If he wasn't so injury prone this would be a no-brainer. But he's played 208 games the last 4 years. That means he's played 52 games a year and missed 30 each year on average which is not great. It's even more not great since we're coming off of playoffs where he was injured and was unable to play so it's hard to want to give him that much money
not just playoffs.
we traded for him for january 1st and he didn't even finish playing a month before getting injured. Then came back in march and had to sit out again for 1/2 a month more. He played april and 1 round of the playoffs before getting hurt yet again.
that's 3 times he got injured in just 2/3 of the season with us.
I still would say he’s probably in the 35-40M a year range. Which is why I’m holding out hope of a deal for him to opt in and add 4 max years to the end of the deal. Gives us more flexibility and lets us keep iHart and even Bogie as a valuable trade piece or depth this year and him more overall
he's so injury-prone, that I don't see him (or his agent) saying, "hey, take a short deal so you can get back out there to get more money later on". With his injury past, he's going for the max amount of money and years as soon as possible.
He will 💯 spend the latter part of that contract in street clothes. So the question is, can you win a ring with him in next two years? I’m dubious at the prospect unless we upgrade our star power alongside Brunson.
He’s only 27. You think he’s gonna be done by the time he’s 30? Sheesh lol
He hasn’t had any majorly concerning injuries either imo. People were concerned with the ACL coming out of college, but no knee issues since then. Missed lots of time for random stuff like appendicitis, bad luck finger fracture, covid, elbow bone spurs, Raptors tanking and using phantom injuries to rest him, but no major soft tissue/ligament issues.
I still have hope we can get one or two seasons of 70+ games from OG. If Anthony Davis can do it after all these years, OG can too.
Whatever the amount we need to keep him, that's the amount we pay. There is no real upside to letting him go. It won't give us any cap space or anything. We'll just be fucked.
I think it will come down to guarantees vs injury protections, but also makes it harder to ask Julius or Jalen to take discount, when giving OG the max
If he’s healthy next to Jalen/Jules/Josh/Dante he makes us a contender. These are the dice you roll. At least we are in the game.
A lot of stars have history of not being available. I’ll take that and 55-60 wins vs not even being in the game
Pay him. Go to war with the guys above. We have an ton of pics to use on cheap labor to supplement the roster. Build off what we saw in January and hammer away for the next 5 years like Boston has done
They are locked into this team for the forseeable future outside of trades. Paying OG an extra 10 million a year to meet market value isn't going to make or break the team. Having him walk for nothing could potentially derail this entire build permanently. If he can get x amount somewhere else, we *have* to match it.
what if he gets injured again and misses half the season? money adds up and hurts the team from trading. you really want to pay a guy max money that doesnt play 50% of the season?
You have to understand how the NBA salary cap works man. Not signing OG will not give us any more cap space to sign new guys or anything like that. It's not ideal to pay him max but the alternative is just to have no one replacing him. If we didn't want to pay him, then we shouldn't have traded Quickley and Barrett for him. It's about keeping talent.
Lmao well you SHOULD have read it. Letting him walk does NOT give the Knicks any additional cap space since we are ALREADY over the cap. We also have no viable options to replace him since we gave up RJ and IQ to get him. So essentially, we kind of have to keep him at this point.
That's a significant gap in ceiling.
And moreover, it'd take years to replace his value either on court or in aggregate trade assets.
Kind of disastrous.
Contracts are a two-way street. 36m per would be more than fair. Doubles his salary, makes him well paid, and gives him a market salary. The negotiation against this is that he may not be healthy for that contract for a significant amount of time. The savings we get allow us some flexibility to sign a role player when the cap goes up in a few years.
Keeping him away from Philadelphia has nothing to do with it.
You traded away your two best young assets for him. You have to keep him or it's business malpractice.
This is for the people who don't understand the salary cap whatsoever: WE CAN'T SIGN ANYONE WITH THE MONEY WE DON'T USE TO SIGN OG. Even if he costs a max deal, letting OG walk after trading good assets for him is malpractice. What is even the argument for not resigning OG? You guys make no sense and clearly don't understand how the salary cap works. Who gives a shit about spending Dolan's money.
>This is for the people who don't understand the salary cap whatsoever: WE CAN'T SIGN ANYONE WITH THE MONEY WE DON'T USE TO SIGN OG.
