Top 3 Questions for Training Camp

Will KAT be a distraction? Is Pacome’s time ending? And who gets the last roster spot(s)? We address all that today, plus compare the Knicks to other defending champs.

Good morning! MEDIA DAY IS TODAY! Holy shit, did that sneak up on me. I don’t know about you, but I am not prepared. As I’ll share more in my annual summer diary later this week, I feel like I didn’t get into offseason mode until late July. The price of success, amirite?

Anyway, we’ll kick off the start of camp with my annual 3 Questions today. If anyone has anything else they want covered over the next few weeks, hit me up via email - macri@knicksfilmschool.com. As a reminder, we’re back to 5 days a week now, but that’s only for FULL subscribers. If you aren’t and want to change that, you know what to do:

Let the fun begin.

News & Notes

🏀 Kudos to the great Ian Begley, who has been hinting for weeks that two of New York’s two-way spots would go to Tyler Nickel and Kevin McCullar Jr.

Yesterday, the Knicks made that official, signing both. As a reminder, two-way players are not permitted to be on postseason rosters and their salaries do not count against the cap or the aprons. Nickel’s presence on a two-way only further emphasizes the need to create as much space under the second apron as possible, as I’m sure the front office would like to convert him to a standard NBA deal before the end of the season.

🏀 Congrats to Jalen Brunson on his successful Saturday Night Live appearance this weekend, and to his teammates for their amusing cameos. For further “analysis” of the episode, be sure to tune into today’s episode of the KFS Podcast.

Top 3 Questions for Training Camp

In the olden days - the 2010’s - before the second apron hovered over teams like the Wicked Witch of the West flying over Emerald City, there was only one question a defending NBA champion faced at the precipice of a new season:

What will you do for an encore?

Rough translation: After climbing Everest and knowing how hard it is, both mentally and physically, can you muster up the motivation - and make the necessary sacrifices - to do it again? Specifically in New York’s case, they just won the title by winning nine of 10 road games in the NBA playoffs. They proved that home court means very little, at least relatively speaking, and they know their repeat chances will not necessarily hinge on their seeding in the East. How does a team with that knowledge motivate itself for the NBA’s grueling six-month slog? Having a “0-0” mentality did the trick when it came to winning 16 times in April, May and June, but it’s not realistic for 82 games.

Every champion in the history of the league deals with this stuff. Some respond better than others, but most get through the regular season well enough, even if we’ve only had three repeat winners in the last 20 years. Of the last 20 champs, 15 have finished with a top-three seed the following season. The five exceptions:

• The 2006-07 Heat, who finished 44-38, good for 4th in the East, and got swept by a middling Bulls team in the first round.

• the 2011-12 Mavericks, who lost Tyson Chandler to the Knicks in the offseason, finished 7th with a record of 36-30 in a lockout shortened season, and got swept by the Thunder in the first round.

• The 2014-15 Spurs, who finished a deceiving 6th despite going 55-27. They lost to the Clippers in seven in perhaps the greatest first round series ever played.

• The 2020-21 Lakers, who finished in 7th at 42-30 in the abbreviated post-COVID year and lost in six to the Suns in round one.

• The 2022-23 Warriors, who finished in 6th at 44-38 but upset Mike Brown’s Kings in seven games before falling to the Lakers in six.

Is there a common thread between these five? If anything, you can point to the ages of prominent players on every team, but that doesn’t really pass the smell test for me. I find them all to be somewhat unique. The ‘22 Warriors had the feeling of “one last ride into the sunset” even as it was happening. The Lakers were a bit of a mess, as detailed in Yaron Weitzman’s excellent book “Hollywood Ending,” and it didn’t help that LeBron and AD played a combined 81 games. The Spurs were awesome and just so happened to play in the most stacked Western Conference in history. The Mavs had been trying to reach the summit for a decade. After doing so, the air went out of the balloon, aided by losing their All-Defense center. And then in 2006, Pat Riley used every last motivational trick in his book, famously sticking his head in a pool of ice water for several minutes. The Heat couldn’t keep the dial at 11 after their title run, and the come-down was brutal.

I don’t sense any strands of similar DNA in this Knicks team, even if I’m sure they’ve all spent the summer enjoying themselves to a requite degree. None of these players besides Deuce McBride has been here for more than four years, and most of the core group has been here for two or less. They shouldn’t feel emotionally spent or like they finally did it after years of heartbreak even if us fans bring a lot of that type of energy. If anything, they should feel like their window is still wide open. Now they just get to operate with the pressure turned down several notches.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be challenges, which brings us to our three questions going into camp:

1. Will the KAT contract thing be a distraction?

Allow me to answer this one up front: no, I don’t think for a second this will impact Karl’s play, despite Shams’ sentiments last week. KAT knows as well as anyone that this is a business and that the Knicks don’t mean any disrespect by trying to negotiate. I fully believe that this isn’t a matter of whether the Knicks want Towns here long term, but is simply about saving every dollar possible so they don’t, for example, have to jettison someone like Landry Shamet in a few years. I pitched 4/200. My guess is that KAT’s camp is at 4/265. At some point, they can decide to split the baby.

