The smart money right now is on the stupid decision: Mitch is gone. Shamet stays. Anyone who has money on Dolan relenting doesn’t know Dolan. Not that there’s zero chance. Just something close to it, probably along the lines of hitting the lottery at the 14th spot under the outgoing system.

Assuming he doesn’t relent, what are the chances that Mitch stays and Shamet is the odd man out?

I’m putting it at about 20%. It would require Mitch to turn down something like $5+M AAV for whatever contract length he is offered.

First, is there any team with the cap space that is crazy/stupid enough to offer him a long-term deal of “starters” money? Meaning something in the $18-22M range, or alternatively, Josh Hart money? I’m guessing no, but it certainly isn’t impossible. And if that happens, I personally would understand the Knicks not competing with that offer. For me, the absolute max I would pay Mitch is the NTPMLE even allowing for going over the second apron.

So the question becomes, will Mitch be willing to sign for less than the NTPMLE, meaning like $5MAAV less?

Obviously it would be an extremely hard sell. Now, if anyone can sell Mitch on the idea, it would be Leon and WWW. But even so, that means means losing Shamet.

So my question to the board (and hopefully the answers are not loaded with Dolan hate, we’ve covered that ground) is:

Will Mitch take that discount if offered? And if yes, would you prefer that and losing Shamet over keeping Shamet and replacing Mitch with a combo of Huk and someone like Looney, Diabate, or Richards, to name a few?

Hearing Shamet talk on that podcast has now made me think maybe I’d rather keep Shamet. He’s a pro’s pro and having a slew of guards off the bench who can all get hot – Shamet, deuce, Clarkson – is a real advantage. And I think while Mitch’s particular skill set can’t ever be fully replaced, we can probably find a back up big who defends and rebounds decently well but is also maybe more reliable, better free throw shooter with a little bit more of an offensive game – and that might offset losing the elite skills Mitch does have.

This is where I’m at, too, Swifty. Shamet is also more realistic to bring back if Guitar Jimmy won’t budge about staying under the second apron. It sucks that we have to choose, but Landry is my choice. The other four starters plus Landry replacing Hart is a lethal freaking lineup, as we saw in the play we kept discussing yesterday, where we put Wemby in the blender with constant drives and kickouts until Mikal had an open corner 3.

Will Mitch take that discount if offered? And if yes, would you prefer that and losing Shamet over keeping Shamet and replacing Mitch with a combo of Huk and someone like Looney, Diabate, or Richards, to name a few?

I don’t think Mitch will take the discount because who knows how many more big contracts will he sign? Will this be the last one?
Between Shamet and Mitch, my preference is to keep Mitch, first of all because he’s the longest tenured Knick and second because his defense can change games when it matters most – in the playoffs.
Shamet can change games too, if he’s hot, but i have more confidence in getting a player close to Shamet’s production, while a player close to Mitch’s seems harder to find.

Either way, i’m still holding out hope that we go into the 2nd apron to sign Mitch and Shamet. Maybe Leon makes a promise to Dolan that he’ll get under it before the season ends. I trust Leon to be able to do what he thinks is best, he seems very good at convincing people to do what he wants.

The Bill Simmons podcast was fun today. He whined a good deal about how no one in the NBA is willing to pay up for Jaylen Brown after the great season he just had. “I don’t get it. He was top 5 in MVP and Portland won’t give up Donovan Clingan?” It’s nice to know the league has caught on to Boston’s sell high BS.

Also caught a little KFS and apparently Jeremy Cohen has already walked back his entire misguided “analysis.”

I do feel like Cohen often starts from an appeal to authority position: “If the front office wants to do it, then it makes sense, so let me figure out how best to articulate why it makes sense.” So when he assumed it was Leon who wanted to stay under the apron, he framed his analysis that way. Once it became clear this was all coming from Dolan, Cohen felt like he could attack the decision.

Both Dallas and Toronto reportedly in “serious” conversations with the Clippers about trading for Kawhi. Given his age, the fact that this past season was relatively anomalous about his health, and that we still don’t know what kind of punishment Kawhi might face from the league whenever the tree scam investigation is concluded, I wish either team luck with that.

I haven’t changed my view.

I think Shamet is probably more replaceable because we already have Deuce and we also have a few other young wings we could always get an upside surprise from is year or next. However, Mitch is probaly going to give us fewer games, is always a serious injury risk, the broken hand is still a mystery but hints at other issues, FTs are an issue in the playoffs and imo he’s not as consistently impactful as he used to be. Under no circumstances would I give him a long contract.

I’ll just throw out one other thing.

Deuce is due for a big payday that will probably make it harder to stay under the 2nd apron the following year wih all the other extensions involved. If they are hell bent on staying under it permanently, we could always trade Deuce for a pick asset and possibly bring back Shamet and Mitch.

My choice is just go over now, but assuming we do’t do that, then Mitch is the one out because he makes the most money and is the least reliable.

Looney or Nic Richards?

I think my preference might be Richards? He seems bigger and stronger than Looney and would replace more of the “presence” that Mitch brings to the table.

Anytime non-Mitch alternatives are contemplated it radicalizes me further in the direction of thinking we should keep Mitch come hell or high water. They are all bad! This is why they are available for a portion of the TPMLE or less.

When the Suns just traded for Miles Bridges, maybe they actually thought they were getting Mikal back for pretty cheap.

Virtually every poster here prefers to keep Mitch, especially over the available alternatives. Alas, it is what it is. Maybe it happens out of the blue, but for now there’s no use crying about it. The question becomes what’s the best feasible option, given the directive that hamstrings the front office?

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses User Verification plugin to reduce spam. See how your comment data is processed.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

12 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.06.29)”

Leave a Reply