"IT AIN'T OUR MONEY"

All the other teams in the league Love and Adore Us

Knicks top list of teams to pay luxury tax
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com

The New York Knicks can't be feeling very lucky on this Friday The Thirteenth.
Show Me The Money

Big spending doesn't always pay off. Just ask the New York Knicks. The Knicks, who missed the playoffs last season with a 33-49 mark, were strapped with a $45 million luxury-tax bill Friday. That means New York owes almost $40 million more than the second-highest paying team in the Mavs, who finished with the league's best record.

Team Money Owed
1. Knicks $45,142,002
2. Mavs $7,204,968
3. Nuggets $2,022,418
4. T-Wolves $998,536
5. Spurs $196,082

By the end of this business day, you see, each of the NBA's five luxury-tax-paying teams from last season will have received an official invoice from the league stating the "net" amount they must remit.
In the Knicks' case?

The payment due by July 25, according to a league memo distributed this week to all 30 teams: $45 million and change.

That's $45-plus million for a team that went 33-49 and missed the playoffs for a third successive season. It was team president Isiah Thomas' first season as Knicks coach, following a 23-59 nightmare under Larry Brown, with New York going 4-14 to slip out of playoff contention after Thomas received a contract extension on March 12.

The next closest tax bill is the Dallas Mavericks' $7.2 million.
Teams that carried a payroll higher than $65.42 million for the 2006-07 season are required to pay a dollar-for-dollar tax on every dollar over that threshold. The following five teams are required to pay as follows:

The 25 non-tax-paying teams, meanwhile, will each receive 1/30 of the cumulative tax amount, which computes to nearly $1.9 million per team.

And the Champion Spurs are on the opposite end of the spectrum moneywise.



[Edited by - TrueBlue on 07-13-2007 7:56 PM]

I find it interesting that everyone is so upset that a man chooses to skip a voluntary work function to celebrate his anniversary when it is public knowledge that a team that one 33 games has the highest luxury tax. All of the contracts are on the current GM's watch. I guess Knick fans have become so used to the mediocrity and handcuff of the salary cap that they choose not to care. I am always excited with Isiah the results Isiah gets at the draft but the lack of outrage about this surprises me.

Although I think people are already numb to the fact that the Knicks are one of the worst run franchises in sports.

Posted by tomverve:

Posted by CrushAlot:

All of the contracts are on the current GM's watch.

Right, except for Allan Houston ($20mill), Jerome Williams ($7mill) and Shandon Anderson ($7mill). But besides that $35mill or so, yeah, the rest is on Isiah.

jyd doesn't count b/c he was amnestized.

i'm not sure about h20 tho - he retired due to medical reasons, does that $$$ count against the cap last season? i thought 1 year after medical retirement it comes off the books (that would've been last season). that would be the only explanation why he wasn't amnestized.

[Edited by - djsunyc on 07-14-2007 05:27 AM]

This cracked my up.... Berman, later in the same luxury tax article:

The Knicks' predicament is why Isiah Thomas is not going to use his $5.3 million mid-level exception on a free agent. Because they are over the luxury-tax threshold, a $5.3 million annual salary would translate to $10.6 million. Jerome James and Jared Jeffries each signed a maximum $30 million mid-level deal the past two summers.

Could it also be that the Knicks would have 18 guys on the roster????

Posted by martin:

From the Berman article this morning:

Some of the expense came on players no longer on the Knicks' roster, but with contracts still on the books: Allan Houston ($20 million), Jalen Rose ($15 million) and Maurice Taylor ($8.5 million). Those contracts came off the books after this past season.

Insurance may pay Houston's contract but I bet the Knicks are paying the luxury part.

all of it, or just the 20% of it not covered by insurance?