The New York Knicks have won the 2026 NBA Championship, and the celebrations in the city that never sleeps has been going on for almost a week now. While there’s still a championship parade to celebrate on Thursday, some have already started to look ahead to the summer, free agency, and what will happen with the Knicks roster.
While most of the team’s cover will be back for the 2026-27 season, there are a couple that require decisions to be made. Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet, and Jordan Clarkson are all set to hit unrestricted free agency while Jose Alvarado has a player option.
All four of those players were big contributors to the Knicks title run, but the core of Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Josh Hart will all remain in New York for the foreseeable future.
James Dolan recently went to speak on “The Carton Show” on WFAN 660 in New York, where he admitted he wants to bring the whole Championship team back, but isn’t sure it’ll be possible.
“First off, most of our guys are under contract,” Dolan said during an appearance on WFAN. “We have a couple guys who are not. 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. Just contractually.
We’re willing to stretch, but there’s certain things in the NBA that you’d have to be suicidal to do. And we’re not going to do those. One of them is called the second apron. Cannot go into the second apron. But that’s up to Leon [Rose]. 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.”
"There's certain things in the NBA that you'd have to be suicidal to do. One of them is the second apron. Cannot go into the second apron. I'll write as big of a check as possible, but I can't write a check that goes into the second apron."
– James Dolan on @CartonShowWFAN pic.twitter.com/KJFIccCnMf
— SNY Knicks (@sny_knicks) June 17, 2026
The good thing for the Knicks is that a lot of teams don’t really have money to spend this offseason, and others who do likely won’t want to tie up their future money to some of the New York Knicks’ free agents.
The post James Dolan refuses to go into ‘suicidal’ second apron after championship appeared first on ClutchPoints.