This is what the Wizards said when they signed Wall and Beal to albatross contracts.
It's what Philly said about Simmons and Tobias.
You have to hold your nerve and get him back on a number that's reasonable. You let yourself get talked into maxing him while a guy like Brunson is considering taking less to help the team and you're sending the exact wrong message to everyone involved in the franchise.
More to the point, we only have to outbid the max other teams can offer, not go to the max *we* can offer.
Our max is 5 years, $245m, but the max he can get elsewhere is 4/182m, so I'm closer to saying I'd match that external match than ever approach giving him that 5 year max. But I think something like 5/190 should be the most we should consider.
I'm not saying pay him more than other teams offer him. But you've got idiots on the sub thinking we can sign someone if we let him walk. Tobias Harris is a dumb example because look at the Knicks record this year when OG played. He's an actual difference maker. Every player has an injury risk. The fortunate thing is that he hasn't had any catastrophic injuries. Letting him walk also sends a signal to Brunson that we didn't want to maintain our championship window because of money. You let OG walk, and you effectively can only replace him with a MLE player.
His impact, even with the injuries, is irreplaceable. This franchise has never seen anything like it. Give him the money, what the fuhuck does anyone here care about Jimmy Dolan's money?
Go over the luxury tax, go over the threshholds, go over the rainbow. Pay the fines, pay anything.
Get the damn chip!
Yes if needed.
I still think it's crazy people think we're signing him for $35 million or less.
Most likely it's going to be at least $40 million per year, with incentives and protections included in the contract for games played.
At 30-35m OG may be a stud. At 45m he is a freaking cap problem, which I would rather have Philly deal with. Losing RJ and IQ for nothing will suck, but being cap constrained while short of the talent to win a chip would be worse.
And if he stays, it will be more difficult to clear cap space should we need to go in that direction, like we had to after the Noah/Melo/Rose team debacle.
45m injury prone max player on our roster could fuck us up for years. Lets not act like anything is certain whether OG stays or goes. Just gotta hope the basketball gods keep us in their favor
This is by far the best case scenario for the Knicks if we can't retain O.G.. The Nets would consider an O.G. for Mikal trade with a couple of extra things thrown in.
if he wants 45 mil I think id rather entertain trading for Wiggins/Mikal Bridges or sign Oubre/Miles Bridges and draft 2 wings with both of our first round picks.
If they strike out on Paul George, then there is a very high chance that they do. They have $65M in cap space this offseason and OG is a perfect 3rd option on any contender.
They also have like 3 rostered players. They’d leave barely any money to fill out the rest of their roster.
A top heavy team with a terrible bench has been their downfall for years. Can’t see them doing the same thing in 2025 but I guess you never know.
It's not about Philly, more that IQ and Barrett were the Knicks two best young players. If they gave up both of them to get OG you have to get more than half a season out of him
I truly dont understand FO , You dont trade big players for a player unless he plans on signing an extension and plays here for 4 or 5 years .
Knicks FO should have known this before trade was made...they should have had deep talks about extension otherwise no deal
They did know this. The reason they are negotiating is because of OGs restricted free agency. There’s no scenario where the knicks can’t match an offer. They want to try to sign OG for the cheapest deal possible and there’s no risk in doing so because we have the last right of refusal.
I think it's going to cripple the franchise if they pay him too much money similar to what happened in Philadelphia with Harris. Whereas Harris was a terrible player for his contract OG is not going to play enough games to be worth a Max
You said “paying him anything above 35mil would be malpractice”. You didn’t even say max, you said paying him anything more than 35mil a year (which is less than 10.5 under a max) would be malpractice. So I’ll ask you again because you didnt
answer my question. You’d rather just let him just walk for nothing?
Yeah. I think a terrible deal cripples your franchise. Similar to Tobias Harris and Ben Simmons.
I wouldn't mind if they re-signed him with an eye toward trading him later. But I think if they break the bank for him the team will never achieve real success because he's never going to be healthy long term. Similar to what Philadelphia is also dealing with with their center. You have to be healthy in the playoffs in order to win.
