James Dolan keeps insisting the Knicks’ second-apron line is about prudence, but the explanation still doesn’t hold up.
The latest reminder came from James L. Edwards III of The Athletic, who said on an episode of the Game Theory podcast with Sam Vecenie that Karl-Anthony Towns’ frustration over not getting an extension appears aimed at ownership, not the front office.
“I don’t think KAT’s irritability with the situation is directed at the front office. Him and Leon Rose go way back.
If there were no restraints, I think this would be resolved. But the owner said no second apron.
You’ve heard guys talk about how they were surprised they lost Mitch[ell Robinson]. Guys know what’s going on.”
That lines up with what Dolan has already said publicly. He previously called going into the second apron “suicidal.” And when he was asked about it on WFAN, he framed the issue as a spending limit tied to the apron itself: “I’ll write as big of a check as possible,” he told WFAN at the time, “but I can’t write a check into the second apron.”
The problem is that the Knicks are already living with most of those restrictions anyway.
New York is within $1 million of the second apron, and it’s already operating under the first apron. The gap between the two isn’t nearly as dramatic as Dolan’s stance suggests. A lot of the second-apron rules he seems to be worried about are either already in play or barely relevant to this roster.
Teams in the second apron can’t take back more money in trades than they send out. That’s already a first-apron rule.
They can’t use preexisting trade exceptions. Same deal for first-apron teams.
They can’t sign a waived player who was originally making more than the non-taxpayer mid-level exception of $15.1 million. First-apron teams face that too.
They can’t use the mini mid-level exception. First-apron teams can, but the Knicks didn’t use it this year.
They can’t sign-and-trade their own free agents. The Knicks didn’t do that with Mitchell Robinson, so that restriction never came into play.
The one area where the second apron would bite harder is in trade construction, since those teams can’t combine multiple salaries in a deal. But even that feels overstated for this roster.
If the Knicks are moving around pieces like Pacome Dadiet and Miles McBride, that’s one thing. If they’re dealing a core player, every starter makes more than $20 million, so salary-matching still gives them plenty of room.
And if they finish a trade below the second apron, that limitation goes away anyway.
The draft-pick rules sound scarier than they are, too. Second-apron teams can’t trade their first-round pick seven years out, but that only matters if you think the Knicks should be shipping out a 2033 first-rounder for a backup center.
That restriction can also disappear if a team stays out of the second apron in three of the next four years. And it only freezes one pick.
Boston is the example here: after finishing inside the second apron in 2024-25, its 2032 first-round pick is frozen, but the Celtics can still trade their 2033 first-rounder because they’re not in the second apron now.
There’s also the rule that a frozen pick can get pushed to the end of the first round, but that only kicks in if a team stays in the second apron three times in a four-year stretch.
As for cash in trades, the Knicks have effectively done nothing there since the league flipped to the 2026-27 calendar. The season is still young, but they sent out under $1 million in trades last year.
There are other second-apron limitations, including the inability to use newly-created traded player exceptions, but that’s not exactly a deal-breaker for a team that has spent the past two seasons deep into the first apron.
So what’s really driving this? Maybe Dolan doesn’t fully grasp how little changes for the Knicks.
Maybe Rose and Brock Aller do understand it and have already explained it. Maybe Dolan is saying one thing while meaning another.
He has said, “I’ll write as big of a check as possible,” and his history suggests he’s willing to pay. The NBA’s luxury tax-band system is also less punishing than it used to be.
That leaves a few other possibilities. One is that this is really about not wanting to pay Towns more than $50 million per year into his mid 30s, which would at least make some basketball sense. Another is that Dolan is simply being petty, especially given his dislike of the league’s revenue-sharing setup.
Whatever the real reason is, the second-apron explanation doesn’t pass the smell test. If Dolan expects anyone to buy the idea that this is about flexibility and optionality, he’s kidding himself.
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