Mikal Bridges trade: Knicks add two players who will head to Nets in shrewd salary cap move, per reports

The New York Knicks took a home run swing before the NBA Draft when they agreed to send the Brooklyn Nets five first-round picks, one swap and Bojan Bogdanovic in exchange for Mikal Bridges. The move made New York an instant championship contender, but it also created a somewhat uncomfortable financial limitation for the Knicks to deal with this season. That deal, in its initially reported construction, would have hard-capped the Knicks at the $178,132,000 first apron. The Knicks still need to fill out their roster, so that hard cap would have been fairly difficult for them to navigate as they attempt to finish their roster.

Fortunately, there was always a workaround. The Knicks would have been hard-capped at the first apron because they were taking in more money than they sent out. If they could find a way to send out more money than they brought in through salary aggregation, that would push their hard cap up to the second apron at $188,931,000.

Now, it seems the Knicks have found a way to do that. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Knicks will sign-and-trade Shake Milton out on a three-year, $9 million deal. The Athletic’s Fred Katz adds that the Knicks will also include Mamadi Diakite, who will see $1.23 million of his non-guaranteed deal become guaranteed, in the deal. Combined, they get the Knicks up to the required amount of salary needed to hit that second apron hard cap. The Knicks will also take back Keita Bates-Diop in the trade, but as a minimum salary, he doesn’t count as matching salary from New York’s perspective.

It seems as though the Knicks have been planning for some version of this scenario since March. The Knicks signed Milton to a one-year deal then, but he played only 27 total minutes in New York. However, getting him on the books then allowed the Knicks to give him a 20% raise through Non-Bird Rights that pushed him over the minimum contract threshold, and therefore made his salary stackable for trade purposes. 

Another notable cap move the Knicks made on Thursday came in the contract that…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/mikal-bridges-trade-knicks-add-two-players-who-will-head-to-nets-in-shrewd-salary-cap-move-per-reports/

Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-07-04 17:35:44

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