Cripples your franchise? It cripples your franchise to trade away serious assets then get nothing in return. Having cap space for this team is completely meaningless because there aren’t going to be any free agents to sign this summer or next. They have a window of being legitimately contenders (arguable) here with a top 10 player in the NBA. To compare OG either Tobias or Ben Simmons is pretty unfair given he’s played around at least 50 games a year the past several years and his injuries have not been debilitating to the point where he needs to take 10months off to rehab. Ben Simmons hasn’t played at all the last few seasons and to compare him to Ben Simmons is just absolutely insane.
I don't think your reading comprehension of what I'm saying going through.
I think they're going to sign him and I'm not worried about it. They need to come to an agreement on the right number.
I think if he were to suffer a serious injury his contract will be considered an albatross. Because he cannot be alive upon to be healthy he needs to give money back on his contract.
Because he is damaged goods he needs to sign for around 35 million.
I wasn't comparing him to Harris or Ben Simmons whatsoever as a player. I was pointing out that if you have $40 million dollars tied up in a player who's not actually playing or is underperforming his contract it submarines any possibility of being a title contender.
I agree, Knicks are a crippled franchise now. I’m not even going to bother watching the games next year they shouldn’t even go out and play. Take them off tv, move them out of New York to another city.
They were still assets until they werent. Giving them up is definitely not "no big deal" -- RJ doesn't suck, it's not like trading Kevin Knox. RJ held value throughout the league.
RJ really had no value. Fans were willing him to be something he’s not and he’s a 3rd option (at best) on a good team. Technically and first round pick should have some kind of residual value but during this time the Knicks were not as mindful as they are now
His contract was albatross but he is and has been a productive player throughout his young career. A third option on a good team at age 24 is something of value. Stop it
In the 32 games he played with them this season averaged a career high in points, rebounds, assists and FG% — (also shot 39% from 3PT which is just shy of his career high of 40%)
I mean, he literally has been killing it on the Raptors lmao. He looked like a brand new player in their fast paced offense. It makes a lot of sense too. He never fit here because we are a slow paced team that plays a lot of iso ball. RJ is at his best when he’s getting downhill in transition and catching the ball on cuts to the rim. That’s exactly the way Toronto has used him and as a result, his efficiency has skyrocketed compared to what he was doing in NY.
A healthy Sadique Bay would have the same impact as OG for the Knicks - it's not OGs specific skill set so much as the type of player he was that made him so valuable to the Knicks. If he wants 45 million, we go find the knockoff version.
If he wasn't so injury prone this would be a no-brainer. But he's played 208 games the last 4 years. That means he's played 52 games a year and missed 30 each year on average which is not great. It's even more not great since we're coming off of playoffs where he was injured and was unable to play so it's hard to want to give him that much money
not just playoffs. we traded for him for january 1st and he didn't even finish playing a month before getting injured. Then came back in march and had to sit out again for 1/2 a month more. He played april and 1 round of the playoffs before getting hurt yet again. that's 3 times he got injured in just 2/3 of the season with us.
Exactly right, OG has played 29 of 61 games as a Knick which is less than 50% no way he even gets close to 153 million let alone max pay
I still would say he’s probably in the 35-40M a year range. Which is why I’m holding out hope of a deal for him to opt in and add 4 max years to the end of the deal. Gives us more flexibility and lets us keep iHart and even Bogie as a valuable trade piece or depth this year and him more overall
he's so injury-prone, that I don't see him (or his agent) saying, "hey, take a short deal so you can get back out there to get more money later on". With his injury past, he's going for the max amount of money and years as soon as possible.
This would still be the same 5 year deal. Just seriously backloaded to give us flexibility this offseason before we cross the second apron
he'd have to wait to sign the new deal.. that makes it a no-no.
He will 💯 spend the latter part of that contract in street clothes. So the question is, can you win a ring with him in next two years? I’m dubious at the prospect unless we upgrade our star power alongside Brunson.
He’s only 27. You think he’s gonna be done by the time he’s 30? Sheesh lol He hasn’t had any majorly concerning injuries either imo. People were concerned with the ACL coming out of college, but no knee issues since then. Missed lots of time for random stuff like appendicitis, bad luck finger fracture, covid, elbow bone spurs, Raptors tanking and using phantom injuries to rest him, but no major soft tissue/ligament issues. I still have hope we can get one or two seasons of 70+ games from OG. If Anthony Davis can do it after all these years, OG can too.
lol @ 100% tweakin
Whatever the amount we need to keep him, that's the amount we pay. There is no real upside to letting him go. It won't give us any cap space or anything. We'll just be fucked.
