Colin Cowherd

You just, you know, NBA, NFL, hockey, you just pay them what you got to pay them.

You're not going to argue about it.

You'd rather get a team-friendly deal, but you're going to pay Mahomes whatever the market bears.

For everybody else, including LeBron at an older age, there is a number where it works.

So one of the problems with Luka being your star, and this is a real problem, is that you have to hide Luka, right, because he's a bad defensive player.

Well, the problem is Austin's not a good defensive player.

So you're going to have, if you brought back Luka and Austin and LeBron at his age, they're poor defensive players, right?

LeBron can give you moments, but so you have to construct it.

You need a lot to compensate for that.

So my take is, what's the contract you pay Austin?

Okay, it's got to be at some point movable.

And if you're paying him $240 million, it's not movable.

Here was Scalabrini last hour on should they keep Austin long-term?

Yeah, I mean, it's not all superstars, and I've always said Luka reminds me of a better Carmelo.

If Carmelo was your guy, well, then you were going to have to protect him defensively.

He wasn't going to give you much on that end of the floor.

Meanwhile, when Giannis was your star, you were getting 30 points a game, and he was an elite defender.

So what you needed is guys on the perimeter that could catch and shoot because sometimes he would clog up the, you know, he'd have the ball in his hands a little bit too much.

So, you know, like Jalen Brunson.

What the Knicks have to protect them is Josh Hart, Mikael Bridges, OG, Mitchell Robinson.