Man, I kind of wanted to share joy. It’s good that we aren’t yet focused on the draft or free agency. The Knicks have the most options this offseason than any year in my recollection.
Brunson / McBride
DDV
Hart
Randle
Robinson
This is basically their guaranteed contracts. Then they have a ton of picks, trade exceptions, bird rights. If we want to preach about the FO’s ability to wheel and deal, this offseason could be a textbook study. Thing is, we don’t really need anything.
1) Resign OG. He has a $19mm player option. Would love to see a Hart type transaction where he opts in and gets extended using Bird Rights.
2) Resign Hartenstein using early Bird Rights
3) Re-sign Precious using Bird Rights. I see the upside.
4) Consider Rokas Jokubaitus with the Biannual Exception (4.1mm). This triggers hard cap. So maybe do that last (or do it this year before the calendar year resets?)
5) Draft Pick 24. I have room here for a project. Thinking Tidjane Salem.
6) Draft Pick 25. Love me some Yves Missi
7) Draft Pick 38. Ryan Dunn? Probably need a stash pick or a two way contract here due to roster limitations.
8) TPEs we have three leftover from this year.
9) MLE - I mean, add Bruce Brown to the goons?
10) Bogs Option has a dead money hit. I’d exercise that option and then explore trades for a better fit. Like Jonathan Isaac.
11) Burks Bird rights? I mean, gotta keep a guy like this around, no?
We haven’t gotten into the use of the future picks. This team is set to cap out on hard cap and roster spots if they don’t make moves or stash players. From there you can really have conversations about adding positional size and talent through trades.
Without any pre-tenses, I think we all love what this team is right now and they have built it without abusing any of their future resources and without much cap burden. They can just keep adding institutional value while being extremely competitive. If it were me, I would use this year to take this team up to the hard cap and then just make smart decisions.
Brunson / RokJok (Bi) / Brown (MLE)
Deuce / DDV / Burks
OG / Hart / Salum / Dunn
Randle / Bogs / Achiuwa
Hart / Robinson / Missi / Sims
My overall point is that not only is this team set to “run it back”, they can easily add to the core 10 man rotation without mortgaging the future. If anything, they need to consolidate assets to make use of the exceptions available to them.
Been a long time coming, but “we here”