Covering the Knicks is difficult. MSG is a fortress with stingy gatekeepers who deny access to earnest bloggers. For a short period, a P&T staff writer used her legitimate newspaper credentials to access the media room and report back for us. When MSG learned of this, they barred her from future pressers.
My recent media day experience felt similar. In previous years, media day was live-streamed, and I blogged about it in real time. This year, a stream was unavailable. Hence, I scoured social media for
updates and wrote a shameful amount of “Stef Bondy reports…” based on tweets that were already stiffening by the time I found them.
Making matters worse, everything—the clips from the mic and the interstitials in which the players answer trivia questions or name their top-5 whatever—seemed kind of . . . phony. Staged. The answers to questions about health, expectations, etcetera, all sounded as though read from cards.
This has sat funny with me. And when a friend asked about a recent news item, my opinion surprised him. Allow me to don my tin-foil hat and brace yourself: I believe KAT’s comments about not getting a contract extension, and the subsequent negotiating freeze, are all bogus.
With billions of dollars involved, nothing in the Knickerbocker world is random. Everything that comes out of MSG is managed. Shortly before my interviews with OG and Jose, I received a list of off-limit topics (religion, politics, injuries (his or anyone else’s), etc.). Similarly, most questions at team pressers seem obvious or prompted. Little is spoken into the mic without prior approval from the agent, front office, or coaching staff.
KAT is many things, including a terrible actor:
After the Knicks announced that contract negotiations would be suspended to focus on the impending season, Karl’s response smacked of mock-WWE surprise: “It was news to me. Very disappointed to say the least. Let’s state the obvious. It’s business, but there is business on the court for us to handle.”
Really? Caught completely off guard? Are we to believe that the front office is jerking around a blue-chip asset, the second (and occasionally first) most important player on a championship club? Leon’s crew, which attempts to orchestrate its machinations with shrewd precision, is surrendering to “Guess we’ll see what happens, champ?”
I suspect the freeze is a ruse. Decisions have been made already—contract extensions, trade partners have been engaged—but there’s reason to delay. Possibilities:
- A trade partner must clear salary space or convince their owner.
- NY expects better offers at the midseason deadline.
- NY wants to see which young players take a leap for potential trade partners and loop them into the package.
- NY needs time to convince us that a trade is good for the team despite just winning the championship.
Maybe that’s too much Ancient Aliens-type conspiracy conjecturing for you. Would you allow that there must be, at minimum, a document containing “If X, Then Y” scenarios? Those could be:
- If KAT doesn’t piss off Jalen by December and plays well, offer more.
- If KAT DOES piss off Jalen by December and plays well, execute Chicago trade.
- If KAT gets injured, offer less.
- If KAT underperforms, fake injury report and trade to Atlanta.
It can be true that James Dolan wants to avoid the second apron, and that crossing that dreaded threshold brings about punitive consequences to the team.
Also true? That it was STRANGE for the owner who famously lights money on fire (metaphorically, possibly literally) to go on talk radio RIGHT AFTER WINNING A CHAMPIONSHIP and declare the second apron to be an unbreachable line. And ODD for a front office that has worked hand in glove with King Dolan, and seems to have total impunity of decision-making, to be allegedly caught off guard by his statements. Flummoxed, even!
News to any of them? Probably not.
The league is ripe with phony-baloney antics. Scott Foster refs a Game Four and even the media calls him ‘The Extender.’ LeBron James dangles his talents from coast to coast for weeks before officially joining a team he’d surely chosen long before. Has the league ever formally apologized to the Kings for 2002? That Luka Dončić trade sure was weird, but at least the Mavs got Cooper Flagg. Beyond being shameful, the apparent fixes are so transparent that they’re embarrassing. There’s even some scuttlebutt about a frozen envelope. Can you imagine?
OK, you got me. Karl-Anthony did not know that negotiations would be suspended. Gotcha—Leon Rose has no idea what he will do with the champion All-Star, but his fingers are crossed that they can iron out a deal before KAT declines his player option and hops a Brinks truck to Atlanta. As with any conspiracy, once the endgame is revealed, we can say, “Yes, that was the plan all along. Knew it!” Really, we don’t know what will happen. We can’t. My hunch, though, is that the great reboundin’ Towns is bound out of town, and before his contract expires. The season is about to begin. I suggest savoring all the time you get with the man, fans.
Go Knicks.
