On The Putback with Ian Begley, SNY’s NBA Insider is joined by Spotrac and The NBA Front Office Show’s Keith Smith to discuss the Knicks’ cap space they could spend before the start of the NBA season and if they have enough room to extend Mitchell Robinson.
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You bring up Mitchell Robinson. You know, Nick Knicks now with the Bridges extension, six core players, 30 or under, all under contract through 26 27. So, uh, that’s a commitment to this group. And with Robinson, I I mean, I don’t I can’t say that I have a strong read on whether the Knicks will or won’t extend him. Obviously, he’s extension eligible. Um just the early kind of chatter as far as people that I’ve spoken to. Uh Mitchell Robinson obviously gonna be here. The Knicks want him here. Um the Knicks, if they didn’t want him here, you can’t really trade him at this point because then who’s your backup center? But from an extension perspective, um if I had to guess, I would guess that this thing kind of goes into the season and it’s it’s a little bit of a wait and see approach. Uh Robinson obviously stellar offensive rebounder, stellar defender. Uh health issues have been uh you know a part of his story and so if I had to guess that’s that’s what I would guess that this thing goes into the season uh w with no extension but uh but we’ll see how things shake out over the next few weeks. Now if they did extend Mitchell Robinson Keith then they’re going into that second apron. Is that is that correct? Yeah. barring some other move that comes that gets them off money. But yeah, if we’re saying we’ve got the guys we’ve got that are under contract, uh and to be clear, this would be for next season, the 26 27 season. um if they if they extend Mitchell Robinson at any kind of reasonable number uh which is essentially what he’s on now or more um yeah they’re they’re going to be a second apron team because I don’t see them starting to move off money for other guys just to to get that done to avoid it. But again that so so I’ve gotten fond of referring to the second apron is like is like Las Vegas. It’s fun to visit. It’s okay to visit it for a little bit, but if you stay there too long, it’s going to get really expensive and it’s going to get really painful. So, you got to be careful, right? So, if you dip into the second apron for a year or two, you’re okay. You’re you’re fine. You’re not going to have any issues. If you stay for too long, that’s when you’re going to start getting the draft pick penalties and frozen picks and picks move to the end end of the round in addition to all the financial penalties and the then the roster restrictions as far as you can’t really sign free agents that make more than the minimum. You’re kind of limited in your trade options. It gets really tough uh to build out a team. But yeah, if the Knicks resign Mitchell Robinson or extend him and get him on a deal and they go into the second apron for a couple years, it’s not the end of the world. you just have to have an exit plan on the backside or if you’re winning titles, no one’s going to really care and you just kind of keep rolling things forward and and you figure it out, which is what I think the plan was for Boston. Uh but obviously they didn’t win the titles. Tatum got hurt and now they they they started their exit plan. We’ve seen a couple other teams. Milwaukee did did their exit plan to get out of the second apron. Phoenix uh did that as they reset their roster. So again, teams are going to they’re going to visit, but they’re not going to stay very long. And it’s interesting, you know, if an ownership group, uh, let’s say the Knicks win a title and and I’m sure that no one is going to care about Second Apron and and the money that it might cost to keep a title winning group together in New York. And and if uh if they start to calculate things with that Second Apron in mind, I I’m sure Nick fans will pull the hair out of their head. So, it’s creates an interesting dynamic for ownership, for front offices, for players, for everybody uh touching the league. And so, in the here and now though, we’re talking about summers ahead where the Knicks may or may not be above that second apron. Obviously, this year, you mentioned it, Keith, hard capped at the second apron. And so, where they are now is they have what uh not a lot of money between where their team salary is now and that second apron. They have a little bit to play with, Keith. about 3.7 million. Yeah, not a lot. And so you do have uh two spots here and I think one it’s obvious is going to go uh to to one of the to a player on a rookie minimum and then I think you’ll get a venerage minimum in there. Um I may need you to correct a mistake for me here. Is Kevin McCull eligible for that rookie minimum? He So he can’t he’s not eligible. So, he has a year service now because he was on a two-way contract last year. Um, so that would put him as a one-year service player. So, it’s a it’s a slight bump. It’s a little over two million uh that he would get a little less than the veteran minimum amount. And then the the big question that’s been asked is can he do that second round pick exception? And I’m under the belief um and I and I confirm this with a handful of people around the league that he is not eligible to do that because he’s already signed one contract. That needs to be an initial contract signed by the player. So, the Knicks still have his rights. They can bring him back on a two-way. They could bring him back on a uh one-year uh minimum contract. Again, that’s about $2 million or so uh there. But it starts to it starts to get that window gets real tight. And as we saw, they they kind of walked that tight rope last year with managing it right down to the day of, all right, we’ve got 14 days that we can be under 14 players and we’re going to push it here and then we’re going to call up somebody from the G- League. I believe it was Matt Ryan was one of the guys came up and did did a uh it was before 10day contracts were allowed. I call them pseudo 10 days, which are, hey, I’m signing you to a non-G guaranteed deal, but you’re not staying for more than I think it was 13 14 days, and then we’re going to reset our clock and and we’ll go that way. So, they’re they’re really good about about managing that that tight to that apron. But yeah, with McCuller, it’s it’s going to be a little harder uh to fit him. My guess is you would see someone more like Mohamd Diwara or James Naji who are eligible for um that that true minimum contract or the second round pick exception because they’ve never signed a deal yet in the NBA. And then like you said, a veteran minimum guy comes in and takes kind of the the I’ll say the next to last spot because that rookie guy is probably going to be in that that last roster spot if we think about it that way. Right. Right. And so if just to take it one step further, if they did did McCull and they signed him to his minimum, which is not that rookie minimum, um they would not be able to sign, let’s say, a Landry Shammit to a veteran’s minimum and stay under the Second Apron. Would that be uh would that prohibit them from doing that? And I don’t want I don’t want you to take your calculator out, but I’m just curious. No, I got it all right here, right in front of me. I I prepped and prepared. Um, so yeah, so that minimum uh from Muller would be a little over two million about about uh you know 50,000 over two million but like we said they’re 3.7 under. So that’s going to leave you only with 1.7. A veteran minimum is about 2.3 million. So you know without boring everybody to tears I know I know we’re getting ready for back to school here but we won’t teach a math class on everybody that that doesn’t fit right. So, what then what you’d be doing is you’d be saying kind of like they did a year ago where it is, hey, we’re going to bring you in, but go hang out in the G-League for a few months, then when we’re we’re able with a pro-rated minimum deal now, we’ll sign you. I I we’ll see. Maybe that is the direction they go. Um, but I tend to think they’re going to go the other way and say, “Hey, we we’re we want to fill it out with a true minimum and another guy.” Then that 15th spot will be what goes to somebody when when you can sign that pro-rated spot, which that would be months and months from now, right? And and a diara or a nagi uh would be candidates uh sorry, just to spin back a little bit, diara would be candidates for that traditional rookie uh veterans minimum. And then you there you’re talking about having enough room for another uh veterans true veterans minimum like a shammit. And so I had mentioned I think in a mailbag a couple weeks back that I thought McCulla would be a candidate for that veteran rookie minimum. I was incorrect. So just correction there. He is not eligible. he wouldn’t be eligible for that if the Knicks then wanted to add a veterans minimum player.
3 Comments
This video is my new source of joy. Thank you for making my day better💝
Please stop it nobody wants him he can’t score
Extend Mitch at all costs