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Knicks Morning News (2026.06.26)

News & Blogs

  • How the Rangers could be impacted by the Knicks’ NBA title under owner James Dolan – The New York Times
  • Knicks’ Active Roster, Draft Class, 2026-27 Salary Info and Free Agents After NBA Draft Results – BleacherReport
  • REPORT: Knicks free agent Mitchell Robinson linked to Kings for one reason – Posting & Toasting
  • Knicks’ Leon Rose Defends Mikal Bridges Trade, Says Criticism of Star ‘Bothered Me’ in Video – BleacherReport
  • Knicks second-round pick Jack Kayil does not plan to return to Germany – SNY
  • What Does a Knicks Trash Can Cost? $168, or for One Woman, Her Job. – The New York Times
  • Tyler Nickel 2026 NBA Draft Profile: Everything you need to know about Knicks’ second-round pick – SNY
  • Mitchell Robinson, NBA Champion – Posting & Toasting

    • YT News

  • From Parade Confetti to Contracts: Breaking Down the Knicks’ Next Moves – Knick of Time
  • KFS X’s & Os | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
  • Knicks second apron specifics with cap analyst Yossi Gozlan | The Putback with Ian Begley – Begley Putback
  • Is Dadiet A Diamond In The Rough? – Knicks Fan TV

    • 29 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.06.26)”

    Repost:
    We know that Dolan is far more spiteful than frugal. On that note, I wonder how much of Dolan insisting on staying below the second apron is out of spite, i.e. to keep the tax bill down because the money would go to the rest of the teams. He hates the other owners and the commissioner and vice versa. He hates that his media empire has been impacted by Silver’s deals with Prime, Peacock, etc. and ranted about it.

    I also wonder if he is more angry at Mitch than the rest of the brass and Brown. Meaning that if Leon, Brunson, Browm, etc. are all trying to convince him to go over the second apron to retain Mitch, his response is “Not for that guy who almost cost me a championship…” It seems like that really is that is the only reason to do it, and it’s probably a hard sell, just like keeping Lin was a hard sell.

    Dolan just burned liked $40M on Thibs, and before that, tens of millions on Phil. The Knicks are the most valuable franchise in the league and he’s raking in the championship spoils. It can’t be just the money, and if he’s saying no to Leon et. al., it can’t be for strategic reasons alone.

    Another repost:
    I also have to wonder why persuasive voices like Rose, WWW, and Brunson can’t talk Dolan into going over the second apron line. Are their hearts just not into it? Is there dissent? Maybe medical is telling Dolan it’s a bad idea? If they pushed hard enough with airtight arguments (the most compelling of which might be that they could probably unload Mitch before the deadline for assets which would be better than losing him for nothing), would Dolan relent?

    I guess we’ll have the answer by Wednesday.

    Reposting:

    Dolan is an idiot.

    Dude has tried to kill the vibes the moment they got to the finals.

    I think the theory that he was too busy with the Sphere to mess up the last few years has gained some credence.

    1

    Repost:

    I don’t buy that they were blindsided. They were $53,000 and change under the SA two years ago and $230,000 and change under the SA last year. They’ve rarely drafted and haven’t put a 1 in the regular, normal 1 draft slot number for years — clear evidence of picking and choosing your spots, and pinching pennies.

    They didn’t go right up to within a rounding error of the SA, but not put their toes over the SA, by accident or coincidence. Plus it’s in the interest of the FO to paint it as them being surprised rather than not planning well. Can’t buy it. I can maybe buy “we can talk the boss out of it if and when we need to but let’s try to not need to,” but a full-on shock? No way.

    1

    Well said, Marechal.

    Ever since the Knicks broke through the ECF and gained unprecedented local and national attention, he’s placed himself front & center: inviting Trump, acting like he’s Joe Namath, announcing the mandate, being a petty cunt at city hall, proclaiming that his players are going to the White House (good luck with that).

    The razor is back with a vengeance.

    Make no mistake: what may be about to happen is too stupid to come from the front office. And this is not something that happens all the time.

    Mitch would be the best player thrown overboard by a defending champ since Tyson Chandler. Landry might even be the second best (it’s between him and PJ Tucker).