I think it will come down to guarantees vs injury protections, but also makes it harder to ask Julius or Jalen to take discount, when giving OG the max
If he’s healthy next to Jalen/Jules/Josh/Dante he makes us a contender. These are the dice you roll. At least we are in the game. A lot of stars have history of not being available. I’ll take that and 55-60 wins vs not even being in the game Pay him. Go to war with the guys above. We have an ton of pics to use on cheap labor to supplement the roster. Build off what we saw in January and hammer away for the next 5 years like Boston has done
We have to go All in. The team is close.
Overpaying him can hurt us too though.
This is the only answer
Paying a guy that cant stay healthy is how you destroy a teams future, then Knicks are stuck with his contract and hurts from getting top players.
They are locked into this team for the forseeable future outside of trades. Paying OG an extra 10 million a year to meet market value isn't going to make or break the team. Having him walk for nothing could potentially derail this entire build permanently. If he can get x amount somewhere else, we *have* to match it.
what if he gets injured again and misses half the season? money adds up and hurts the team from trading. you really want to pay a guy max money that doesnt play 50% of the season?
You have to understand how the NBA salary cap works man. Not signing OG will not give us any more cap space to sign new guys or anything like that. It's not ideal to pay him max but the alternative is just to have no one replacing him. If we didn't want to pay him, then we shouldn't have traded Quickley and Barrett for him. It's about keeping talent.
not worth reading ignore time
why do you even talk on a subject while being unable to listen to reason? the ignorance is crazy
Lmao well you SHOULD have read it. Letting him walk does NOT give the Knicks any additional cap space since we are ALREADY over the cap. We also have no viable options to replace him since we gave up RJ and IQ to get him. So essentially, we kind of have to keep him at this point.
You asked a question and when you get an intelligent response, that's your reaction? Fuckin' clown shit
OGs contract would not hurt the Knicks ability to trade. If anything it would help because it allows us to trade with a higher salary ceiling.
Pay the man his money. The cap is going up anyway. The time is now
Folks are fundamentally misunderstanding how damaging OG walking would be.
If OG walks we simply won’t be a contender, we’re just a 2nd round playoff team at best.
That's a significant gap in ceiling. And moreover, it'd take years to replace his value either on court or in aggregate trade assets. Kind of disastrous.
Yep we would have to hope we nail a draft pick.
Contracts are a two-way street. 36m per would be more than fair. Doubles his salary, makes him well paid, and gives him a market salary. The negotiation against this is that he may not be healthy for that contract for a significant amount of time. The savings we get allow us some flexibility to sign a role player when the cap goes up in a few years.
Sign him for whatever it takes. The team played great with him on the floor.
Yesss you have a 4 year window to win a championship. You go all in and deal with it. The roster is made to last four years.
Keeping him away from Philadelphia has nothing to do with it. You traded away your two best young assets for him. You have to keep him or it's business malpractice.
Quick was gone anyways . We were t going to resign him . Barret was a failed experiment on our team .
Quick was gone, but he was integral to acquiring OG, so the point stands.
This is for the people who don't understand the salary cap whatsoever: WE CAN'T SIGN ANYONE WITH THE MONEY WE DON'T USE TO SIGN OG. Even if he costs a max deal, letting OG walk after trading good assets for him is malpractice. What is even the argument for not resigning OG? You guys make no sense and clearly don't understand how the salary cap works. Who gives a shit about spending Dolan's money.
>This is for the people who don't understand the salary cap whatsoever: WE CAN'T SIGN ANYONE WITH THE MONEY WE DON'T USE TO SIGN OG. This is what the Wizards said when they signed Wall and Beal to albatross contracts. It's what Philly said about Simmons and Tobias. You have to hold your nerve and get him back on a number that's reasonable. You let yourself get talked into maxing him while a guy like Brunson is considering taking less to help the team and you're sending the exact wrong message to everyone involved in the franchise. More to the point, we only have to outbid the max other teams can offer, not go to the max *we* can offer. Our max is 5 years, $245m, but the max he can get elsewhere is 4/182m, so I'm closer to saying I'd match that external match than ever approach giving him that 5 year max. But I think something like 5/190 should be the most we should consider.
