Knicks (who got better, Mitch from Day 1 and better subs)
Magic
Bucks
Sixers
Pistons
So yeah, maybe the Hawks are back in the play-in after all… With the Celts, Heat (annual tradition), and what the hey, the Raps.
Are we sure McCullar qualifies? He played a couple NBA games. I thought that disqualified him. He’s obviously the best choice if he does.
i think being on the active list for any game gives you a year of service so yeah he’d be $2.048mm.
Even if the Yankees find a new creative way to lose today I still fully expect them to win over 90 games. They’re 6-16 over their last 22 games and only 48-41 overall but their run differential suggests they should be 54-35. Losing Schmidt is a big blow but they’ll as usual makes moves by the trade deadline to bolster this team.
I’m totally with you on Boone, for the life of me I can’t understand how the fuck he’s held on to his job this long. Its crazy that the Knicks seem to have higher standards of winning right now than the Yankees.
Stein said Darvin Ham and Phil Handy are possible targets for our coaching staff.
Good catch, if it’s McCullar Yabu is either taking a bigger discount than I think is plausible (would have to be close to $1M) or the other slot is going to a true baby-minimum like Nnaji.
The reports seem to be that we’re talking to other vet-min candidates, meaning either McCullar is out of the picture or we’re clearing some salary.
I wouldn’t mind clearing Huk in favor of Nnaji. I think Nnaji is a better prospect anyway and that would give us some breathing room.
The most frustrating thing about the Yankees of late is how few elite players we have relative to our payroll. We’ve passed on Harper, Machado, Seager, and others because Cashman loves to try to recreate guys like that in the aggregate instead of just biting the bullet.
We have more “flexibility” because of the Donaldsons and Goldschmidts of the world, but despite having a talent in Aaron Judge that franchises can go their entire existence without having, we seem allergic to using that flexibility on elite position player free agents.
The strategy looks particularly short-sighted in light of recent inflation in the MLB market. I’m sure Harper, Machado, and Seager will have some rough years towards the end of their contracts, but they don’t make an amount of money that would be crippling in 2025 and beyond.
In any event, I find it pathetic to be so terrified of some future down years when we should be doing everything in our power to maximize the prime of one of the best hitters of all time. It’s unfathomable that they haven’t taken that imperative seriously at all.
Pacers will still be good next year, especially if Mathurin makes the expected small leap to best player in the conference.
“I’d recommend watching his unfiltered video of all his shots, ptmilo posted it a while ago.”
I agree, and my assessment is quite different from yours. I see a player who was allowed (encouraged?) to do whatever he wanted out there, but when he limited himself to the basics was actually quite effective. He also seem to be quite good on the defensive end.
“I wouldn’t mind clearing Huk in favor of Nnaji. I think Nnaji is a better prospect anyway and that would give us some breathing room.”
I personally think this is an utterly ridiculous statement, but would love to hear some other opinions on this matter.
I don’t know about you but I’m rooting for Nnaji to make the team just for the sheer pleasure of hearing Breen explain to Clyde how to pronounce his middle name. 🙂
Z-Man has been trying to bait me into a debate about the merits of James Nnaji for a while now, but alas, at age 30 I am more cognizant of the merits of running any particular internet argument by a quick cost/benefit analysis before engaging than I once was.
I still think there’s a chance the Knicks make one more big deal, if not now then by the deadline.
Today is the first day Bridges is eligible to be extended.
One underappreciated downside of Thibs last year was that by not playing the kids, he probably reduced their trade value short term. Dadiet was a 1st round pick and Kolek was a hot commodity coming out of summer league. Not that I want to trade either, but if we had a deal lined up and needed to sweeten it, we would be a lot better off if those guys had played more and were still viewed at their peak value.
He’s a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. The available data is somewhere between difficult and impossible to translate into NBA equivalents.
Debating this guy is like saying I want bragging rights to being a better guesser. Hopefully in summer league he’ll be matched up with some NBA level talent (or close) and get his chance to show if he belongs here now.
I think the correct term is “engage” you. I haven’t heard a peep about Nnaji being considered for a roster spot, or being anything but a long-term project. I would welcomed me any recent scouting report from a reliable source saying that he is anything more than that. Not seeing anything re: Diawara either, but his positional profile is much more in vogue and a position where we don’t have much depth. I’d love to be enlightened by some actual video evidence showing that he projects to be a better prospect than Hukporti.
“ we would be a lot better off if those guys had played more and were still viewed at their peak value.”
Pretty much disagree. The value is in the untapped upside because of the fewer minutes. Neither made a dent, hence fewer minutes. If they did make Thibs circle of trust they wouldn’t be dangled as trade bait and more likely Thibs would be coaching them next season.
Cody Bellinger for now has saved the Yankees season…
The reports seem to be that we’re talking to other vet-min candidates, meaning either McCullar is out of the picture or we’re clearing some salary.
yeah for the 1.2 slot but he can still stick on another two-way; i think his qo was actually a two-way qo.
I mean, when he was drafted 31st in 2023 (by Detroit, with a Detroit 2nd we once had, then traded back to Detroit, then re-acquired post-pick in the KAT trade after Boston and Charlotte also had it for a bit), I don’t think the Pistons were picking names out of a hat.
He ranked 40th on Vecenie’s 2023 big board, 21st on Kevin O’Connor’s, and 33rd on Hollinger’s. Pure analytics models tended to rank him even higher, because he held his own as a teenager in the 2nd best league on the planet.
I think both his floor and his ceiling are higher than Hukporti’s, but that’s an argument I know I shouldn’t dedicate too many time and words to in my “public interest lawyer with a girlfriend” era.
A vet-min, baby minimum, and McCullar on a two-way that we convert to a multi-year deal when the prorated rate allows us to seems like way to go assuming no trades.
I’m speaking strictly about “trade” value.
I’m not convinced the Knicks are done. They may not do anything now, but if they wanted to it would be a lot harder to do given all their young players haven’t played much in a year.
I don’t think what he’s trying to do with Anthony Volpe, Oswald Peraza, and DJ LeMahieu is recreate Manny Machado in the aggregate.
He’s likes stars and scrubs.
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