James Dolan’s latest shot at the NBA landed at the worst possible time for Knicks fans.
Just weeks after New York won the 2026 NBA Championship, the Knicks governor went on WFAN’s The Carton Show and said his team would never go above the league’s second apron. That one line immediately raised alarms about whether the Knicks would be able to keep their entire championship core together.
It was a jarring message given what the roster had just accomplished. New York had finally ended its 53-year championship drought, and the group on hand had already proven it could win at the highest level. But Dolan’s comments made it sound like the financial ceiling was set, no matter how successful the team had become.
There’s more going on here than a simple basketball decision, though. Dolan has long had a tense relationship with the NBA, and money is at the center of it.
He has paid plenty to build a winner in New York, including the salaries of both Tom Thibodeau and Mike Brown. He has also been the lone dissenting vote on multiple governorship changes and WNBA expansion efforts.
That broader frustration showed up in May 2024, when Dolan sent a four-paragraph letter to the NBA’s board of governors objecting to plans to expand the WNBA to Toronto. Less than a year later, The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov described the note as "a terse manifesto of his list of grievances with the league."
At the heart of Dolan’s complaints is transparency. He has asked the league for more detail about annual budgets and how the money collected from governors like him is distributed through the NBA’s revenue-sharing system.
In a letter sent to the NBA’s Board of Governors and obtained by ESPN, Knicks owner James Dolan continues to take issue with the league office and tells teams that he’ll vote no on the league’s proposed operating budget for 2024-2025 and the election of a new BOG chair. Dolan… pic.twitter.com/DJvuLS7Mdh
- Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 9, 2024
That issue hits especially hard for a team like the Knicks, who play in one of the biggest markets in the country and help subsidize smaller teams around the league. Along with the Golden State Warriors, both Los Angeles teams, and other major-market clubs, New York is part of the group that shoulders those costs.
Dolan has never hidden how much he dislikes that setup. One former NBA governor told The Athletic that he has always "hated" those policies. And from Dolan’s point of view, the complaint makes sense: television money remains the league’s biggest revenue stream, yet the Knicks still have to share their piece.
He has also pointed directly at the NBA’s move toward the NFL-style TV model, saying that it hurts local outlets such as MSG Networks. That, more than anything else, appears to be the real source of his anger with Commissioner Adam Silver’s handling of the league’s television deals.
So when Dolan says he won’t go past the second apron, it’s fair to wonder whether this is really about the roster or whether it’s a form of payback aimed upward at the league office. If it is, the cost lands on the fans.
New York’s title run changed everything, and the roster looks built to chase more. But if Dolan is using the second apron as a line in the sand because of his grievances with the NBA, Knicks fans may be left hoping he finds another way to make his point.
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