Minnesota also traded KAT because of the second apron.

Don’t forget the Wolves. That’s why the Knicks even got KAT for so cheap.

Thunder survive because they just keep finding quality rotation guys for cheap in the draft or free agency. It’s really impressive

Jdub’s injury issues last season was a blessing in disguise cap wise for them. If he made all NBA last year 90% of the cap would be tied up in their big 3.

You can run, you can hide, but the 2nd apron is coming for everyone.

The next CBA negotiation will certainly be interesting. Seems like the players got fleeced and didn’t understand what the effect of the current agreement was going to be

thunder boutta get fcked too. I sense they’ll sell high on Jdub soon

Damn we already forgotten about

Spurs will too, they could reasonably pay Wemby and Harper (assuming he becomes their second star) and end up fine, even if Castle needs to be traded

Thunder survive the 2nd apron because SGA is the only player that matters. Everyone else is replaceable to various extents

The Nuggets aren’t as monied of a franchise. The Celtics actually chose to spend to keep the championship team together, but it made sense for them to punt and regroup once Tatum went down for a full season.

The Knicks have plenty of money and so far everyone healthy. There’s no reason for them not to go into the second apron other than to save Dolan money. (Yes 2nd apron is very restrictive, but it at least lets them keep their existing talent; the alternative of letting major pieces go just to have some extra leeway to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic is objectively worse.)

Dolan’s specialty has always been grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

Man, just imagine the Sixers this season if they kept McCain lol.

Nuggets don’t deserve the out lol

Jared McCain is not a difference maker.

Really feels like anything over the max contract should still only count for 25% of the cap, so teams that offer their guys super maxes dont hurt the salary cap as much. And then add something where if the contract gets traded then it fully counts towards the cap or something.

Yeah, a championship team should have an easier time defending their title.

But the problem is you have 1 or 2 years and thats it. JB is asking for a max, Maxey is deserving of a max… unless you guys short pay embiid, which i just dont see happening, its not going to last.. not every team can get a (aged) lebron james to come fill your roster gap for the minimum.

Unpopular Opinion: Super teams are good for the league.

you dont understand basketball. You really dont want to try and compare our organizations.. it wont end well for you on any front..

The second apron is not a death knell when you have the bird rights of the entire rotation.

This exactly and there’s a good 2.5 seasons before the 2nd apron penalties necessitate moving out of it. We rolled the dice on Dame working with Giannis and Khris coming back at the same time, which obviously didn’t happen but ownership at least tried to make it work in the 2nd until it wouldn’t work anymore.

This comes down to that Dolan just doesn’t want to pay the luxury to go into the 2nd apron and he even stated so last summer - no one should be surprised by where they are now when he himself stated that he was never going into the 2nd, even to extend his Championship team’s window.

Wanting to run it back until the wheels fall off has proven time and time again to be a terrible idea. The Celtics kept everyone from 2024 (statistically one of the best offenses ever, actually I’m pretty sure it was statistically a top tier defense as well) and got rocked last year. The Thunder kept everyone and JDub got hurt and Chet had a terrible series at the worst possible time. The Bucks speak for themselves, and the nuggets lost a couple key contributors but lost in the second round anyway.

People get way too caught up in the moment. When the Bucks won they said it was the first of many. When the Nuggets won they said it was the first of a strong run. When the Cs won they said it was a dynasty. When the Thunder won they said it was a dynasty. Players get hurt. Players regress. Player just straight up fall off. You need to keep your flexibility over everything in the NBA.

I don’t care if the Knicks FO knows this, or if Dolan is actually just cheap, I’m just glad they aren’t being short sighted about this one. I have absolutely loved KAT from well before he was traded to the Knicks and think he was the best player on the team no question in the playoffs. I’m okay with letting him go if the front office (which mind you, has consistently gotten hit after hit after hit) decides this is best.

I’m arguing that the Knicks dont think he’s worth the contract he qualified for regardless of the salary cap/apron.

The Wolves didn’t think so either considering what they traded him for.

I think it’s a very different situation than Jaylen Brown.

While there was a cap component to the Celtics decision, the Celtics also just didn’t think Jaylen Brown was very good. For instance, they internally viewed Derrick White as better.

That’s not the situation with KAT and the Knicks. They do value him, but it’s way more about the cap.

you’re thinking of a different Dolan, than James Dolan, who owns the Knicks.

