How much did Knicks star really leave on table, what move means for NY

Jalen Brunson was probably already the most popular professional athlete in New York, but his decision to sign a four-year, $156.5 million contract extension with the Knicks on Friday clinched it. The payday, while significant, represents only around 58% of what he could have earned by waiting until next offseason to re-sign on a projected five-year, $269.1 million max deal as an unrestricted free agent.

The Knicks will be able to put those savings to good use in constructing what the rest of what us hope will be their first championship roster since 1973.

Still, this signing comes with quite a few questions. Why would Brunson leave so much money on the table? How will his decision to take less impact other stars around the league? What does this newfound flexibility mean for the Knicks — do they suddenly just have another $113 million to utilize over the next few years?

Well, the answers here are complicated and messy. We won’t fully understand the implications of Brunson’s decision for years to come. But let’s walk through every element of this deal and try to figure out what it means for Brunson, the Knicks and the NBA as a whole moving forward.

How much did Brunson really leave on the table?

If you assume that Brunson would have otherwise signed a five-year max contract with the Knicks next summer, the gap between that deal and the one he signed Friday was roughly $113.6 million. However, that is a significant oversimplification of the situation.

Let’s look at this contract year-by-year. The 2024-25 season, in either scenario, is a wash. The only way that the Knicks could have added salary to Brunson’s deal for this upcoming season would have been by creating cap space to execute a renegotiation-and-extension. They operated above the cap, so that wasn’t on the table. Brunson was always going to earn the $25 million or so that he was contractually guaranteed when he originally signed in New York. The new money conversation begins with the 2025-26 season.

This new deal covers three guaranteed seasons before strategically giving Brunson the chance to opt out ahead of the 2028-29 campaign (more on that in a bit). He received a 40% raise on his 2024-25 salary, which rises 8% annually thereafter. That is the maximum allowable under veteran extension rules. If Brunson had waited until next summer to re-sign, his new salary would not have been linked to his old one. He would have become a free agent eligible to earn anything up to his max, which would have been 30% of the salary cap as a seven-year veteran with those same 8% annual raises attached. The difference in those figures is significant, but it’s not $113.6 million.

In actuality, Brunson is sacrificing around $37.1 million over three years compared to what he otherwise would have made by waiting an additional offseason.

That aforementioned $113.6 million figure is legitimate in that it covers what this extension pays Brunson compared to the absolute maximum he could have earned by waiting. However, it was unlikely that Brunson actually would have wanted to commit himself to New York beyond the 2027-28 season for one simple reason: That will be his 10th season in the NBA.

After a player has played 10 NBA seasons, he becomes eligible for the highest possible max contract, one that starts at 35% of the salary cap. What Brunson has actually done with this extension, and what he probably would have done had he actually become a free agent next offseason, was set himself up to become a free agent at the exact moment in which he is eligible to earn the most possible money while still retaining the most possible value as a player.

Brunson will only be 32 in the summer of 2028, and the salary cap is expected to rise 10% annually each year because of the reported new media rights deal. That sets a projected salary cap of around $205.8 million for the 2028-29 season. If he becomes a free agent in the summer of 2028, as is now possible, he will be eligible to re-sign on an enormous five-year contract that would carry him through the end of his prime.

There are other potential permutations here that spit out slightly different numbers, such as Brunson again extending early or picking up his player option for the 2028-29 season, rolling the dice on another 10% cap jump the year after that and an even bigger follow-up contract. There is inherent uncertainty here. 

We have no idea what kind of player Brunson will be in 2028, or in what state he will find the league at that time. He has nothing close to a guarantee here, but by signing this extension, Brunson is setting himself up to potentially make up that lost salary down the line. His playing style figures to age relatively well as it isn’t based on athleticism. He has a great relationship with his team. It doesn’t hurt that his agent, Sam Rose, is the son of Leon Rose, president of the Knicks. 

From that perspective, this extension comes off as more of a partnership decision. Brunson is helping the Knicks during their peak championship window. Down the line, he has a chance to be well-compensated for doing so. He’s trusting the Knicks to take care of him as he has done for them. 

Is it wise to place that sort of trust in a team? Well, that’s for each person to decide for themselves. But considering what this will do for New York’s championship odds, it appears Brunson finds it worth taking that risk. Almost every player will say publicly that their main priority is to win; Brunson is putting his money where his mouth is. He hasn’t guaranteed himself a title, either, but he’s improved his chances of doing so meaningfully.

