News & Blogs
Nets to acquire Julius Randle, first-round pick in trade sending Nic Claxton to Bulls: report – New York Daily News
Jalen Brunson’s Mom Sandra Makes LinkedIn Post Celebrating Son, Knicks’ Win vs. Spurs in NBA Finals – BleacherReport
REPORT: Knicks in trade talks as Jose Alvarado delays player-option decision – Posting & Toasting
Bucks trading former Knicks target Giannis Antetokounmpo to Heat in blockbuster deal – SNY
Trading picks may help Knicks keep championship squad intact for next season – Newsday
REPORT: Giannis Antetokounmpo dealt to the Miami Heat – Posting & Toasting
Knicks expected to re-sign Mohamed Diawara to multiyear deal – SNY
Knicks Draft Preview 2026 – Knick of Time
Becky Hammon Admits She Was WRONG About Jalen Brunson! – Knicks Fan TV
Knicks NBA Draft Preview and offseason primer | The Putback with Ian Begley – Begley Putback
The case for Zuby Ejiofor #Knicks #NBADraft #StJohns – Knicks Film School
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49 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.06.24)”
Could not watch the draft. First time in years. Strange thread as what we expected to unfold unfolded. I kind of liked the Spanish kid but in Brock I trust.
Also, Donnie, indigo Park is definitely a high lottery pick for me this year, although it’s pretty weird and has a few tracks I don’t like. The Wallace Stevens shout out really activated my college poet self
I’ll explain to folks how being over provides more flexibility than being under:
Being over the second apron gives you a soft cap. You can keep your roster together, retain your own players, and even afford your first-round picks. You have more assets, you just can’t aggregate them.
Staying under the second apron gives you a self-imposed hard cap. It forces you to shed talent, let good players walk, and sometimes even dump picks because you can’t afford the contracts attached to them. You have fewer assets, but the freedom to aggregate what’s left.
We’re constantly told the team under the apron has “more flexibility.” But flexibility to do what? The team over the apron has the players and the assets. The team under it can’t even afford to pay a first round pick.
Dolan is a real cunt for this. God knows where he got this idea from. Probably someone at McKinsey again.
With a couple marginal exceptions, they haven’t first-round drafted since the first year Leon got here.
Repeating — the real question is how long the second apron mandate has been in place.
Not sure why you think that’s the real question. It never made sense to go over the second apron before.
Top o’ the mornin’, gents.
By the way, Clarence would like a word.
Because, among other things, it means that getting to a point where they knew they couldn’t draft was knowing, rather than accidental. And the “front loading” (*) of the future into the present therefore looks even more pronounced.
It’s one thing to not be able to draft and have to throw assets overboard haphazardly if ownership springs it on you last minute; it’s quite another thing if you’ve known all along.
(*) Actually, there’s no need for quotation marks there. Reads and communicates fine without them.
The only asset we’ve thrown overboard so far is our first round pick and we did get five second round picks in return. I hope we don’t have to throw anything else overboard.
We didn’t throw anything overboard. We shedded salary so we can bring dudes back, we turned one late first round pick into 5 second round picks and we picked up half a million dollars.
Shams says Knicks intend to move 31.
I’d probably take Isaiah Evans right now.
Baba Miller is the most interesting (not necessarily best) player for me: 6’11” with great rebounding and passing numbers. A solid handle. But is really skinny and can’t shoot at all.
A couple of other players I like:
* Aaron Nkrumah, Wing — Lots of steals. Decent 3p%. Small school.
* Tamin Lipsey, PG — Lots of steals. Holds onto the ball. Shooting?
* Ugonna Onyenso, C — Shotblocking… and, uh, a lot of shotblocking
* Brazile, PF — Can shoot. Explosive. Bad player & old but has tools.
* Nate Bittle, C — Shot-blocker & shooter. Slow & injury history.
They just threw the 24th pick in the draft overboard. No one seriously believes they’re actually going to use all five of those 2s — which isn’t close to sufficient value anyway. Memphis pulled in five 2s for moving down five spots in the first round.
They essentially incinerated the pick. If people want to quibble about the term, then ok, they deeply charred it to inedibility.
The great irony of all this is that is that moving your first round pick to the end of the round is the worst penalty for staying over the second apron 🤣
Multiple years out. Could be the top pick in the draft.
We didn’t need to shed salary to bring everyone back, though.
We shedded salary to appease our imbecile owner.
I agree that E’s assessment is harsh, though. 5 seconds is a solid return for a meh pick.
It’s excellent work by the front office to comply with a foolish mandate from the owner.
I suspect Dolan went on air having no idea what he was talking about. But it didn’t really matter until people started calling him an idiot. At which point Dolan insisted they stay under the 2nd apron just to pretend he knew what he was talking about.
Literally impossible now that they changed the lottery rules. You’ll never know what that pick could have been.
It’s a terrible return based on the market set an hour before. Memphis got 5 2s for moving down from 16 to 21.
