I figured this warrants its own thread. After trading out of the first round (and acquiring 5 second round picks) the Knicks did not want to add first round salary to the books. As things currently stand, Knicks have the 5 starters plus Deuce, Kolek, Dadiet, and seems like Diawara under contract. Let’s add Jose who will be back, and count his current player option salary of 4.5M. So that’s 10 players, with 4 roster spots to fill, and about 208M in committed salary. Second apron is 222M, so that leaves 14M to fill 4 roster spots.
Now the Knicks could move Dadiet and open an extra 3M, which would mean 17M in second apron space, but 5 roster spots to fill. If the Knicks add a second round pick, that starting figure would only be about 1.5M to the final number, which isn’t much.
But for the sake of simplicity, let’s just use round numbers, Knicks currently have 4 roster spots to fill to get to 14, second round picks can make about 1.5M, and a vet minimum deal will count as 2.5M towards the books. You have 14M to play with (with ways to create more being trading Dadiet’s 3M or Jose opting out and signing for a little less) and we can assume at least Shamet will be part of that number.
In this scenario, you could sign shamet to a starting salary of 7.5M, sign a second round pick, and bring in 2 vet minimum players (guessing they would be big men) and be at that 14M number, meaning right at the second apron. This is just an example. But use these numbers to play around with the different scenarios, as this seems like the most likely path the Knicks are taking.