Mitch is Back!

The Knicks are about to get a BIG reinforcement.

Good morning! Big news day for the Knicks ahead of their bout with the defending champs tonight…

News & Notes

The cavalry is close to arriving - or at least its biggest member.

According to Tom Thibodeau, Mitchell Robinson was a full participant in practice yesterday. While there is still no set date for his return, the plan seems to be that he will come off the bench when he’s back.

Obviously, this is outstanding news. A healthy Robinson gives the Knicks 48 minutes of elite rim protection and offensive rebounding. While Precious Achiuwa has done yeomen’s work filling in for Robinson (not to mention every other member of New York’s front line at one time or another), Mitch is simply a better option at both ends. He also gives the Knicks more injury protection as they come down the home stretch.

I’ll have some more thoughts on Mitch below, including why he should absolutely come off the bench, but you can also watch my full instant reaction yesterday here.

Standings Check-In

Miami beat Cleveland, Indy beat Detroit, Phoenix beat Philly, and Boston beat Milwaukee without Giannis. Here’s where we stand, with the a top-three seed suddenly looking very gettable:

Game Night

TONIGHT: Knicks at Nuggets, 9:00 pm, MSG Network

Injury Report: Anunoby, Randle and Mitch are all out, while Zeke Nnaji is questionable for Denver.

Halftime Zoom: The Halftime Zoom REMAINS undefeated on the road trip. Come hang out. Here’s the link.

What to watch for: A close game, probably. For as awesome as they can be at times, the Nuggets have played almost exclusively close games when facing good teams this month. That said, they remain dominant in their building, with a 27-6 home mark that is second only to Boston.

Thursday Mailbag

Here’s 28 questions and answers to lead us into tonight’s big game…

Darryl Genovesi asks…Two questions…First, how good is Deuce actually? Is he, say, a Top 100 talent league-wide? And second, with OG’s injury, might we get him to re-sign him on the cheap, and is there any reason we should hope that we can? In other words, does how much we pay OG, on the margins, impact whether we are able to bring back I-Hart and/or Precious next year?

Thanks for the two-part question Darryl.

In response to the Deuce question, I think top 100 is probably pushing it. That’s no disrespect to McBride, but the NBA is as steeped in talent as it ever has been, so much so that Derrick White wasn’t even included on ESPN’s preseason top 100 player rankings, and he had strong support for the All-Star team just a few months later.

Could McBride get there? That depends on him maintaining something close to this level of efficiency (currently 63rd percentile for combo guards league-wide according to Cleaning the Glass after finishing in the 8th and 6th percentiles the last two years), but more than that, on his continued development as a pick & roll point guard. Despite his individual uptick, New York’s offense still falls to sub-basement level depths when he’s on the floor without Jalen Brunson.

Unless he can develop some ability to keep an offense afloat without the team’s primary initiator on the floor, his ceiling is always going to be capped at something closer to an eighth/ninth man or spot-starter in favorable matchups (a.k.a., smaller, guard-driven teams like Golden State) as opposed to a true sixth man.

As for OG Anunoby, there are three key markers we should use to look at the various possibilities that exist where his next contract is concerned:

Option 1: Opt-out and Extend

Anunoby has a $19.9 million player option for next season. Because the Knicks traded for him on December 30, if he opts out, they’ll be able to offer him a four-year extension on June 30 that would start at $26.1 million and total $116.9 million over the four additional years, giving Anunoby an average salary of $29.25 million over the next four seasons.

That puts him right in line with the contract Devin Vassell signed last offseason, and a few million short of Jerami Grant, who signed a deal last summer with Portland that pays him an average of $32 million annually. Those aren’t perfect player comps, but they are players who both sides could theoretically bring up in negotiations.

Option 2: Opt Out and Sign with a New Team for the Max

I’m including this here not because I think there’s a chance it happens, but because it’s an important reference point for negotiations (as in “we don’t need your max offer, but we need you to beat their max offer”).

As a player with between 7-9 years of service time, Anunoby can sign with a new team for up to four years and $181.9 million, for an average of $45.5 million. That would give OG something around the 20th highest average annual salary in the league (although he’d get lower on the list with each passing season).

Option 3: Opt Out and Sign a Max with the Knicks

The big kahuna: five years, $245 million, for an average of $49 million a season.

