Goodbye, D-Rose

The Knicks say goodbye to an important part of their culture as a big decision for Josh Hart gets pushed back.

Good morning! I hope you had a restful weekend, because this week promises to be an active one. The Celtics, Wizards, Grizzlies, Suns and Warriors already made significant trades to kick off the summer, but we may just be getting started. As usual, stick to the KFS Newsletter and Substack chat every day for the most comprehensive breakdowns and analysis of everything even remotely relevant to the Knicks.

🗣️ News & Notes ✍️

🏀 Late Saturday night, Josh Hart agreed to extend the deadline on his $12.9 million player option for the 2023-24 season until Thursday at midnight. The move would seem to benefit the Knicks, giving them more time to gather information on their cap needs for the upcoming year, but the decision likely benefits Hart as well.

First, the logistics. Hart essentially has two choices: he could opt-in for $12.9 million next season and extend off that number, which he could do at a maximum of four additional years at $81 million total, or he could opt out and sign a brand new contract, either with the Knicks or some other team. The reason the opt-in and extend option is seen as something Hart might consider is because it shouldn’t require him to accept less than his presumed market value of $17-18 million even though the option is for just under $13 million. Assuming the Knicks gave him that max of four years and $81 million, that’s $94 million total over five years, or an average of nearly $19 million a season.

Even at that average annual figure though, getting Hart to opt in would still benefit the Knicks in the immediate future. The most obvious way is that it allows them to access the full $12.4 million non-taxpayer midlevel exception, assuming they waive the non-guaranteed contracts of DaQuan Jeffires and Isaiah Roby. In that scenario, Hart would be on the books for $12.9 million, New York could use the full $12.4 million mid-level, pick up Deuce McBride’s $1.8 million team option, guarantee Jericho Sims’ $1.9 million contract, and still be about $300,000 under the $165 million luxury tax line.

(I won’t get into all the reasons that Leon Rose wants to avoid being a tax team in 2023-24 because we’d be here all day, but take my word for it: the Knicks do not want to be a tax team this year, not when they can pretty easily avoid it and aren’t yet a contender.)

Needless to say, the Knicks may not yet know if they’ll need access to that $12.4 midlevel. Perhaps they don’t think a rotation spot is going to open up that would warrant them laying out so much money on a single player. On the flip side, they may have a player in mind, but aren’t yet sure if they’ll be able to get him to agree to a contract starting at $12.4 million. Pushing back the option gives the front office four more days to get info on the free agency landscape, not to mention the trade landscape. A big trade could mean the difference between them needing another rotation player or not.

(I know, I know…tampering? In the NBA? Preposterous!)

But there are other reasons the Knicks would like Hart to pick up his option. Generally speaking, more flexibility is better than less flexibility. Let’s say they don’t wind up spending the entire mid-level for whatever reason; getting Hart at a cheaper number for this season might still allow them to make a trade or trades in which they take back more salary than they send out without triggering the tax. They may also have an interest in bringing back Roby or Jeffries, or converting Trevor Keels from a two-way¹. Or do something else that hasn’t come up yet.

The better question is why Hart agreed to delay his option decision. Presumably, Hart would ideally like to opt out. If we believe reports about his market value, doing so gets him an additional $4 or $5 million this summer. It also allows him to hit the open market a year earlier, when he’ll be 32, or perhaps even 31 if he can negotiate a player option. If he opts in and extends, assuming no options, he’ll be 33 the next time he hits free agency - possibly past when he’ll be able to get one last big payday.

The thinking has gone that he’ll bypass these potential benefits if it helps the team bring in another key piece, perhaps even his former college teammate Donte DiVincenzo. But for as nice a guy as Hart is, he’s not in a position to be leaving money on the table. Opting in and extending for the full four years and $81 million brings another implied benefit, which is that Hart is getting more money per season than the market would otherwise offer.

But what if that’s not the case? What if there’s a cap space team out there that would give Hart $20 million annually or more on a four-year deal right now, perhaps with a player option? Extending his deadline gives Hart and his representatives more time to see if such an offer might exist in the marketplace, which would in turn give Hart the ammo to put the screws to the Knicks. If they’re currently trying to drive a hard bargain (say, have the final year of that four-year, $81 million extension be a team option, or try to work incentives into the deal), finding a firm offer from another team would easily be their best negotiation tactic.

And if that’s what ends up happening? New York could still pay Hart and avoid the tax, but it might come with some uncomfortable decisions. Do they take a more urgent approach in moving Obi Toppin for a future draft asset? Do they pay a few second rounders to swap Evan Fournier for a cheaper expiring contract? Or so they move a small salary such as Deuce McBride, who Ian Begley reported Thursday was a player of interest among other teams?