Were there financial benefits to Brunson signing now?

Yes, a big one, and people seem to be ignoring it: Brunson signed the extension right now. He put pen to paper. He’s guaranteed himself $156.5 million. That’s generational wealth, and the Knicks can’t take it back. For a second-round pick that has only earned around $60 million in his career thus far, that’s a pretty significant figure. No matter what, Brunson will reach his 32nd birthday having guaranteed himself over $240 million in total NBA earnings. That might look small in the context of other deals we see around the league, but it’s still a lot of money. 

That is probably going to factor into decisions stars make moving forward. NBA salaries are growing so quickly in light of these projected 10% annual cap jumps that it might make more sense for the best players to prioritize security over maximizing every last dollar moving forward. Is the difference between $60 million and $70 million annually great enough to justify an extra year of waiting? Is 80% or 90% of the max so much money now that stars would rather give a little bit back to maximize their championship hopes? That’s going to vary on a player-to-player basis, but it’s a legitimate consideration at the moment.

Contrary to the way that $270 million contract he could have signed next summer has been discussed, it was not a guarantee. Brunson needed to make it through one more season healthy and playing at a star level to secure it. That might sound like a certainty, but NBA history says that it not the case.

Remember Isaiah Thomas’ 2016-17 season? He averaged 28.9 points per game and finished fifth in MVP voting. He was perhaps as beloved in Boston as Brunson is in New York right now. The King in the Fourth led the Celtics to the 2017 Eastern Conference finals, a feat Brunson has not yet matched, and he did so despite playing through a hip injury in the immediate aftermath of the death of his sister. At the peak of his powers, Thomas appeared certain to earn a max deal when he became a free agent in 2018.

What did he ultimately sign for one year after his legendary season? The minimum.

All it takes is one injury, one unforeseen change in circumstance, one change in market conditions. A player’s fortunes can flip overnight. Remember when the Lakers offered Dennis Schroder a $84 million deal only for him to decline it and sign for the taxpayer midlevel exception that summer? Such scenarios are rare, but they happen, especially to small guards. Brunson knows this, by the way. 

In 2021, he wanted to re-sign with the Dallas Mavericks on a four-year, $56 million extension. “I want to be safe,” Brunson said about his thought process at the time on “All the Smoke.” “I’m not trying to gamble right now. This is not something you really gamble with if it’s out there.” Dallas didn’t offer the extension. Now, Brunson will earn several times more as a superstar. That doesn’t mean he’s adopted a superstar’s risk tolerance. He saw a lot of guaranteed money on the table, and he took it. Whether he should have is a matter of opinion, but mitigating risk is a frequent explanation for players signing contracts that appear to be below-market.

That is the obvious, tangible financial reason Brunson signed early, but there may also be other financial benefits to Brunson extending this offseason. After all, being New York’s most popular athlete carries significant weight in the endorsement market. Such opportunities were already available to Brunson, but imagine how much more popular he will become if he leads the Knicks to a championship after taking less money to stay in New York. That opens doors that just aren’t available to most players.

The most obvious example? Brunson doesn’t currently have a signature shoe. He wears Nikes, generally sporting Kobe Bryant’s sneakers but sometimes mixing in signatures from LeBron James. How much more valuable does Brunson become on the sneaker market if he’s the face of New York’s first champion in more than 50 years? The answer is “a lot.” At the highest levels, superstars earn more on sneaker deals than they do as NBA players. James, for instance, has a lifetime Nike contract worth approximately $1 billion. He’s still below $500 million in salary earned in the NBA, though that will change this season.

We’re talking in vague terms here because we obviously can’t predict the future. But winning in New York is a powerful differentiator when it comes to endorsements. Derek Jeter reportedly earned at least $150 million in endorsements during his career. Eli Manning earned a reported $8 million to 10 million per year. We don’t know exactly how much of a difference a championship would make here, but it’s safe to say that if this sacrifice leads to one, Brunson will be rewarded for it on Madison Avenue. 

What does Brunson’s contract mean for other stars?

A common reaction to Brunson’s decision to leave money on the table is that other players, and the NBPA as a whole, won’t like it. The arguments are that Brunson, a star player, is putting money back in the pocket of Knicks owner James Dolan, and that by doing so, he has set a precedent that other owners will use to pressure their own star players to sacrifice money for the good of the team.

