7 New York Knicks who are as good as gone this summer

No. 6: Mamadi Diakite

Mikal Bridges makes about four million more than Bojan Bogdanovic, who right now is the only player being sent to the Brooklyn Nets in a trade. To push that hard cap up to the second tax apron, giving them the breathing room to find another center or otherwise add to the roster, they will need to add at least that much salary to the deal.

A new quirk in the CBA, however, does not allow a team to stack multiple minimum-salary players to achieve salary matching in an unbalanced deal; what that means is since the Knicks are getting back just one player, they couldn't add two minimum contracts together to reach that extra $4 million. If they could, they could trade Mamadi Diakite and Jericho Sims and accomplish their goal.

Instead, they need to pick one minimum contract and one player on a non-minimum deal. Of the minimum options Mamadi Diakite is the obvious choice, as Sims is a player the Knicks have under contract for multiple seasons and see potential to grow into their long-term backup center.

Diakite, however, is a journeyman player bouncing around on two-way contracts and end-of-roster deals. His minimum deal for this season is non-guaranteed until the leaguewide cutdown date in January, so the Knicks were able to keep him around after waiving Daquan Jeffries. Diakite is now a 28-year-old "big" who isn't at home at power forward or center and would be the logical choice to add to this deal. If the Knicks expand it, as they should, Diakite looks like a virtual lock to leave the Knicks and be shipped to Brooklyn.