All of this is up in the air, but what’s very certain is that the Knicks are no longer in a place of not having to worry about impending financial hardships. Contending teams pay the tax; pretending teams do not. New York can and almost certainly will avoid the tax next season and may even be able to do so the season after that as well. After that though, new contracts for Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle (or whoever is occupying Julius Randle’s salary slot) will kick in. By that point, the Knicks will have done everything in their power to avoid being in a situation like the Hawks find themselves in right now - up against the tax for a non-contending roster, left to beg teams around the league to take meh contracts off their hands for real value.

The Knicks may be young and have a roster full of players with upside, but make no mistake about it: the future is now. They need to make an upside swing sooner rather than later. Maybe that’s not this summer, but the Hart scenario is the latest reminder that a big move is coming - likely faster than we think.

🏀 In light of all of the above, it should be no surprise that the Knicks declined their $15.6 million team option on Derrick Rose on Saturday afternoon.

The thinking had been that the front office might pick up that option to use as outgoing salary in a trade, but that would have all but guaranteed New York would be a tax team for the upcoming season, whether they used Rose’s expiring contract in a trade or not. As Ian Begley tweeted on Saturday, while the Knicks can certainly still make a significant trade, this decision on Rose suggests that nothing is immanent, or at least nothing that would require Rose’s contract, and thus, entail New York triggering the tax.

Even without Rose’s expiring salary, the Knicks still have more than enough outgoing money to acquire a star player, should such a trade materialize. The different now is that the highest salaried NBA players are unattainable without including one of their own higher salaried guys (i.e., Julius, RJ or Mitch) along with Evan Fournier’s expiring $18.8 million deal².

Rose can still be brought back on a minimum deal, but according to Steve Popper, his days with the Knicks are likely over as he’s expected to seek an opportunity where he can get rotation minutes. I’d keep an eye on the Bulls, whose ownership has prioritized profitability over practicality for decades and knows that a Rose reunion will mean a lot of extra tickets sold.

As for Rose’s legacy with the team, he leaves having played 152 games over four seasons in New York (the last two and a half years, plus his lone season alongside Melo and KP). That total ranks 125th in franchise history. He also ranks 83rd with 2138 points, 63rd with 578 assists, and 45th with a scoring average of 14.1. None of those are the numbers I’ll most associate with his time here though. My top three:

• 10.6: the number of points per 100 possessions New York outscored their opponents by in the 937 minutes Rose played here in the 2020-21 season.

• 2: The number of players to finish ahead of Rose in the 6th Man of the Year race in that first season here. After he was traded from Detroit, Rose was the best sixth man in the league, and at worst one of the two most impactful Knicks on the roster.

• 35: The minutes Rose averaged in New York’s first round playoff series vs Atlanta. For most of that time, he was unequivocally their best player, starting the series by putting up an efficient 17, 26, 30 and 18 points before finally running out of gas in the final game.

More than the numbers, ask yourself: how many players can say they were one of the top two guys on a Knicks playoff team over the last 40-plus seasons? It’s not a long list, but Rose is on it. If you’re making a list of the top 50 Knicks in history, he has to be in that conversation, even if the majority of that impact came in a 40-game stretch (35 regular season appearances and five playoff games) in one season.

🏀 Naz Reid agreed to a three-year, $42 million extension to remain Minnesota’s backup center, leading to some speculation as to whether Karl-Anthony Towns may find himself in a new home by the end of the summer. Anything is possible, but the Wolves don’t have to do anything before the 2024 offseason if they don’t want to, or at least not for salary cap reasons. My guess: they’ll certainly listen to offers, but their asking price will remain sky high until they can see this roster together for at least part of one more season.

🏀 The Knicks released their summer league schedule, to be played in Las Vegas in a few weeks. Other than Trevor Keels, its unclear whether anyone else of note will be a part of the action. The dates:

• July 8 vs Philadelphia (5 pm, NBATV)

• July 9 vs Brooklyn (5:30 pm, NBA TV)

• July 12 vs Orlando (8 pm, ESPN2)

• July 14 vs Boston (7 pm, ESPN2)

🏀 New York made some post-draft additions, signing Overtime Elite’s Jaylen Martin and Kentucky’s Jacob Toppin to two-way contracts. They also added Race Thompson to their summer league roster. Martin is very much a developmental project with significant physical upside but a long way to go with his shot. Jacob Toppin is…Obi’s brother.