There is some basis to this argument. It just requires a player of frankly greater stature than Brunson to hold up. In 2010, for instance, LeBron signed for less than the max to join the Miami Heat. When he rejoined the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014, he did so with the stipulation that he would only play for max salaries moving forward. Not coincidentally, James had become increasingly involved with the NBPA during his time with the Heat, and during that first season in his second Cavaliers stint, he was elected a union vice president. He earned his max every year until this summer when he took slightly less to help the Lakers duck the second apron.

Brunson is not James. Owners and executives will probably bring Brunson up in negotiations, but we still live in a world in which the league’s three highest-profile players (James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant), as well as its last three MVPs (Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo) are all either earning max salaries or coming extremely close. There isn’t some shining beacon of team charity sitting atop the league right now. Brunson’s circumstances were unique for numerous (some aforementioned) reasons that are going to be impossible to replicate. Is every team going to go out and acquire their superstar’s three favorite college teammates moving forward? That seems unlikely.

Is that going to stop narratives? Of course not. As we’ve covered in depth, max players are getting hit just as hard as the middle class under the new rules created by the 2023 CBA. There are players who, in the old world, would have earned max contracts but will not now that the rules have changed. It seems a pretty safe bet that when that happens, their agents are going to spin the smaller deals as sacrifices made to help their teams improve rather than just the reality that their client no longer warrants the max. When that happens, there will inevitably be an outcry about labor sacrificing for the sake of management.

But that’s just not really how the system works. It’s not as though money a player chooses not to take just vanishes into the wind. The CBA is specific about how basketball-related income is divided. Both the players and the owners are guaranteed 49% of it. Either side can earn as much as 51% in a given season but no more. If the players earn more than 51% through salary, the difference is returned to the owners through the escrow system. If the players don’t earn 49% of the league’s basketball-related income in a given year, the owners have to make up the difference.

What this basically means is that the actual amount of money the players earn is roughly fixed. What isn’t fixed is how that money is allocated. The system is theoretically designed so that, if one player sacrifices $10 million, that money is reallocated to other players. Is the system perfect? Not necessarily. There is that wiggle room between 49% and 51%, after all. But generally speaking, there isn’t going to be some cascade here in which every player needs to make enormous financial sacrifices in order to win that leads to player salaries declining drastically.

In fact, regardless of the CBA’s rules, player salaries are actually about to rise significantly because league-wide revenue is about to rise significantly. The cap is going to rise 10% annually because of the new TV deal. That’s more money in the pockets of players. So all in all, this deal really doesn’t need to mean much to the rest of the league, at least in financial terms. The parties directly affected here are Brunson and the Knicks, so let’s get into what all of this means for them.

Who else do the Knicks need to re-sign?

With Brunson inked up, every core Knick is now secured through the 2025-26 season except one: Julius Randle. He will become eligible for an extension on Aug. 3, and it can pay him as much as $181.5 million over four years. Given his injury last season and the general struggle prime-aged fringe All-Stars like Brandon Ingram seem to be having in securing max contracts, Randle would almost certainly accept that extension if offered. There has been no substantial reporting on the matter yet. However, given the other contracts the Knicks have to deal with this offseason, Randle would likely have to take a pretty substantial discount in order to extend before the season.

After the 2025-26 season, two more key Knicks can reach free agency. Mitchell Robinson became eligible for an extension on July 1, the two-year anniversary of the four-year deal he signed in 2022. For a variety of reasons, though, an immediate deal seems unlikely. The Knicks seemingly shopped Robinson on the trade market before the NBA Draft. His injuries make him a scary bet as a starting center. Plus, the declining structure of his existing contract is less than ideal when it comes to extensions as he is only eligible to earn a 40% raise on his relatively small $13 million salary for the 2025-26 season. With two 10% cap jumps coming in as many summers, Robinson would probably prefer to shop himself as a starting center than re-sign at what will effectively be mid-level money by then.

The far more pressing concern right now is Mikal Bridges. The Knicks and Nets officially completed the Bridges trade on July 6. Technically, Bridges becomes eligible for a two-year extension on Oct. 1, the three-year anniversary of the rookie extension he signed in Phoenix. However, he would be limited in the amount he could re-sign for by the league’s tight extend-and-trade rules. Those rules expire six months after the trade, meaning that Bridges could re-sign and get that 40% raise starting on Jan. 6. However, if he waits, he would be limited to only three years in an extension. That would get him to 10 years of experience before hitting free agency, but it would also limit the amount of money he could guarantee himself.

