Buyouts effect team bottom lines, but not salary cap implications. Our concerns are not with the real dollars, but with the cap. Mills and Perry have had a lot of time to interact with Noah and to discuss his predicament with Fizz. The rumor seems to be that the collective decision is that regardless of money, having Noah around would be detrimental to the development of the team. Knicks don’t want him & nobody will take him at what he’s paid.
With buyouts making no difference, Knicks choices are if and when to stretch
No stretch = $18.5 M in 2018, $19 M in 2019
Stretch before 9/1 = $7.5 M in 2018, $7.5 M in 2019, $7.5 M in 2020, $7.5 M in 2021, $7.5 M in 2022
Stretch between 9/1 and next season = $18.5 M in 2018, $6.4 M in 2019, $6.4 M in 2020, $6.4 M in 2021
If the Knicks want to keep Noah around to preserve flexibly to the very last second while at the same time keeping JoNo away from the squad, that causes trouble with the players, the union, and the agents, all of whom you need to favor you if you want to be a player destination.
The clean approach is to part ways as soon as you can lock this year’s salary into the books. We intend to be an over-cap under-tax team anyway in years where both lines are projected to jump up.
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