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Jordan Clarkson, NBA Champion – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ Karl-Anthony Towns Reveals His Top NBA Big Men Ever During Golf Showdown vs. Diana Taurasi – BleacherReport
Knicks NBA Draft guide: Prospects for New York to consider with all three picks – The New York Times
Latest Knicks Rumors on Every Player Connected to NY in Trades, Free Agency Ahead of 2026 NBA Draft – BleacherReport
Jose Alvarado, NBA Champion – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Draft Preview 2026 – Knick of Time
Knicks Offseason Guide 2026: Ian Begley Breaks Down Free Agency, Draft & Extensions – Knicks Fan TV
REACTION: @JCMacriNBA’s quick thoughts on the Knicks re-signing Mo Diawara – Knicks Film School
Pod Strickland Episode 605: Lessons From Leon – The Strickland
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29 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.06.23)”
I’m officially worried about the Knicks offseason. Judging by yesterday’s trades, these aprons have teams shook. Randle was an obvious salary dump, and Milwaukee clearly took the lesser package between Miami and Boston. I thought for sure they’d wanna retool around a star, but they smartly went for flexibility in this apron era. But who’s gonna want to play for them with the roster they have?
Julius has been a negative asset or negative asset-adjacent for quite a number of years now.
Re Giannis trade – I for one am a bit worried about the Heat. Spo is obviously an awesome coach. Their defense should be absolutely elite with Davion Mitchell, Wiggins, Powell, Bam, Giannis. Mitchell/Wiggins/Powell all shot about 40% from 3 last year, and while Bam is not a great 3 point shooter, I imagine Spo will figure something out to make the spacing tenable. Wiggins has turned into a really good 3 point shooter (~39% from 3 over his last 1900 attempts). And I still don’t understand the Clippers trading Powell to the Heat for.. John Collins?!?
I think their depth is… ok? Even without whatever vets minimums they can convince to live in Miami and play with Giannis?
Pelle Larson is ok
Fontecchio is fine off the bench
Portis is a proven player
Jovic seems to have had a bad year last year but was a promising player at one point.
They probably need another ball handling guard they can trust – someone like Braden Smith in the 2nd round as a high floor low ceiling guy who can just play basketball and annoyingly turn into Peyton Pritchard.
Re: Diawara – this is absolutely a home run. Allows us to in theory stay under 2nd apron if that’s what Leon wants although it probably means one of Shamet or Mitch are gone. tbh I love Mitch but the injury thing is always going to be there in addition to whatever mental health stuff was going on this year, the hack-a-mitch stuff… have to wonder whether the 15 min he gives you could be mostly covered by Hukporti + someone. I thought Huk looked very good in the limited minutes he played.
Of course I’d love Mitch back and to retire a Knick, but if we have to choose between him and Shamet I might choose the latter.
Re the apron, the difference between us and those teams is that those teams are still trying to get their rosters to championship level. Ours is literally already there. Running it back doesn’t guarantee a repeat, but we know that this combination of guys can get it done. So if we lose flexibility for a year or two, it matters much less to us than it does a Minnesota, who still don’t quite have the right group of players around Ant.
Offline points to Frank. This morning, I sent him this video of Julius’ son Kyden (who, when he was much smaller, was seen in a video sobbing over how much he hated the Nets):
https://x.com/NetsKingdomAJ/status/2069277524073292012?s=20
His reply: “Hostage video.”
So any guesses as to how many picks we actually end up making?
How many at our current draft slots?
If Giannis is healthy the Heat are going to be very good. Betting Spo and Riley will load manage him, banking that they can still be a lower seed team and have him healthy for the playoffs.
Did they? If you really love Brown sure but I like Miami’s package better. More picks and players I can develop or package in a trade later.
Do teams still do draft and stash? I feel like I’d we make more than one pick it’ll be for a foreign player not expected to come over right away.
I’m expecting some sort of mild char tonight with 24. Something more than a quick, hot, 20-second-a-side, sear; something less than an incineration.
I just think Brown is the better player to build around. He and Myles Turner can draw playoffs Milwaukee. Now they have to find gems in the draft AND hope some team loves guys like Herro, Porter, and Turner.
Actually, let me amend that. I think what we do in the draft tonight will speak to the team’s plans the rest of the off-season regarding the second apron. If we make 2+ picks tonight in players that we’d have to sign I think it means that we’re not going over the apron and Mitch and probably Shamet are gone. If we select 1 or 0 players we’d have to roster I think we’re willing to go over the 2nd apron.
Even if he is, how quickly does Milwaukee think they can rebuild around him? He’ll be 30 before next season, they were getting less draft capital (and don’t have any of their own picks because of the Lillard trade), and they have no cap space. If you’re Milwaukee, are you willing to take the chance that you’re in a worse position in a couple of years trying to trade a 32 year old Jaylen Brown who’s demanding out?