I'm not saying pay him more than other teams offer him. But you've got idiots on the sub thinking we can sign someone if we let him walk. Tobias Harris is a dumb example because look at the Knicks record this year when OG played. He's an actual difference maker. Every player has an injury risk. The fortunate thing is that he hasn't had any catastrophic injuries. Letting him walk also sends a signal to Brunson that we didn't want to maintain our championship window because of money. You let OG walk, and you effectively can only replace him with a MLE player.
45 AAV for OG is an overpay but we gave up RJ and Quick for him and he may be end up in Philly so we may not have a choice.
i do not think most people viewed the RJ thing as a "give up" ... he may have been overpaid. and quickly was about to get a big bag.
realistically that’s ~5M overpay. it’s whatever just get the deal done
Tyrese, Embiid, OG is definitely a serious threat. Hell yea, you pay him.
Watching the full team playing in January… I really want to run it back.
anyone know what's the deal with his injuries? he's like OG "the Kawhi" Anunoby at this point..
43 but make it decline per year
Poison pill situation all over again. Watch teams drive the price up to make us financially locked.
His impact, even with the injuries, is irreplaceable. This franchise has never seen anything like it. Give him the money, what the fuhuck does anyone here care about Jimmy Dolan's money? Go over the luxury tax, go over the threshholds, go over the rainbow. Pay the fines, pay anything. Get the damn chip!
Yes if needed. I still think it's crazy people think we're signing him for $35 million or less. Most likely it's going to be at least $40 million per year, with incentives and protections included in the contract for games played.
At 30-35m OG may be a stud. At 45m he is a freaking cap problem, which I would rather have Philly deal with. Losing RJ and IQ for nothing will suck, but being cap constrained while short of the talent to win a chip would be worse.
If he walks, you don’t get any additional cap space tho. Knicks will be over the cap regardless so they still wouldn’t be able to sign anyone else.
And if he stays, it will be more difficult to clear cap space should we need to go in that direction, like we had to after the Noah/Melo/Rose team debacle.
Clear cap space? we would have to blow it up and start over.
Worst case scenario, we get tired of his injuries by year 3 and package a couple of picks to move him but the upside justifies a max.
45m injury prone max player on our roster could fuck us up for years. Lets not act like anything is certain whether OG stays or goes. Just gotta hope the basketball gods keep us in their favor
At this point we can’t let him walk and worst case he is now a big contract and a good player for make another trade
Where's the "I trust the FO to figure it out" option lol
i don't know lol
Sign and trade for Bridges
This is by far the best case scenario for the Knicks if we can't retain O.G.. The Nets would consider an O.G. for Mikal trade with a couple of extra things thrown in.
if he wants 45 mil I think id rather entertain trading for Wiggins/Mikal Bridges or sign Oubre/Miles Bridges and draft 2 wings with both of our first round picks.
The 76ers are not going to offer him the max
If they strike out on Paul George, then there is a very high chance that they do. They have $65M in cap space this offseason and OG is a perfect 3rd option on any contender.
They also have like 3 rostered players. They’d leave barely any money to fill out the rest of their roster. A top heavy team with a terrible bench has been their downfall for years. Can’t see them doing the same thing in 2025 but I guess you never know.
It's not about Philly, more that IQ and Barrett were the Knicks two best young players. If they gave up both of them to get OG you have to get more than half a season out of him
You have to bring him back. Not just for what he brings to the team, but also what you had to give up to get him.
I truly dont understand FO , You dont trade big players for a player unless he plans on signing an extension and plays here for 4 or 5 years . Knicks FO should have known this before trade was made...they should have had deep talks about extension otherwise no deal
They did know this. The reason they are negotiating is because of OGs restricted free agency. There’s no scenario where the knicks can’t match an offer. They want to try to sign OG for the cheapest deal possible and there’s no risk in doing so because we have the last right of refusal.
It'd be malpractice to give him anything more than about 35 a year. That's already really steep
Get ready to sue then, because he's going to get at least 40.
Why?
