The NBA officially announced on Wednesday that they have stripped the New York Knicks of their 2025 second-round pick due to violating the league’s tampering rules.
According to the press release, the investigation found that the organization spoke to free agent signing Jalen Brunson prior to the permitted start date.
If this is all the NBA is doing about the Knicks’ actions, then it only further confirms that the league office doesn’t care about tampering. The Knicks truly couldn’t have been more obvious that they were targeting Brunson well before the start of free agency. And rather than rehash what that looked like, I’ll just copy and paste what I wrote when the news of the tampering investigation first broke …
The Knicks’ pursuit of Brunson was arguably the most blatant display of league tampering we’ve seen in a handful of years. Not only were reports of his deal surfacing several days prior to the start of free agency on June 30, but the Knicks couldn’t have been less discrete about their intentions to pry him away from Dallas.
Executive William “World Wide Wes” Wesley was spotted at a Mavericks playoff game, and the team also hired Brunson’s father to the organization back in June. Not to mention, the trade of Nerlens Noel and Alec Burks to the Detroit Pistons was clearly a means to open up the proper cap space for Brunson. Everyone, their mother, and their mother’s mother knew that Brunson was headed out East, which is why shortly following the opening of free agency, the reported expectation around the league was that the NBA would open this investigation.
Commissioner Adam Silver should save himself the embarrassment and stop picking one random team to snatch a second-rounder from each year. Last season it was Chicago and the year before that it was Milwaukee.
Even with Ball stuck in the sideline and the Bucks eventually missing out on the very player they were penalized for targeting, I highly doubt either franchise strongly regrets their actions. The fact of the matter is that losing one measly future second isn’t going to deter anyone from trying to execute a big-name signing. So, yeah, either the NBA needs to make a real statement out of one of these teams or stop trying to look tough.