2 picks
Neither at a current slot
If I’m Milwaukee I’m happier with the Heat deal for sure. They are not a player away, so more picks plus more players who also can be turned into picks makes sense. If you take Brown, that’s the core of your team – and it’s clearly nowhere near enough.
I don’t care how many rookies we draft. I’d like to see Leon using the picks, and other assets on the bench, to produce a 6th man who pushes either Hart or Mikal for a spot in the lineup. A DDV or iHart type triple.
A prediction that’s guaranteed to make me look like an idiot: I think we’ll make a first-round pick.
My reasoning is that this draft is regarded as deep through right around our first-round pick (and I concur), and then has such a steep drop off my second-round rankings are nearly interchangeable. I think we have a better chance to get a good player with this pick than we’ll have in the draft for a while.
While projecting future drafts is quite the imperfect science, next year’s is not well-regarded as this one and NIL seems likely to only further spread talent out across classes. In other words, it’s impossible to say when the next time there will be a class with bona fide options on the board in the mid 20s will come.
There are also no particular salary restraints. We’re either going over the second apron to keep the team together and the #24 rookie scale contract is mostly irrelevant, or we’re not and that contract doesn’t put us over.
So I think we make at least a first-round pick, and I kinda think, with very low confidence, that it’ll be Zuby.
It’s pretty remarkable that this shit keeps happening to Riley. He once got Shaq for Lamar Odom. He got Jimmy Butler for Hassan Whiteside. He got Norm Powell for Kevin Love. And now this.
How he got them to throw in Portis instead of taking back Kuzma, I’ll never know.
That said, this version of the Heat is not worrisome.
Isaiah Evans appears to be on the move as a Knicks pick at 24. Looks like teams are scared off by Quaintance’s knee and Peat’s potentially irredeemable bricklaying. Philon will probably fall no further than Detroit.
Zuby’s mocks are about half available at 31, half gone by 31.
In what is probably a distinctly minority opinion, I want some new blood on the roster. For non-stagnation reasons, proper team-building reasons, and plus I don’t want to just watch the same exact guys again next year.(*) Life moves on.
(*) Or even worse veteran minimum type replacements for them.
We came back from offering KAT for Giannis. It was bumpy, but not impossible.
On the Bill Simmons podcast today they suggested that this might actually have effectively scared Jaylen Brown straight. He wanted his own team, he almost got one. Now he got to experience all the feelings of being traded to Milwaukee to have his wish fulfilled. I doubt he was excited.
I thought the Celtics handled it pretty well. They offered Brown for Giannis straight up, which would have been a heist. When Milwaukee wanted more, they never budged. They weren’t desperate for Giannis, they were just willing to steal him.
The Wolves operate under the tax line, not the apron. They’re financially strapped.
I don’t think they did. What were they gonna do with Jaylen Brown? The Miami package sucks but at least it offers some high standard deviation outcomes.
I concur with Frank that the Heat’s opening night roster doesn’t look bleak, and between Spo Magic and the sheer force of Giannis I bet they can get to 50+ wins.
That said, I’m not exactly shaking in my boots. They are badly vulnerable to age related decline as well as the kind of volatility inherent to the role players they’ll be relying on. Much better outcome for us than Boston getting him for Jaylen effin Brown.
I feel bad for Randle. On a really good Knicks team. The best one in a decade. We were on a crazy win streak after we got OG and Randle was beasting out. We looked like title contenders. Hurts his shoulder when we’re up 19 (thanks Thibs), doesn’t recover in time for the playoffs and then gets traded to Minny, never getting to see this through with us, which he helped start.
Then he settles into Minny and, by all accounts, loves it. Team ends up still being pretty good and getting back to the WCF. But next season injuries and now the team wants to go in a different direction so he’s sent back to NYC but to one of the worst teams in the league and now he has to be in the city across the river from guys he played with who are now idolized as heroes and champs.
I mean, that fucking sucks. Sorry, but it’s a bum rap for him.
I’m only half joking when I saw the Nets should hire Thibs.
Nets love Jordi Fernandez. No chance they move him out for Thibs.
I used to be “Mr. roll the pick out”.
I didn’t care about losing 5 cents on the dollar. Picks are easier to trade later than players you selected in the draft. Previously we needed picks to trade.
Now we need some quality youth and preferably a big man for the future or if we lose Mitch.
Unlike the past, IMO, it would be a mistake to do anything other than make a selection with the 24th pick in a quality draft when we are already set with veterans.
Seems less ideal for the Heat, even if Powell cooled off after last season’s hot start.
Is this Heat team measurably better than the post-championship Bucks teams? I’m not really sure.
Is the injury stuff maybe slightly overblown? He’s only 28 years old, and he’s really had just one worrisome injury. OG Anunoby had a worse injury history than Mitch and we don’t fret about him anymore.
Also his ankle injury was horribly mismanaged by Thibs and a terrible training staff. Since coming back from it and working with our competent medical staff, he’s been fine.
Everything else he’s suffered is quite random — a broken hand, a broken thumb, a broken pinky.
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