You nailed it. I’ve been trying to make this point and fans haven’t grasped on to it. Yes only a few teams could be ok in the second apron, and the Knicks are one of them. The nuggets just let Peyton Watson essentially leave for a future pick. Are “you” really telling me they are going to use that pick and get a player better than Peyton Watson this year? They will also need to attach a player to make the salaries match. Or they could have simply gone into the second apron and kept a promising young wing. And next offseason unload salaries and get under for the repeater reason.

Instead they will be relying on aging vets with very few young guys and not many avenues to get a 23 year old wing on a good contract , like Peyton Watson.

The real penalty is the lack of flexibility it forces. It makes it near impossible to build a functional bench.

I’d agree in theory with pushing all in for 2.5 years and then getting out under it. But at the same time we haven’t actually seen a team endure the process of blowing through the 2nd apron, (over)paying all their players, then getting hit with the restriction of exact salary matching. Then they’d have to dump a bunch of overpaid players at the end of that window while giving every other GM the leverage of knowing they don’t have any other option but to trade.

In this hypothetical, the Knicks would near max 32 yr old KAT, pay 32 yr old Hart, super max 31 yr old Brunson, pay Deuce what he’s worth.

Brunson will be a Knick for life but now how do you dump 35 yr old KAT, 35 yr old Hart, 33 yr old OG, and/or 34 year old Bridges, with salary match restrictions. They’d get extorted for picks or just fall into the 2nd apron restrictions they wanted to avoid.

It’s a tough spot because I understand rewarding the championship and running it back, but especially with an older core, I get if the FO doesn’t want to feel the repercussions of rewarding everyone 5 years down the line.

“As the owners wanted”

Don’t kid yourself man. This is how you get rich people to have an excuse not to spend more money. Any player movement or distribution of talent is a nice side effect.

Mitch was

People (including Knick fans) keep ignoring that Dolan blindsided the front office by saying he won’t go into the second apron. We could’ve kept the team together for a year or two and positioned ourselves into a 1-3 year window before having to dismantle the team or start letting players go. He’s going to fuck up the roster to save money now that we got a ring.

Not the second apron, the repeater tax. When your end of bench ends up costing the same as your playoff rotation that becomes a problem.

Am I crazy or do the Knicks already have the team, their top 7 is the same other than meech and they replaced him with Drummond/Wiseman/brown

Which in theory should be ok

Pay these dudes, regain the vibes and you have at least two more years, health giving

Column A(the apron) is an excuse. Multiple teams have sat in the 2nd apron for multiple years and even added to try to make something happen.

If ever there was an excuse to go over the apron it’s to pay the All NBA center who just pushed your team over the top to a championship.

If that’s not enough you are a cheap ass owner and my needle leans towards the player 100%.

Ironically, when Dolan was involved in basketball operations, the Knicks were recklessly spending to hell and back

Funny that he’s choosing now to be a cheap fuck

How does the second apron handcuff this team? They could’ve taken the entire rotation from last year and kept it as long as they wanted with no consequences other than picks. If someone got injured or fell off a cliff it makes it hard because you can’t retool but if that happens we’re screwed either way.

It’s money, plain and simple.

No shit, psyop is a hyperbole, this is sports it’s not that serious..

Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams

Shams is a whore who will say anything to generate clicks. There’s nothing here.

The temperature is rising and youre laughing

This ain’t no “haha funny” shit, here

Shams is such a fucking dork it’s wild. He takes himself so seriously as if his job held any importance in the nba landscape.

Part of the criticism was that Shams was reporting that Giannis wanted out every year for like, 5 years.

Literally every title team of the 2020s has had to completely retool within 2 seasons of winning the title. It’s laughable that Knicks fans think their immune to this

Brother, Giannis didn’t want to be in Milwaukee and wanted to get traded. KAT and Hart want to be in New York more than anywhere else, but they just want to get paid as much as they can. Completely different situations lmfao

I’m not saying it isn’t true, but there can also be a bit of sensationalism going on.

If there is one fanbase that understands front office calamity, New York Knick fans might it, but after this summer, “contract talks” are certainly not what’s on the mind of fans i’ve talked to

Tame shit, dude. You just started following sports yesterday? They are not gonna show their cards for the public. These are multimillion dollar contract negotiations.

Btw, don’t go all “these fans do this and that” when you hide behind an NBA flair.

How have percentage based contracts ruined the value of players? There were a handful of dynasties with stars taking up a huge percentage of the cap. Kobe and Shaq were paid anywhere from 70-90% of the cap during their threepeat. Jordan alone was making more than the cap in 97. The warriors were paying 5 players together over 100% of the cap. Previous CBAs were just less punitive, and so teams could go well over the cap and the main penalty was higher tax. The current CBA has changed that and created essentially a hard cap. That’s not the fault of percentage based contracts. The knicks are paying their top 5 a lower percentage of the cap than the warriors were too.