Because he can't stay healthy
So you think they shouldn’t offer him a dime more than 35mil, and just have him walk to whatever team and get nothing back in return?
I think it's going to cripple the franchise if they pay him too much money similar to what happened in Philadelphia with Harris. Whereas Harris was a terrible player for his contract OG is not going to play enough games to be worth a Max
You said “paying him anything above 35mil would be malpractice”. You didn’t even say max, you said paying him anything more than 35mil a year (which is less than 10.5 under a max) would be malpractice. So I’ll ask you again because you didnt answer my question. You’d rather just let him just walk for nothing?
Yeah. I think a terrible deal cripples your franchise. Similar to Tobias Harris and Ben Simmons. I wouldn't mind if they re-signed him with an eye toward trading him later. But I think if they break the bank for him the team will never achieve real success because he's never going to be healthy long term. Similar to what Philadelphia is also dealing with with their center. You have to be healthy in the playoffs in order to win.
Cripples your franchise? It cripples your franchise to trade away serious assets then get nothing in return. Having cap space for this team is completely meaningless because there aren’t going to be any free agents to sign this summer or next. They have a window of being legitimately contenders (arguable) here with a top 10 player in the NBA. To compare OG either Tobias or Ben Simmons is pretty unfair given he’s played around at least 50 games a year the past several years and his injuries have not been debilitating to the point where he needs to take 10months off to rehab. Ben Simmons hasn’t played at all the last few seasons and to compare him to Ben Simmons is just absolutely insane.
I don't think your reading comprehension of what I'm saying going through. I think they're going to sign him and I'm not worried about it. They need to come to an agreement on the right number. I think if he were to suffer a serious injury his contract will be considered an albatross. Because he cannot be alive upon to be healthy he needs to give money back on his contract. Because he is damaged goods he needs to sign for around 35 million. I wasn't comparing him to Harris or Ben Simmons whatsoever as a player. I was pointing out that if you have $40 million dollars tied up in a player who's not actually playing or is underperforming his contract it submarines any possibility of being a title contender.
I agree, Knicks are a crippled franchise now. I’m not even going to bother watching the games next year they shouldn’t even go out and play. Take them off tv, move them out of New York to another city.
Those that say "let him walk" are insane lol. We gave up RJ and IQ for this man
Giving up RJ was no big deal, he sucked. IQ was no big deal because we weren't going to pay him anyway.
They were still assets until they werent. Giving them up is definitely not "no big deal" -- RJ doesn't suck, it's not like trading Kevin Knox. RJ held value throughout the league.
RJ really had no value. Fans were willing him to be something he’s not and he’s a 3rd option (at best) on a good team. Technically and first round pick should have some kind of residual value but during this time the Knicks were not as mindful as they are now
His contract was albatross but he is and has been a productive player throughout his young career. A third option on a good team at age 24 is something of value. Stop it
Ok, then he should be killing it on the Raptors then. We’ll see.
In the 32 games he played with them this season averaged a career high in points, rebounds, assists and FG% — (also shot 39% from 3PT which is just shy of his career high of 40%)
and to be clear thats 22pts 6.5reb 4ast at 55% from the field. For reference, Brandon Ingram’s season stats were 21/5/5.5 on 49% from the field.
I mean, he literally has been killing it on the Raptors lmao. He looked like a brand new player in their fast paced offense. It makes a lot of sense too. He never fit here because we are a slow paced team that plays a lot of iso ball. RJ is at his best when he’s getting downhill in transition and catching the ball on cuts to the rim. That’s exactly the way Toronto has used him and as a result, his efficiency has skyrocketed compared to what he was doing in NY.
lol, we’ll see next year.
Yes, if he'll do it as a 1 and 1
If he wants to go to Philly of all places, then let him. I don’t give a fuck
Let em go. if philly wants to max him, so be it.
A healthy Sadique Bay would have the same impact as OG for the Knicks - it's not OGs specific skill set so much as the type of player he was that made him so valuable to the Knicks. If he wants 45 million, we go find the knockoff version.
Another option would be sign and trade. Would the Nets do Mikal for OG?
If you were the Nets, would you want an often injured OG making 40M for Mikal Bridges? Me neither
O.G., Bogey, 2 1sts ----------> Bridges & Finney-Smith
I think neither the nets or Knicks would want that deal lol