Punch Bowl Now More Turd Than Punch

How quickly can the owner of a reigning championship team spend down a sudden windfall of goodwill? James Dolan has spent the NBA offseason exploring that hypothetical, and he appears to be a gifted speedrunner. The owner of the New York Knicks began his work before the job was even done this past June, inviting Donald Trump to Game 3 of the NBA Finals. That wound up being the team's only loss in an otherwise torrid 15-game playoff stretch. Then, at the team's victory parade, mere days after he'd funded the first title in 53 years for a team beloved by America's biggest city, Dolan took the mic and glowered. To cap off an event that united an estimated 2 million fans in communal joy, the team owner used his time in the pulpit to (predictably) take a shot at Mayor Zohran Mamdani and (inexplicably) question the Knicks fandom of parade attendees. "I don't need your vote," he told the fans, for some reason. For all the justified criticisms of Dolan over the years, he has typically been willing to spend his money on the team. A fan could have reasonably expected that an owner who has already spent big on some catastrophic Knicks rosters would happily spend big to return a lucrative, championship-winning roster, even under the current collective bargaining agreement, which punishes high spenders. But this was not the case. Just four days after the Knicks lifted the trophy, Dolan told WFAN that he would not spend into the second apron to keep the team intact. "We're willing to stretch, but there's certain things in the NBA that you'd have to be suicidal to do," he said. "One of them is the second apron."

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