Knicks owner James Dolan’s second apron comments raise big questions on team’s future rost

Let me introduce you to a concept I like to call “the sportswriter’s lament.” After the New York Knicks won the NBA championship on Saturday, I wrote an extensive offseason preview that largely operated under the premise that they would be willing to go above the second apron ahead of next season. Doing so would have made sense. They have a championship roster. They are a high-revenue franchise playing in the NBA’s biggest market. Their contract structure, dating back to the Karl-Anthony Towns trade, even hinted at a four-year plan in which the Knicks ducked the second apron for two years, went above it for two years, and then ducked back down below it before the worst penalties (a first-round pick moving to No. 30) kicked in. It all made sense on paper. But as so often happens in sports, plans can change on the word of one powerful figure.And so it might be for the Knicks as they consider how to defend their 2026 championship, because team owner James Dolan appeared on The Carton Show on WFAN in New York on Wednesday, and he seemed to indicate that the Knicks do not, in fact, plan to go into the second apron.

“If we could bring back the whole team, exactly as it is, why wouldn’t you? But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to,” Dolan said. “We’re willing to stretch, but there’s certain things in the NBA that you’d have to be suicidal to do. One of them is called the second apron. Cannot go into the second apron. But that’s up to Leon [Rose].” When host Craig Carton joked that Rose, the team president, makes the decisions and Dolan just signs the checks, Dolan responded with a chuckle, “I’m just telling him how big of a check I can write. I’ll write as big of a check as possible, but I can’t write a check that goes into the second apron.”Dolan’s comments suddenly make the notion of the Knicks running their entire roster from last season back far more complicated, though comments made by a team owner on a radio show are far from binding. It is entirely possible that Rose convinces Dolan that it does make sense to go above the second apron. Nonetheless, Dolan’s comments force us to prepare for a summer in which the Knicks duck the second apron.

So if the Knicks are indeed treating the second apron as a hard cap, and if we assume that none of their five expensive starters (Towns, Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart) are going anywhere, what does that mean for New York’s ability to retain their key…

2026-06-18 02:19:23