Looking at some of the early thoughts on the CBA, the message was clear, to try and keep players with their current teams (particularly star players) and limit the unpredictability of free agency. Minimum salaries, rookie-scaled salaries, and exceptions will increase and be tied into the salary cap, so overall cap space will naturally decrease, even with the inevitable rise in the cap this summer. Other salary cap spikes will be very unlikely in the next few years, and the year-over-year increase on the current deals with override the small salary cap increases. It's obvious this deal is designed to limit cap space and make this much less of a seller's market for free agents who want to change teams.
So if we are looking at the current state of the Knicks, the CBA tells us the smart thing to do is to keep this group together as best as possible. Rose will always be the big question mark, but if we see reasonable health (assuming this back issue does not cause any major concern) and we are satisfied with his play, than locking him up becomes more important than ever. We already know how tough it is to get a good PG, as we have struggled for years to find good ones. The current CBA is designed to make it that much harder. Same goes for Jennings. Hopefully we can keep him too.
KP will eventually be in line for a huge extension, that is a good thing. He will be our designated player when he becomes eligible based on the new rules. Exercise it the minute it comes into play. We will have one of those league superstars that only the lucky teams will have, and if you don't have one, it will be nearly impossible to get your hands on one. Also, the roster increase from 15 to 17 is cool, it will allow us to really gamble more with later draft picks and take fliers on players without wasting precious roster space, and truly develop them in the D-league. There is definitely some cool stuff with the new cap. I wish there was an amnesty clause though. But one thing is for sure, i think its obvious we need to keep this group together as best as possible, because we have seen the potential when healthy, and replacing some of these guys will be so much harder in future off-seasons.
