2. Joakim Noah, 4 years, $72 million
It is pretty funny to see two legendary NBA figures in Thomas, and now Phil Jackson, who were great in their own ways, be completely awful at actually managing a team. We all know how bad Jackson was with the Knicks, but the Joakim Noah signing might have been the icing on the cake.
Now, Noah was a tremendous player and a former Defensive Player of the Year, one of the better centers of his time. However, it was very clear that his career was on the decline the season before he joined the Knicks which makes this contract even worse to look at.
Noah wasn’t just bad, he was straight-up awful, averaging just 4.6 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game while shooting 49.1% from the field in 53 games over two seasons. He was so bad, in fact, that the Knicks opted to buy him out and stretch his contract out over the next four seasons while not actively employing him.
While Noah’s contract finally ran out in 2021, it’s completely embarrassing that the Knicks even had to do this in the first place. 2016 was notorious for the number of horrific contracts that were hounded out due to the spike in cap space and it’s rather unfortunate that the Knicks were one of the teams that handed out more than one bad deal that offseason.