Getty Executive Vice President and Senior Basketball Advisor William Wesley and President Leon Rose of the New York Knicks look on during the first half against the Chicago Bulls.
New York Knicks Vice President of Basketball and Strategic Planning Brock Aller had been identified as part of the next wave of rising front office executives, according to a Yahoo Sports poll with league personnel.
“Knicks vice president Brock Aller has been mentioned often by NBA figures for his key role as a strategist for New York under president Leon Rose,” Yahoo Sports NBA insider Jake Fischer wrote. “Aller joined the Knicks after rising through Cleveland’s front office, and Detroit’s before that.”
Aller was Knicks President Leon Rose’s first hire when he transitioned to the front office from his previous job as a powerhouse NBA agent three years ago.
Entering his fourth season with the Knicks, Aller is a prime candidate to be poached by other teams who will be looking for their next front-office leader, especially if Rose hands his latest hire, former Minnesota Timberwolves President Gersson Rosas, more power.
According to Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, it was Rosas who took the lead in the failed negotiations with Donovan Mitchell last summer. On the other hand, Aller facilitated the Josh Hart trade, per Steve Popper of the Newsday, which proved pivotal in the Knicks’ playoff run last season.
Since Aller came on board, the Knicks have done shrewd dealings from the Ed Davis trade, which netted them multiple second-round picks to extracting extra protected first-rounders and signing key players like Jalen Brunson to descending deals.
Aller spent 15 seasons with the Cavaliers and was a key front-office figure during their title run with LeBron James.
Known as a Cap guru, Aller was one of the Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s trusted men in Cleveland before he moved to New York for a bigger role. He rose from being an intern to becoming Gilbert’s personal assistant and, later on, the Cavaliers’ senior director of basketball operations.
“Aller’s probably one of the finer capologists in the league,” Gilbert told Cleveland.com in a 2017 interview. “He knows more about cap than probably PricewaterhouseCoopers knows about the IRS code. He lives with the cap, with the collective bargaining agreement.”
“He comes up with ideas on things that the league has never heard of, they have to go into their committees to check if it’s OK or not. He’s sort of a savant with this. He’s a space-creator, the kind of space that Koby will need in the cap. He was involved in probably every trade in the last few years in a creative sense. He was instrumental in the New York Knicks trade [for J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert].”
RJ Barrett Trains With Zach LaVine in LA
RJ Barrett trained with one of the Knicks’ rumored trade targets, Zach LaVine of the Chicago Bulls, in Los Angeles based on the photo uploaded by their trainer Drew Hanlen on Instagram.
LaVine had been linked to the Knicks since the February trade deadline, but according to The Athletic’s Fred Katz, it “never got close.”
The two-time All-Star has four years left on his five-year $215 million contract.
Why Knicks Did Not Aggressively Pursue O.G. Anunoby
SNY’s Ian Begley revealed why the Knicks were reluctant to go all-in on O.G. Anunoby at the February trade deadline.
“My understanding on Anunoby [trade talks] was that the [Knicks] were ready to be aggressive at the [trade] deadline, but there was a concern about if Anunoby would then sign in New York long term if they traded for him,” Begley said on the July 26 episode of the Orange and Blue Bloods podcast.
Anunoby, 26, has only one year guaranteed left on his current contract. He can become an unrestricted free agent after next season if he declines his $19.9 million player option.