So… 30%?

That’s true.

Correction. The Celtics didn’t want to give 70% of their cap unless it was for two top 10 players. They would have been just fine paying that if it was Giannis.

The problem with one max per team is that it makes MOVING a max contract basically impossible. It’s like, here take my disgruntled/flawed max guy for your disgruntled/flawed max guy.

I like the one max per team idea. Maybe something like one 30% max and one 25% max per team. Two players shouldn’t take up to 70% of the cap but I could see around 50-55%.

And that’s exactly how you kill dynasties. Look at Tatum and Brown or KD and Steph, or even KD, Westbrook and Harden at OKC. And now the Spurs. Teams should not be punished for drafting well.

nothing like a bunch of redditors finalizing what billionaires should pay millionaires

The first one. Similar to the NFL

The max exists so NY, Brooklyn, both LA teams and GS don’t become the Yankees and Dodgers. Without the max, it would be near impossible to keep a superstar player in Milwaukee for the majority of his career like Milwaukee kept Giannis.

Call me a biased Wolves fan, but I can’t see any fair read of this that comes off as KAT proclaiming he’s the Knicks’ franchise guy.

Taking the max contract given to you instead of risking a year and getting more is not “taking a discount”. I hated his snl sketch because of that bullshit.

Yea mf’er certainly should go into the apron for a few years. Just use the money he should be paying in property tax for MSG (40-50M per year) to go into the second apron. Pretty sure there was an article saying that this exemption totals $1BN + lost revenue for NYC at this point.

For real. And its two years under the apron when they really get you.

pretty much, the only real downside for the knicks would be losing the MLE to sign a vet

TBH I expect future CBAs to tweak the second apron to be more punishing the longer you stay in but to make it easier for teams to dip in and out of for competitive windows.

The max stays the same portion of the cap, which is a percentage of revenue. So it’s quite literally sustainable by definition. If the league stops making money they get paid less.

You said it yourself. These guys are between 29-31 in age. Two years from now, they will be at the ends of their peaks, just in time to trade some pieces. If anybody thinks Brunson-KAT-OG will compete at age 35, then they’re delusional.

Run this team back for 2 more years, extend them and go into the 2nd apron. Everybody is under contract, just pay the taxes and deal with it.

Also the replace KAT in the aggregate doesn’t work for this roster. Brunson, while a 1A, is not a generational superstar that can carry a subpar roster like Giannis or SGA. This is the perfect team for him. As a small guard entering his 30s, he has about 2 more years of contention with this team.

This isn’t me being sentimental about keeping the core guys. This is a lightning in a bottle roster, spearheaded by an unprecedented Jalen Brunson extension, that likely won’t happen again for the next decade regardless of our flexibility.

I’d argue they can if the next deal is less per year than his current deal. He’s set to make 22M next year. They could give him a ³⁄₄₈ deal that pays him 15M instead.

As a bucks fan, since we dont have our picks for the next few years, id love it if we threw the bag at him (somehow) as a fuck you to any team who thought they could get him for cheap

Maybe not top contenders, but there’s always a market. Nobody expected Trae to get that extension with the Wizards either

Serious…they could be in the 2nd apron for two years and keep the intact, WITHOUT too severe of penalties to the team. But I feel Dolan doesn’t want to pay the luxury tax financial penalties bc he’s being a cheap ass.

Jokic contract is 4 years old. Cap is 70 mil higher then when he signed so I think it’s a bad comparison. Jokic is eligible for 72 mil a year next year so 60 mil for kat isn’t crazy

Those jumps will always be limited to 10% at the most. Been that way ever since the 2016 off season where the cap spiked like crazy and it led to a whole bunch of crazy situations and contracts. Number one being KD just being able to sign with the Warriors without them even having to work to create cap space.

Sorry what I meant is that he wants 277 for 4 at the end of the day. If he wants a discount he will most likely not give up 77 mill, he will prolly give up 40 mill at MOST. Even then I think that’s unlikely. So 230 for 4 would be good for him if he wants to push it. But they really gotta trade either him, hart or bridges. And bridges feels like a piece they can move

It was more obvious when y’all weren’t good and were still getting a ton of attention.

He’s right though, this gets repeated everywhere but he literally took the max available to him at the time he signed his extension, if he waited another year he could’ve signed a 5 year deal instead of 4 which is obviously worth more money, but he did not take a discount

Bro. You can’t just tell a top 1% commenter to calm down.

Ah jeez I just realized you are one too lol