And it wasn’t a “meh pick.”
There’s frankly not a lot of credibility there when someone rightly busts Leon’s chops for years for not drafting and then complains when other people bust Leon’s chops for … not drafting.
He incinerated another pick and threw another asset overboard. It’s starting to look very much like he massively front-loaded all of this. Worked out, at least for now. We’ll see about the rest.
Frankly, big picture, we need to see if Leon can even operate outside his front-loading, friends and family plan.
(NOTE here that if the championship ratifies everything and Leon just gets a pass for everything that happens before and after, we have a fundamental disagreement at the threshold of the conversation that probably renders fruitless any significant back and forth about it.)
We could have brought them back and made a pick, but Dolan and/or management chose to avoid the 2nd apron and save money.
Shams said last night they are also likely to trade the #31.
Personally, I think that would be dumb. We need more young talent for the future.
I think it’s more simple than that. Dolan is stupid, arrogant, and belligerent. When someone like that is in charge and they have an idea in their head, no one can even talk to him about. Reasonable counters never even get heard.
Trying to explain to him that going over the second apron isn’t really a big deal is like trying to tell Trump starting a war with Iran is going to be problematic after he’s already made up his mind.
?
You’d know in the year it gets downgraded.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s (rightly) never going to happen.
It doesn’t have anything to do with basketball, from Dolan’s perspective. He literally told you that he wasn’t writing that big a check, and he couldn’t have been more unambiguous. A lot of us know, and you probably do too, that when a rich guy tells you the limit of a check he’s willing to stroke, he means it. (*) Most likely, he told Leon this years ago.
We don’t know if Leon concurs philosophically in basketball terms. He might, he might not.
(*) And moreover, Dolan isn’t entirely free to just stroke a check for a big tax bill; the Knicks are a public company.
Right, which is why I said that when Dolan first issued the mandate, Leon probably said something like, “No problem, boss, there are a lot of basketball penalties for going over that number, anyway. We’ll be fine.”(*)
There would be no point in pushing back and Leon probably rightly sensed he could get in trouble for pushing back.
(*) Which Dolan then turned into “suicidal” in his non-high-IQ brain when he bumbled and stumbled on the point on the FAN — before turning to his actual comfort zone and the real reason.
Second round picks have pretty good value. The Knicks have drafted pretty well in the second round. Mitch, Deuce, Tyler, Mo, etc. But, also traded 2 second rounders for Jose. So, by trading out of the first and getting a bunch of seconds, it might come in handy a few different ways for us. Drafting a player(s) and/or trading for a needed vet like Jose in the future. And who knows, maybe the Knicks add more to their stockpile by trading the 31st pick. But the main thing, is hopefully the cost savings helps us bring back all/some of the vets like Mitch and Landry.
Just for the record, if we give Mitch more than a 3 year deal with a team option in year 3 I’m going to be very upset. I love Mitch, but he’s a walking season ending injury risk that will have to be babied all season to remain healthy…until he breaks his own hand, foot or whatever. Plus, he relies on athleticism which will surely decline towards the end of that contract.
If we are doing all this 2nd apron avoidance and draft nonsense to keep Mitch and then give him 5 years, imo we are insane.
If we can keep him on a short deal that’s great, but we can’t act like we haven’t all lived through his constant injuries. The probability that he gets injured probably rises as he gets older.
If it’s the last pick in the draft it won’t be in the lottery. You’ll never know if it would have been a top 4 pick.
The way we flipped Yabu into GTA would not have been allowed if we were over the second apron. I’m confident Brock would have found a way but not as efficiently. So I disagree that being over the apron gives you more flexibility.
I’m still of the view that the mandate can be broken if things align the right way. Mitch’s FA value is the wild card. I am sure Leon has maximum number he will not exceed for Mitch–akin to IQ as non-starter rotation player. If a team like LA pay him lavishly because they need a starting C, he’s gone, mandate or no mandate. And in the meantime preserve as much space as possible.
Stiffing IQ was probably mandate driven. Brunson going low on the extension very well might have been, too.
Lots of moments of clarity now possible.
We’re going to bring back Mitch at the same or even slightly lower salary than what he is making now. Mitch is gonna stay because while he MIGHT be able to get a bigger pay day elsewhere, that team is also going to expect him to play every night and possibly start and he knows his body can’t handle that. He doesn’t want another injury that sits him out for a season or two and he doesn’t want to be limping around when he’s retired.
So he’ll stay with us for 3 years at the same or even slightly less salary than he has now because we will let him load manage, take back to backs off, etc.
We will lose Shamet but it won’t be that big of a deal. We’ll still have Alvarado and Deuce and the emergence of Diawara, who is now on an incredibly team friendly salary, will more than make up for losing Shamet because we now have another OG in the making coming off the bench.
Staying under the apron will allow us to aggregate salaries in a trade. Which might come in handy when we decide to get DDV back for our repeat title run. We’ll be able to do this by trading Alvarado and another player because Tyler Kolek will take a huge step forward this year and will take the back up PG position from Alvarado.
