The Knicks have agreed to a two-year, $16MM deal with free agent guard Elfrid Payton, his agents, Ty Sullivan and Aaron Mintz of CAA Sports, tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
The agreement contains a team option in the second season, according to The Athletic’s Michael Scotto. That lines it up with the other two-year contract agreements the team has reached so far in free agency.
Payton, an athletic two-way point guard, is set to join his fourth team in the past 18 months. He was traded from Orlando to Phoenix in February of 2018, signed with New Orleans last July, and started 42 games with the club this season.
New York also had interest in veteran free agent George Hill, according to SNY’s Ian Begley, but Hill decided to return to Milwaukee on a three-year, $29MM deal on Sunday night. The team now has one open roster spot and roughly $2MM in projected cap space to spend, plus the $4.8MM room exception.
In addition to Payton, the Knicks have already come to terms with Julius Randle, Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson, Reggie Bullock and Wayne Ellington during the first 24 hours of free agency.
Superteam status.
Knicks are gonna have a great bench starting five lol
I wonder how they will market this 2year contract team.
With the amount of tourists, people who just wanna see a game at MSG, and opposing fans who don’t mind going to root for their team in NYC…MSG kinda sells itself.
Knicks barely have to market any team. Attendance is always strong.
This is getting ridiculous. Randle, Portis, Payton, Bullock, Gibson, and Ellington? Are they trying to set a record for most mediocre players signed during a summer?
The Knicks have a ton of depth.
If you consider warm bodies with a pulse depth, then yes.
Agreed, this roster looks trashy
Anytime I hear anything about the Knicks I just go straight down to the comments for laughs
LOL. It’s like they’re double parked trying to give away all the cap space to anyone who’ll sign for 2 years. Payton was DSJ before DSJ – great athlete, lousy low IQ basketball player, which is a problematic trade off at PG. Played decently last year before getting hurt, but at 3 mm/ 1 year. Not a bad signing at that price point, but for 8 mm/2 years per, considering they already have DSJ, they could have done better. Wonder if they tried. One more spot with the room exception.
Knicks trying to become Pelicans North. Y’all want E’Tuan Moore!?
I guess is the usual 1+1 contract.
Great move. Most can’t see the strategy, but it’s clear… Sorry for blindpeople, take the Red one
Oh, we can see the strategy. We also know who is putting together the strategy. the same people who have never put together a good strategy. We also know this actually wasn’t their strategy, it’s just the only strategy they have left.
So the strategy is strike out with all the good free agents this year, sign some scrubs for two years, and then likely strike out with good free agents again in 2021? There are no silver linings here.
well, in their defense, their future would have looked a lot better had they won the lottery and landed zion. couple more years of top 5 picks should improve their squad by 2021
the Knicks positioning themselves for another free agent run in 2 years and if Kawhi opts for only a 2 year return to Toronto, NY could be a favourite.
Why are they any more likely to succeed in attracting free agents in 2021?
The difference is they now have a legitimate core of young players to build around with good veteran leadership. Best of all they have their full compliment of draft picks and cap flexibility.
Randle and Payton should be nice in fantasy basketball this year
These are all signings meant to be auctioned off at the trade deadline. Hopefully not with RJ Barrett attached. Still the worst run professional sports team on the planet. The thing about trading players to contenders for picks is the contenders picks always suck. Having 4 first round picks doesn’t mean anything if 3 of them are lower than 20. When’s LeBron JR. turning pro again?