    And there’s only been one contender in the apron era that’s panicked about the second apron: the Minnesota Timberwolves (talk about suicide).

    Indeed, Dolan is an idiot.

    For the record:

    Prior to the NBA finals I had suggested Dolan might be the best owner in NY and that he could be headed for a second act like George Steinbrenner’s.

    I was wrong. Even compared to a Yankees owner who is inexplicably fighting for a salary cap, Dolan is still, and will always be, the worst.

    Isn’t today the day that Alvarado delayed his player option too? I would guess we’ll be getting some idea on how the rest of free agency goes based on what happens with him.

    And there’s only been one contender in the apron era that’s panicked about the second apron: the Minnesota Timberwolves

    The NBA champion Celtics stripped their team down to avoid the second apron . It’s why they are so much more beatable now

    1

    I don’t buy that they were blindsided. They were $53,000 and change under the SA two years ago and $230,000 and change under the SA last year. They’ve rarely drafted and haven’t put a 1 in the regular, normal 1 draft slot number for years — clear evidence of picking and choosing your spots, and pinching pennies.

    They didn’t go right up to within a rounding error of the SA, but not put their toes over the SA, by accident or coincidence. Plus it’s in the interest of the FO to paint it as them being surprised rather than not planning well. Can’t buy it. I can maybe buy “we can talk the boss out of it if and when we need to but let’s try to not need to,” but a full-on shock? No way.

    not persuasive. we were hard-capped below the second apron both of those years. we aggregated salaries our mega-trades in 24-25. last year we used the tpmle. those were relatively easy cases where staying under the second apron was the max flexibility move for immediate team improvement. not and accident or coincidence and also not evidence of second apron phobia applicable to this year.

    “The not going into the second apron stuff, the front office did not advise that. It was not like the front office went to Dolan and was like, ‘No, it’s strategically helpful to not go into the second apron.’ That didn’t happen.” Katz reported.

    “Dolan went on the radio, said they’re not going into the second apron. And then there were people in the Knicks who were like, ‘Wait, what?’ The Knicks front office understands that if they don’t go into the second apron, they’re going to lose guys.”

    “People were blindsided,” Edwards added.

    we were hard-capped below the second apron both of those years.

    “Were hard-capped” is too passive a verb, IMHO, and as with the Yabu example offered up a couple days ago, confuses/reverses the causal arrow.

    The NBA champion Celtics stripped their team down to avoid the second apron.

    Wrong

    The proof that you’re wrong is in your link. Hint: look at the date.

    Also, not for nothing, I would hardly describe trading Jrue and Porzingis after the years they both had as panic moves. They made the Celtics better. We’re not getting Anfernee Simons back for Mitch. We’re getting nothing.

    The NBA champion Celtics stripped their team down to avoid the second apron.

    This is technically true but skirts over the important fact that their best player suffered a season ending injury and KP is so unreliable that 17 games after Boston salary dumped him Atlanta did the same thing.

    Repost day? 😀

    I don’t have anything to repost, so i’ll say this:
    I’m just happy that we are NBA Champions and i trust in the guys that have take us there! 🙂

    2

    Also, i’m happy we are bringing Mo back, i have a feeling he’ll be a good player in this league. And now we’ll get to see if MB didn’t play him more to not showcase him to other teams, or if it was just because he didn’t feel that he should do it.

    Boston blew it up because they would owe half a billion in luxury taxes in a year they weren’t going to be competitive. Had nothing to do with the apron.

    I seem to recall KP and Jrue playing when the then champion Celtics lost to the Knicks.

    I was ok with staying under the second apron as a strategic move. But if the front office is saying they need to go for it and the owner is doing this two weeks after winning a championship, screw him.

    1

    I’m choosing the OG orantly believe Mitch will be back until there is a tangible big offer from another team on the table.

    I’m lookin at what back up bigs make and Mitch is already one of the highest paid back up bigs in the league.

    If we’re ignoring the SA stuff and just going purely on what is a reasonable salary for a back up center, does it make sense to resign him for 20 million a year?

