Good morning! Mr. Konchar, we hardly knew ya’…
News & Notes
🏀 We got another flurry of roster moves yesterday, with the headliner being that John Konchar was waived. Per Ian Begley, Konchar had been away from the Knicks this week tending to a personal matter and the two sides have decided to part ways “for now.” With Konchar out, in comes Tony Bradley, another center competing for a roster spot. On Bradley, Mike Brown admitted “we’re looking for bigs” and noted how he’s a veteran who has hurt them in the past. Bradley has spent time on six teams in eight years, including Indiana in the ‘24-25 season and Atlanta last year.
In addition to those moves, New York also gave camp invitee Jaden Akins their final two-way spot. Akins is a combo guard who was on the Summer league roster, and before that had a nice G-League stint for Detroit. The Knicks also signed and waived Toby Okani, who will presumably join the Westchester Knicks.
🏀 Deuce McBride spoke to the media for the first time yesterday and sounded like a man who’d very much like to remain in New York for the foreseeable future. Speaking openly about the difficulties he had following his sports hernia, McBride said it’s “kind of crazy thinking about how unhealthy I was playing through that playoff run.” Similar to the sentiment McBride shared with me back at Fanatics Fest in July, it’s clear he feels like he sacrificed for the team even though he wasn’t near 100 percent. Now, it’s their turn to repay the favor.
To that end, I thought Jonas Plaut nailed the big picture scenario where Deuce and the Knicks are concerned in his latest edition of The Cap Crunch (if you’re not subscribed, do yourself a favor and change that). Read the whole piece, which goes through the nuts and bolts of why this situation is so complex, but I thought this section was particularly instructive:
In this scenario, the issue may not be whether McBride is worth the contract he seeks; the organization may simply determine that the financial cost of retaining him does not fit within its preferred timeline. McBride could therefore find himself squeezed out of New York not because his value has diminished, but because the Knicks’ broader financial plan leaves no room for the value that he has created.
The “timeline” and “broader financial plan” Jonas refers to is of course the dreaded second apron, and the apparent mandate to stay under it moving forward. To that end, this isn’t just a matter of fitting McBride’s potential ‘27-28 salary on the books next to new contracts for Towns and Hart, but making sure his salary moving forward doesn’t take them over the second apron once new pacts are handed to Brunson and Anunoby. Again, this isn’t about McBride in a vacuum, as Jonas explains:
If the Knicks ultimately commit meaningful money to McBride, along with Alvarado and Shamet, the organization could find itself allocating a significant amount of salary to a trio of smaller guard-wings while also paying an increasingly punitive Tax bill. None of the contracts need to be particularly large in isolation for the cumulative cost to become meaningful. As the Knicks enter potential Repeater Tax years, resource allocation will take on heightened importance. The question may therefore become not simply whether each player is worth his individual salary, but whether allocating those resources, and absorbing the heightened financial costs that follow, is justified within the broader Cap Sheet.
I’m as curious as anyone to see how this shakes out. Jonas pitches a three-year, $30 million extension for McBride that makes sense because even if they ran into a problem once new deals for Brunson and Anunoby kick in, they’d easily be able to move Deuce on that number if need be. More importantly, they wouldn’t need to do so for two years.
\Who knows how many more banners they can raise in that time?