The optimal window to extend would come during the 2025 offseason when he’d be eligible for a four-year extension on top of the last year of his existing deal. The structure of such a deal would look pretty similar to what Brunson just signed. He would be inking for roughly $156 million over four years in terms of new money, and he would presumably have the leverage to demand a player option at the end of it that gets him to free agency after his 11th season, which would make him eligible for the 35% max.

Like Brunson, Bridges would potentially be leaving quite a bit of money on the table by taking this deal. As a 2026 free agent, he’d be eligible to re-sign with the Knicks for significantly more, $296 million over five years based on current projections.

The numbers here are eerily similar. Brunson “left” $113.6 million on the table. Bridges would be “leaving” $114.9 million on the table, though in both cases, the practical numbers would be lower if they exercised player options at the end of it. Bridges, like Brunson, has been underpaid thus far in his career. The four-year, $90 million extension he signed with Phoenix after his third season looked outdated the moment he agreed to it. Only time will tell if he’s willing to make the same sacrifice.

Hopefully, for the sake of Knicks fans, Brunson and Bridges have talked this out ahead of time. Of course, Brunson was able to sign right away. Bridges is not. A lot can change in the next year, so his future is still somewhat uncertain.

Where do the Knicks sit in regard to the second apron?

The Knicks are safe from the second apron’s wrath for the 2024-25 season no matter what. The structure of the Bridges trade hard-capped them at the second apron, so they won’t be forced to pay it. The immediate, short-term benefit of the Brunson extension is that it also offers quite a bit of protection against the second apron in the 2025-26 season, projected at $207.824 million. The Knicks, according to Yossi Gozlan’s cap sheets, have around $22.4 million in room beneath that line. In fact, at the moment, the Knicks aren’t even slated to be a luxury tax team for the 2025-26 season, though with only 10 players under contract, that would obviously change. If Brunson had been on the books for his max salary, the Knicks would only have around $11 million in second apron room to tweak the roster.

Note that projection includes Randle opting in at his $30.9 million salary for the 2025-26 season. If he opts out and walks, the Knicks are suddenly at right around the salary cap. If he opts out and signs a new deal, or if he extends beforehand, his impact on the cap depends on the final number. The Knicks could potentially structure a deal to cost them less in 2025-26 and rise afterward depending on the final number. However, the Knicks likely prefer to keep their options open until they see how Randle works with this new, Villanova-centric roster.

There are too many variables to accurately project the 2026-27 season. The projected second apron figure would be right around $228.6 million. Brunson, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, Deuce McBride and Pacome Dadiet are currently under contract for roughly $120.6 million. If Bridges extends, he’d take them to around $155.5 million, leaving them roughly $73 million to devote to Randle, Robinson or a replacement starter at center, and filling out the rest of their bench below the second apron. If Bridges doesn’t extend but re-signs at his max, you can lop $16 million or so off of that $73 million in second apron space. DiVincenzo and McBride expire in the summer of 2027, so making any predictions beyond that point would be impossible. If the Knicks make another substantial trade before then, such as potentially moving Randle for a player or players who make more sense with the Villanova crew, we might have to throw all of this out of the window.

The name of the game here is to stay below the second apron as long as possible. Eventually, the Knicks are going to get there, but delaying the clock is so important because once you do get there, you basically have to stay below the line in three of the following four seasons afterward. Failing to do so drops one of your first-round picks (the one seven years after that first second apron season) all the way down to No. 30 overall. The widespread assumption is that no team would risk paying that price to keep a team together unless it was in the middle of a dynasty. 

The Knicks likely have a multitude of scenarios mapped out here, and the goal is probably to stay below the line through the end of the 2026-27 season in order to maximize flexibility. At that point, they will either have to commit to a roster or start to reconsider this core. Three years of data will give them an idea of how viable this group is, though, so if they do double down on it, well, it probably means they’ve won a championship or come fairly close. The money Brunson is saving the Knicks now clears the way for them to duck the second apron for at least the next two years, if not the next three. That creates enough flexibility for them to make a real run at this thing during Brunson’s prime.