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<\/a><\/p>\nAfter signing Dallas Mavericks\u2019 restricted free agent center Moussa Cisse to an offer sheet on Saturday afternoon, the Mavs matched it late Friday night.<\/p>\n
Not that it matters now, but this was a nifty little bit of business by the front office. The offer sheet didn\u2019t contain much guaranteed money (partially guaranteed for the first year; non-guaranteed in year-two) but paid Cisse like a veteran with at least two years of service time (hence the $2.45 million salary in 2026-27). That\u2019s about $265,000 more than Cisse\u2019s minimum would have been coming off his rookie season, hence the incentive for him to sign.<\/p>\n
The gamble that the Knicks made and ultimately lost is that the Mavs wouldn\u2019t match the offer sheet because they already had 15 guaranteed contracts on their books, including full time centers Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II and recently acquired big man Santi Aldama. Now, they\u2019ll need to waive someone (thus incurring a dead cap hit on their books) or make a trade.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible Cisse is the player they ultimately decide to waive, at which point the Knicks (or any other team) could sign him. Unless that happens though, New York is barred from trading for him for one year. For the Mavs, the move isn\u2019t exactly a vote of confidence in Lively III, who has appeared in just 43 games over the last two years and hasn\u2019t yet progressed to running as he recovers<\/a> from multiple right foot surgeries.<\/p>\n For the Knicks, the biggest takeaway is that they\u2019re still very much on the hunt for a third big man who they\u2019ll be able to get for the vet minimum. Oscar Tshiebwe is a name to keep an eye on (h\/t to the great Jeremy Cohen). It\u2019s also possible they don\u2019t fill the 14th roster spot this summer and hold an open competition in training camp.<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfc0 New York concluded it\u2019s Vegas residency much in the same fashion they began it, with a 110-88 loss to the Mavs. By the numbers, the Knicks were the worst team at Summer League, getting outscored by an average point differential of 13.6 across five games. They shot the lowest field goal percentage by a wide margin and were also last in 3-point percentage and free throw attempts, resulting in a scoring average of just 73.0 points – more than eight points below the next worst team.<\/p>\n On an individual level, no one really popped on Friday, although Pacome Dadiet did score a team-high 19 points. He finished as New York\u2019s top scorer in Vegas at 15.3 points, but made just 16 percent of his threes. Tyler Nickel ended a bit cold (3-for-11 from deep), but leaves with the second most total 3-pointers at Summer League (19) on a 41.3 percent hit rate. I\u2019ll take it. Jack Kayil played just 10 minutes and missed both of his shots, while Liam Robbins scored 14 points in 20 minutes. I\u2019m still pulling for the big guy to get a camp invite.<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfc0 Last but not least, it was a pretty cool weekend for your boys (and girl) at KFS.<\/p>\n Big thanks to our friends at Fanatics Fest and Knicks Twitter Day for hosting two outstanding events. Both saw Knicks fans out in full force, proving yet again that we are the best fan base in all of sports. The KFS spots from FF should be available soon, but in the meantime, I\u2019ll say here that Deuce confirmed what has been my sneaking suspicion for months: he was never fully healthy after returning from sports hernia surgery. I\u2019m now biased, but please sign that man to a contract extension.<\/p>\n Oh, and I hear there\u2019s a pretty good documentary streaming now on Peacock called \u201cThe Effect: Knicks in \u201926\u201d. Highly recommend to anyone with the service. <\/p>\n Chugging an entire gallon of milk.<\/p>\n Walking from one hotel to another in the middle of cloudless Vegas afternoon.<\/p>\n Slighting Jalen Brunson.<\/p>\n Life is filled with bad ideas, and this summer is a perfect opportunity to add my own fraught one to the list: Ranking the Top 100 Knicks of all time.<\/p>\n Or should I say, re-ranking.<\/p>\n As long time readers of this newsletter may remember, I celebrated the NBA\u2019s 75th season five years ago by counting down the Top 75 Knicks ever, from Pablo Prigioni<\/a> at No. 75 all the way up to Patrick Ewing<\/a> at No. 1. <\/p>\n On one hand, the experience was a fruitful one. Making the list not only forced me to learn more about Knicks history than I ever thought possible, but its also made me reconcile what exactly \u201cgreatness\u201d means in the context of one team\u2019s entire existence. <\/p>\n On the other hand, the entire project only reinforced my inherent belief that list-making is nothing more than fun fodder for discussion and debate. There is no possible way to definitively rank the greatest players in the history of a franchise any more than there\u2019s a way to rank the top 100 soft cheeses or native birds of Madagascar.