    I get we want to repeat but beyond the second apron stuff, does resigning a center who shoots 35 percent from the free throw line and has to be load managed at a contract that’s notes than 15 million a year for multiple years really a smart move.

    Put it another way. If the lakers do offer him 20 million a year, what is the chance that they will deeply regret that decision within the next two years?

    I love the dude but I still think some of this SA stuff could all be posturing by us and Rose could be letting Dolan be the “bad cop” in this situation, similar to how Thibs was let go.

    Coping, I know.

    This is technically true

    It is not!

    The NBA champion Celtics went over the second apron, won 61 games, and were the favorites to win the East right up until the moment Tatum ruptured his achilles.

    And again: trading Jrue and Porzingis were not panic moves. They were the kind of smart moves the Celtics always make.

    I love Mitch and want him back. Well, i’m a homer, i want everybody back (almost) all the time. LOL

    But how would you rate Mitch’s performance this playoffs? Between the hack-a-Mitch and KAT playing a lot better on defense than previously expected by the most optimistic, which lead to less minutes needed from Mitch, i don’t know… it really depends on the number that we’ll have to pay him.

    It made all the basketball sense in the world to be below the second apron until we went on this unexpected playoff run. Or more precisely, as long as Giannis was a possibility. We would have had one less first to trade and couldn’t aggregate. So whatever Dolan thought, or if he was even paying attention , before then is irrelevant.

    “Were hard-capped” is too passive a verb, IMHO, and as with the Yabu example offered up a couple days ago, confuses/reverses the causal arrow.

    This is also wrong.

    Not only was there no basketball reason to go over the second apron last summer, it was (nearly) mathematically impossible to.

    The only reason we were even close is because we used the $5.5M TPMLE.

    1

    I found this Dolan story from last week to be very telling, btw:

    Dolan still didn’t believe what he was seeing. “It was like when you’re in your car on a snowy day,” Dolan said. “When you start skidding down the road and you know you’re going to hit something, but there’s no impact yet, you can’t get out of the way, you can’t move the wheels and you’re just waiting for impact. That’s what it felt like. It was like an out-of-body experience.”

    Dolan’s not the kind of guy who listens to people when they tell him you have to drive differently in the snow. He’s an idiot who learns by crashing his car, probably multiple times.

    That’s what’s going on here with him and the second apron.

    I’ve given this idiot way too much of my time this week and I need to sign off and enjoy a weekend away with my little guy. But before I go I will leave Leon with the greatest compliment I can ever give him:

    Even though it looks certain that Dolan is going to senselessly steer this car into a tree, Leon gives me hope. He has negotiated with Dolan and pricks like him his whole life. If anyone can figure out a way to get this moron to change his mind, it’s Leon Rose.

    Godspeed.

    I don’t buy that they were blindsided. They were $53,000 and change under the SA two years ago and $230,000 and change under the SA last year. They’ve rarely drafted and haven’t put a 1 in the regular, normal 1 draft slot number for years — clear evidence of picking and choosing your spots, and pinching pennies.

    I don’t understand this point at all. In both years they were hard capped at the second apron because they traded for Mikal (24-25) and used the TPMLE (25-26). There’s every reason to believe they thought these moves made the team better than going over the second apron would’ve, and because of, you know, the rules of the CBA, it was truly a one-or-the-other situation.

    It’s not analogous to this offseason at all, in which it’s blatantly obvious that the 26-27 team is optimized by going over the second apron.

    Edit: oh, ptmilo beat me

    Tidbits of reporting from this AM:

    Stein says the Nets are pursuing Mitch, which seems to me like little more than an attempt at trolling. What value does Mitch have to a horrible team with no path to contention anytime soon?

    Katz confirms that we can put to bed the idea that this is simply basketball strategy. The front office sees the same thing we do–going over the second apron for a single season is hardly a huge deal, and gives us the best chance to defend our god damn title. It’s literally just fuckin’ Dolan:

    The Knicks’ front office knows this. And yet, it also understands that dipping below the second apron would lead to much of its depth flocking elsewhere, which is why, despite Dolan’s desires, it wants to go over the second apron, according to league sources, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. But so far, Dolan has not changed his mind.

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