Seriously, though. The negativity, Hubs, is way overblown. Nothing has happened yet.
One more year.
who gives a fuck.
Dolan isn’t the sharpest or most reasonable knife in the draw, but we can’t be sure if this is all coming from him or his conversations with Leon, Aller etc…
I don’t want to make to strong of a judgement on the strategic implications of going over the 2nd apron vs. not. That’s not my area.
But just in basketball terms IMO we should be bringing back everyone except Clarkson and should have added a young talent to replace him for the long term.
The only other thing I would consider is making a choice between Shamet and Deuce and possibly trading Deuce for an asset or backup C because we are going to have to pay Deuce eventually and he’s likely to be more expensive than Shamet.
E you’re fucking ridiculous.
This isn’t mathematically possible.
I guess I have blind loyalty to Aller and Rose because, you know, they assembled this team that just won a freaking NBA title. These guys kinda know what they’re doing.
And my god, I can’t believe the word “incineration” is being used again. I thought we put a stake through the heart of that dumbass term.
That’s incorrect, BE. Both the terry and Alvarado portions would have been allowed. The second apron would have only affected the cash considerations.
I think Kolek will take a step up this year. He can even sometimes play alongside JB or Jose. I like having 2 ball handlers out there at the same time. In certain situations. I know it was garbage time, but during the playoffs when Kolek played his confidence level seems so high. I am hoping he takes a big step up this year.
Wow it’s very frothy here today.
You’d think Leon might’ve bought a little leeway with a frickin Championship, but I guess not.
Agree with Walker that 2nds have a lot of value in this ecosystem, especially for winning teams. Maybe we are slightly overrating our ability to “coach up” any prospect, but when these guys buy into the program like Deuce and Diawara did, you have the ability to sign these 2nd round picks for cheap, 4-year contracts, essentially getting their primes for very little money.
So Leon’s plan in a nutshell has been to hand-pick his stars and then build the bench around them with these 2nd rounders and vet mins. And guess what? IT FRIGGIN WORKED.
That people still have the hubris to think they know better is… definitely a choice.
walkerandbendercornerstones,
Once Deuce has to get paid we are back in the same boat. That’s why I’ve been throwing out the idea of trading Deuce, picking up a draft asset and keeping Shamet. Deuce will make more than Shamet, but it’s not 100% clear to me that there’s a huge difference between them given how well Shamet performed under pressure and the fact that Deuce gave us nothing in the finals.
Hubert, I was talking about the cash consideration in each trade. So you have to throw something else in to replace the cash.
I think these draft day maneuvers are mainly a Brock Aller thing. He loves the second round like algae loves the reflecting pool
https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2025/07/second-round-pick-exception-details-for-2025-26.html
Depends on what “WORKED” means.
“That people still have the hubris to think they know better is… definitely a choice.”
Seems like a bad idea to cut off all continued conversation about the Knicks’ roster on a blog called “Knickerblogger.” But maybe that’s just me.
Bruh, this is literally the only thing I said about Leon:
My esteem for the front office is actually going up now that Dolan is making clear how involved he is.
You should be banned for this comment.
Your arrogance is fucking ridiculous and only matched by your own stupidity. You’ve been wrong about so many things and now, oh look, moving the goal posts again even after we won a fucking title.
How can someone be this wrong all the time and still think they know better?
“Depends on what “WORKED” means.”
For you, out of purgatory. For the rest of us, a championship (and an NBA Cup to boot)
No, we’re trying to cut off one poster who continually is wrong about shit yet brings his negativity to the board every fucking day whenever anything doesn’t go the way he thinks it should go.
We just won a title. But here we are using the term incineration and yesteray you were fucking defending your Dejonte wet dream.
Dude, you are wrong. Admit it. You’ve been wrong about EVERYTHING.
you were wrong about Cam. Wrong about RJ. Wrong about Dejonte. Wrong about being in the mezzanine. Wrong about us not being able to win a title. You are wrong. And you are the worst kind of wrong. You’re arrogant about it.
Those aren’t inconsistent and the term fits.
They won a title and yesterday incinerated another 1. Both of those things factually happened in the last few weeks.
Think of walking and chewing gum at the same time. It is possible.
In terms of the “WORKED” definition — depends on how much was front-loaded and friends-and-family plan. We’re entering a fundamentally new era now, so we shall see.
“Mezzanine” is Hubert’s term. Off-limits to me for years.
1st Rd picks also come with exceptions that allow you to sign them. So do vet min players.
The Knicks have a starting lineup under contract.
The Knicks have most of a second string under contract.
The Knicks have dozens of future second round picks.
The Knicks can squeeze 1-2 years out of the roster as composed.
The Knicks don’t need picks until next year.
First rounders can’t flee right away if they outperform their contracts, either.
The second-round thing is nonsense. They can save you a little money over the vet minimum you’d have to fill out a handful of your 14 slots with, nothing more.
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