<\/p>\n And yet, I pored over this goddamn thing. Oh did I pore. <\/p>\n I ranked, and re-ranked, and then re-ranked another three dozen times, and then after I started writing the first entry and attempted to justify my order, I realized I\u2019d completely botched the last third of the list, so I scrapped that part and basically did it from scratch.<\/p>\n And that was all so I could justify the list to myself. Forget about proving its worth to anyone else.<\/p>\n But I promise you: it was totally worth it. At the end of the day, stuff like this is fun. It\u2019s a way to spark conversation, and better yet, the perfect opportunity to honor all of the important players who helped break a 53-year title drought. There\u2019s also a few mistakes from the first time around that I\u2019m looking forward to correcting.<\/p>\n Before we get to that, a word on what exactly I\u2019ll be doing. Twice a week for the next nine weeks, I\u2019ll be writing about a different Knick from the Leon Rose era. Most of these players weren\u2019t here the last time I did this list, and few have either come and gone since I did the Top 75 or have joined\/moved up in the rankings over that time. I\u2019m expanding the list from 75 to 100 because I want to get to as many Knicks from the current roster as possible. Every time I write about a new Knick, I\u2019ll include the ranking of the players immediately above them, right up to the next Knick I\u2019ll be writing about (so for instance, if the first Leon Rose era Knick I\u2019m writing about is ranked 100th, and the next one is ranked 85th, I\u2019ll reveal the list up to 86 when I write about the 100th ranked player. I hope that makes sense.)<\/p>\n On that note: it should again go without saying that this is not an exact science. I did, however, compile a statistical database of where all 100 players ranked all time in certain categories throughout franchise history. Those categories are:<\/p>\n I also noted how many times each player started or came off the bench for a playoff team, and then how deep those teams made it into the postseason.<\/p>\n The goal of all this legwork wasn\u2019t to come up with a points system that would spit out a list based on these specific inputs, but merely to give me a broad strokes idea of how much these players produced while they were Knicks, and more importantly, how much of that production occurred in the highest leverage games.<\/p>\n The end result – and here\u2019s where we get to why this was a fraught idea to begin with – forced me to ask impossible questions with no right answers. For instance, how does one compare the following four players:<\/p>\n Player 1: an 8th man on a Knick title team who elevated to 6th man by the end of the finals thanks to hitting several massive postseason shots, but because of injuries and lack of service time, barely ranks in the top 200 for regular season minutes and points<\/p>\n Player 2: a 4th or 5th starter on multiple teams that made the second round who stuck around long enough to rank inside the top 60 for regular season minutes and points<\/p>\n Player 3: a bench player who was arguably New York\u2019s top dog when he was at his very best and who helped lead them to one postseason appearance, only to get smoked in the first round, with regular season minutes and points rankings around 100.<\/p>\n Player 4: a key starter on multiple finals teams, including one season in which he made the All-Star team, but whose entire career took place before 1955.<\/p>\n In case you haven\u2019t figured it out, these are the descriptions of four actual players who I ranked between 60 and 80 on the list (anyone who correctly guesses all four will get a shout out in the newsletter at the appropriate time).<\/p>\n Is there a right order for them? To heck if I know. Mostly, I just went with my gut, and that includes putting certain players higher or lower simply based on anecdotal evidence that may not be totally rooted in data.<\/p>\n With that caveat, four final notes on this process, and then we\u2019ll kick off the list on Wednesday with our first entrant who (as of now, unless I change my mind) will check in at No. 100:<\/p>\n This time around, I was not as kind to players whose careers started in the 40\u2019s or early 50\u2019s and\/or did not last far into the 60\u2019s. This isn\u2019t my way of agreeing with JJ Redick\u2019s \u201cplumbers and firemen\u201d comment, but I do think less deference should be given to players who a) played before the league was fully integrated and b) didn\u2019t treat the NBA (or BAA in some cases) as a \u201cprofession\u201d as we now understand it. My justification is simple: when the NBA did their top 75 list five years ago, only five of the 75 entrants had careers that ended before 1969. If the voters for that list gave a slight demerit to the accomplishments of the NBA\u2019s pioneers, I will too.<\/p>\n Speaking of eras, for reasons I can\u2019t really explain, I was far too ignorant of many prominent Knick role players that came along after the title teams but before Riley arrived. There were some lean years in there and they never made the conference finals, but New York did make the playoffs in half of the 16 years from 1976 to 1991. I\u2019ve worked hard to correct that this time around.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n