To be clear, Anunoby is not going to get the full sushi boat from the Knicks, but that was never going to happen anyway, injury or no injury. The interesting question is whether his elbow issues have scared off potential suitors from offering him their max (Option 2).

Take Philly, for instance, who must operate with a certain level of urgency every season for as long as Joel Embiid is there. Assuming Paul George re-ups in LA and Pascal Siakam re-signs in Indy, there will be no worthwhile unrestricted free agent targets who fit their timeline.

There are several other teams with max space or close to max space who’d love to pry Anunoby from New York (because, again, he’s the sort of player who could easily play 35+ minutes for any team in the league, which is part of what makes him so valuable), and it only takes one asshole to swallow hard and give him a blank check. Whether that mystery team would internally view such a contract as an overpay or not, players of OG’s caliber simple don’t switch teams in free agency anymore, so they’d be paying not only for the player, but the right to get that player via a method that is usually unavailable.

Unless the medicals feature some significant red flags, I bet at least one team would offer something close to the full four years, $181.9 million. Then again, if there are no red flags, the Knicks won’t have an issue opening up their own checkbook. My guess: even with the elbow stuff, Anunoby won’t accept Option 1, and the Knicks will wind up going five years, but at something below their max - maybe $180-185 million with incentives that can bring the contract to $200 million.

Long story short, I doubt the elbow issues matter much, if at all, when it comes down to how frugal the front office can be here. If the Knicks try to play hardball, there will be another team waiting to hit it out of the park.

However, when it comes to OG’s contract impacting their ability to make other moves, every dollar could wind up mattering quite a bit.

Looking forward to next season’s payroll, the Knicks have about $125 million committed to Randle, Brunson, Hart, Mitch, DiVo, McBride, Bogey and Sims (both of whom are fully or mostly non-guaranteed, but who I’m assuming the Knicks pick up, in Bogey’s case because that salary slot is a valuable asset, and in Sims’ case because he’s cheap labor). Any realistic OG number takes them flying past the $141 million cap, and we haven’t even accounted for new deals for I-Hart and/or Precious, both of whose cap holds will be on the books until they’re either signed or exit via free agency. The Knicks are also currently slated to have two first round picks, which are slated to account for $4.5 million total based on current projections.

This is where the conversation gets complicated, because we’re not only talking about potentially avoiding the $172 luxury tax line this season, but waiting as long as possible before you cross the first apron ($178.6 million) or second apron ($189.5 million). It’s highly unlikely the Knicks become a second apron team next season, but with new deals for Jalen and Julius (or whoever they eventually trade Julius for) on the horizon next summer, the contracts they sign this summer could very well be the difference in which apron they’re skirting or crossing for 2025 and beyond.

Getting back to the immediate future, if we assume a conservative starting salary of $35 million for OG, that takes us to $160 million. Even if they retained Precious over I-Hart (I’m assuming Achiuwa would cost less; Bobby Marks’ recently projected him at $8-10 million annually, whereas I-Hart would likely command something between the full $12.4 million non-taxpayer MLE and his early bird number starting at just over $14 million), that plus minimum salary holds and even one rookie salary would put them into the tax. In short, I doubt that any haggling with OG is going to prevent them from being a tax team next season.

But I could definitely see a world where a higher 2024-25 salary for Anunoby, plus retaining Hartenstein and using one or both picks, could push them up against the first apron in ‘24-25…and we haven’t even gotten to the possibility of a big trade adding salary and/or them using their midlevel.

Best guess: they’d love to come out of this summer with both Anunoby and I-Hart, but still ducking the first apron (and don’t rule out them dealing away one or both first round picks for future draft assets if it means ducking the apron). I think they can get OG (and I-Hart) to agree to a number that gets them in just under the line.

More likely, I imagine they hope to use one or both of those picks to trade for a star, which would in turn lessen the blow of being a first apron team, since the primary apron restrictions hamper the ability to pull off big trades, and in this scenario, they’d only be above the first apron to begin with because they already made their big trade.

Final answer: be very happy the Knicks have Brock Aller on their payroll to deal with all this stuff in more detail.

Mitch asks… Regarding Hartenstein and Precious — do they try to keep both? Can they? Other than a star trade, it feels like Hartenstein should be priority #2 this offseason, obviously behind resigning OG. My personal preference is to have Hartenstein as a long term center.