Perhaps someone should take down the Kevin Durant billboard outside Madison Square Garden.
Per Marc Berman of the New York Post, the Knicks brass no longer feels they need to make a big free agent splash in the summer of 2019.
Instead, the Knicks have deemed adding a top-five lottery pick, developing their rookies and young players as well as easing Kristaps Porzingis back into action as larger priorities.
The Knicks are currently $32 million under the salary cap and would not add someone to a max-like contract "unless that player would be a dramatic difference maker to the team's fortunes," Berman reports.
Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Kemba Walker, Klay Thompson, and Kyrie Irving are all expected to hit free agency on July 1.
Rolling over cap space to 2020 or having flexibility to trade for a star, such as Pelicans' Anthony Davis this summer, are other options, Berman writes.
The Knicks could still make necessary moves to clear more cap space and sign someone like Durant, too, but team president Steve Mills downplayed the urgency to do that while speaking to reporters on Friday.
"We are in a position if we need to find a slot for a max salary we can do that," Mills said. "Our focus is on the guys that we have right now, developing them, and also developing the environment, or the culture, that exists around our team."
While some of the young talent on the Knicks have shown promise, the team is still 9-25 and losers of nine of their last 10 games.
Mills believes the team still has a long way to go before free agents view New York as a desirable destination.
"If we don't make this a place the guys internally feel something good is happening and believe in what we're doing, that's not going to be attractive to people who are on the outside," Mills said. "Our guys have to feel it and then they have to hear about it and see it in how our guys are interacting with us. The plan is that we develop an environment that free agents should want to be here."