(One important note I’d like to clear up right now, because I’ve heard this mis-reported in some circles: there is absolutely a world where Towns opts in to his $61 million player option for the 2027-28 season and the Knicks can remain under the second apron. Accounting for KAT’s player option, adding salaries for OG, Jalen, Mikal, Landry Shamet, Jose Alvarado, Mohamed Diawara and Tyler Kolek, keeping Hart’s number at his $22.4 million team option, and then filling out the roster with five veteran minimum salaries, that brings the Knicks to $234.2 million in payroll. The second apron is projected to be $236 million. They could even decline Hart’s option and extend him at a ‘27-28 salary that is slightly higher than his current amount. No, this doesn’t include Deuce, but as I’ve written many times this summer, the writing is on the wall on that one. If anything, the current reporting on KAT’s extension talks clarifies why there’s been so much smoke about a Deuce trade. Unless Towns takes a serious haircut - something under $50 million in ‘27-28 - there’s no feasible way to bring back McBride and stay under the second apron. Putting him aside though, having Towns opt in and picking up Hart’s option and then working out extensions off of those numbers could actually be the best way to get those guys paid and remain under the second apron moving forward. Regardless, all this second apron talk has always been about ‘28-29, not ‘27-28.)

All this being said, Pat Riley’s Disease of More (or Disease of Me, if you prefer) is real, and the longer this drags on, the more likely it is to become a distraction. What happens, for instance, if the Knicks are mired in a disappointing regular season before the trade deadline and KAT remains without an extension. Would his name pop up in rumors?

Even then, I’m not sure how concerned I’d be. Towns name popped up in trade rumors last summer (with Giannis) and then again before the deadline, and he went on to have a spectacular run through the postseason. One way or another, I think this gets worked out. They’ll be fine.

2. When do they rip the Dadiet band aide off?

The key number here is 12.

As in, 12 second round picks the Knicks currently own, nine of which are from other teams, and only three of which come with protections of any kind.

As I’ve opined several times and as Stefan Bondy confirmed late last week, Pacome Dadiet has negative trade value. No one in the league wants his $2.9 million salary for this upcoming season, but it might not be a simple question of how many second rounders it’ll take to get rid of him. If you’ve been paying attention, that’s not really how this front office operates.

Bondy wrote in that same article that the Knicks tried to snag Moussa Diabaté earlier this summer but the Hornets wanted no part of Dadiet’s contract. Translation: New York wasn’t willing to sweeten the pot enough for them to take on unwanted salary. Charlotte may have balked, but this is still the sort of deal the Knicks want to make - one where they pay a price in picks to unload Dadiet but get a useful player back in return.

But the time limit on such an ideal world may be running out. If the Knicks can’t move Dadiet, they’ll be limited to keeping just one additional veteran from the handful they’re bringing into camp. In a sense, even if they don’t get a useful player back in a Dadiet trade, they’ll effectively be getting one by being able to keep an extra one of Brown, Konchar, Agbaji, Eubanks, Wiseman.

That brings us to…

3. Which vets have the best shot to make the roster?

If the Knicks can’t move Dadiet (or don’t want to yet because they find the price to be prohibitive), I assume that the battle for the 14th roster spot will be between Eubanks and Wiseman, both of whom are centers. Mike Brown may not be Tom Thibodeau, but the notion that he’s comfortable going into the season with only two true centers on the roster seems far fetched, especially when one of those centers is Andre Drummond.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the Wiseman/Eubanks question comes down to floor vs ceiling. Do you want the former second overall pick in the draft who the Pacers seemed legitimately high on when they signed him in 2024, or the undrafted journeyman who has been on six teams in eight years but has filled a rotation spot before? My guess is that Eubanks goes in with the advantage, but I’m sure Wiseman will be given every chance to impress.

If they can open a roster spot by moving Dadiet (or, I suppose, someone else), then we’ll get a nice competition between Bruce Brown, John Konchar and Ochai Agbaji. Like Wiseman and Konchar, this seems to be a floor/ceiling debate between Agbaji (ceiling) and Brown/Konchar (floor). Of these, I feel like Konchar is the easiest plug & play option if you need eight solid minutes off the bench, even if he is only a 35 percent career 3-point shooter. Agbaji’s ‘24-25 campaign in Toronto was legitimately intriguing because his shot finally came around to pair with his defense, but that just makes you wonder why the Raptors dumped him half a year later (his cratering 3-point percentage probably didn’t help).

As for Brown, it’s hard not to have visions of him cutting to the hoop and receiving passes from KAT given a) what Towns showed in the playoffs and b) how well Brown played off Jokic in Denver. Like with Agbaji though, I have to wonder why the Nuggets let him walk after a year in which he played in all 82 games and shot a very respectable 38.5 percent from deep, albeit on his customary low volume.

Honorable Mention: Would they really trade Deuce before the season?

Sticking this down here because I refuse to believe the answer is yes. A team would have to bowl them over with an offer and I just don’t see anyone doing that right now, not with every other team in the same position as the Knicks, just trying to see what they have in camp before targeting anyone from outside their organization.

But where there’s smoke, there’s often fire, and there’s been smoke surrounding the possibility of the McBride trade for a year now. KAT’s insistence on being paid something close to the max will only increase the billows.

Hopefully the wind blows this all away before the deadline, but my bet is that the Knicks go into the season with McBride, see how the first several months shake out and what their needs might be, and then address this one way or another before early February.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”