🙋‍♂️ Ask Macri📬

Today’s question comes from Cole, who asks:

How should the Knicks value (or balance) continuity? Consistent cores were a theme across the conference semifinalists with teams built around newer pieces — CLE, SAC, LAC — getting bounced early. While I agree that we should look for a big upgrade (and remember how perilous doing nothing was in 2021-22), how should maintaining a consistent roster factor in?

Before I answer that, for as much as the Knicks did “run it back” to some extent in 2021-22 by re-signing Alec Burks, Derrick Rose and Nerlens Noel, I’d argue that the biggest reason they struggled was because they tried to switch things up too much. In bringing in Kemba Walker and Evan Fournier, they not only upended the defensive identity of the team, but they introduced two high-usage players into one of the most heliocentric (i.e., Julius-centric) offenses in the league. The results? New York was 16-21 in games Kemba played, 42-51 over the 93 games Evan Fournier played before he was removed from the rotation, and have been 82-59 in all other games in the Thibs era.

Bringing in Jalen Brunson also represented a massive shift, which was perhaps part of the reason for a 10-13 start. Even amidst that rocky beginning though, it was evident that Jalen and Julius made for a very cohesive pairing. Sure enough, they made beautiful music together before long.

The same can’t be said of Julius and RJ. If continuity is like the S&P 500, where the longer the investment, the better the gain, then the Randle / Barrett duo should be running roughshod over the league by now, having played more games together over the last four seasons than any two players in the league.

And yet, as I wrote about at the beginning of the offseason, those two make anything but magic, having been outscored by 281 total points in their 256 games together. Worse yet, it seems to be trending in the wrong direction. In the 1780 minutes Julius and RJ shared the court this season, the Knicks were outscored by 65 points. In the other 2211 minutes, New York outscored opponents by 305 points, or 6.6 points per 48 minutes, which would have been neck and neck with the Celtics for the best in the league.

This isn’t to say that continuity has no value. It’s impossible to watch Steph Curry and Draymond Green and not see a mind meld that has been built up over more than a decade. At the same time, like Jalen and Julius (but to a much greater degree) their kinship was evident early on, with Golden State winning the title in the first season Green was a full-time starter. We can point to Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray as another good example of a pairing that has aged like a fine wine, but like Dray and Steph, those two worked wonders almost immediately.

This certainly isn’t the case for all star-level pairings. Have Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown gotten markedly better as a pairing over the years? Did Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan over their six seasons together? John Wall and Bradley Beal over their seven seasons? Dame and CJ? CP3 and Blake?

The evidence would seem to suggest that continuity matters far less than how well a team’s star player(s) are able to use their superhuman abilities to make those around them better. LeBron James, for example, led the Lakers to the 2020 title with a roster that was largely overhauled from the previous season. In Miami, it took him and Dwyane Wade about half a season to figure it out. When he returned to Cleveland, the Cavs immediately ran roughshod over the league until injuries and a 67-win Warriors team got the better of them.

As for keeping non-star level rotation players together, the reality is that this simply doesn’t happen in the NBA like it used to. With Udonis Haslem retiring and Marcus Smart getting traded, there are only 17 players in the entire league that have never made an All-Star team and have been with their original team for more than four years. Out of those 17, several have repeatedly been on the trade block and/or are likely to change teams in the near future:

• 8 seasons: Myles Turner, Kevon Looney

• 7 seasons: Jamal Murray

• 6 seasons: Cedi Osman, OG Anunoby, John Collins, Maxi Kleber, Furkan Korkmaz, Jonathan Isaac³, Dillon Brooks

• 5 season: Deandre Ayton, Mitchell Robinson, Duncan Robinson, Anfernee Simons, Shake Milton, Robert Williams, Miles Bridges⁴

That means on average, one out of every two NBA teams will keep about one non-All-Star level player on their roster past their rookie contract.

In other words, while long-term roster continuity is a nice idea, the evidence suggests it is neither a reality nor a pre-requisite for success. Much more important is tinkering until you find the right combination (like the Knicks did this season) and having the right sorts of players who can adapt and succeed in the playoffs.

🏀

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1. For those wondering, two-way contracts are not counted against the cap, so Keels won’t be impacted by these cap issues.

2. They can still get pretty high without including one of the big money guys. For example, if Fournier, Obi and IQ were the outgoing contracts, they could take back a player making up to $37.3 million next season. Notably though, Zach LaVine and Paul George - two players mentioned as possible trade targets - exceed that amount.

3. Missed two full seasons.

4. Missed last season.