Knicks are reportedly near hiring Cavs executive Brock Aller to ‘high position’

The New York Knicks are reportedly near hiring current Cleveland Cavaliers executive Brock Aller to a “high position” in their organization.

The 2019-20 NBA season is on hiatus until further notice for the Cleveland Cavaliers and other teams due to concerns regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic.

It’s uncertain if the season will eventually play out, at least in some capacity, down the road.

It appears, though, that Cleveland will feasibly be needing to find a new executive in the near future. Cavaliers executive Brock Aller, who is at the moment, the Wine and Gold’s senior director of basketball operations, is reportedly close to being named to a “high position” in the New York Knicks organization.

That information came from veteran NBA reporter Frank Isola, who is a regular guest on ESPN’s “Around The Horn” and “Pardon The Interruption,” and the New York Daily News‘ Stefan Bondy reported that Aller is close to being named to that aforementioned “high position” within the Knicks organization.

As Isola noted above, Bondy also first reported in March that the Knicks had interviewed Aller for their assistant general manager position before the NBA’s season suspension, and then Bondy touched on how from there, Aller had been offered that gig. His role will again, seemingly be centered on cap strategy.

Aller will likely be joining the recently-hired Leon Rose, who is now the Knicks president of basketball operations, and it’s clear that New York is looking to really get going in the right direction in their full-rebuild.

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The Knicks and prior team president Steve Mills mutually parted ways in February, and it was a long time coming for the team eventually announcing Mills would be stepping down from that role.

Aller has essentially been the Cleveland Cavaliers capologist since Koby Altman started his current role as the Cavaliers general manager before the 2017-18 season, and before that, Aller had been with the Wine and Gold since the 2013-2014 campaign.

As Cavaliers Nation’s Justin Benjamin also hit on, though, Aller’s been a “personal assistant to Cavs owner Dan Gilbert for 10 years.”

Benjamin additionally emphasized how Aller had previously played a “gigantic role” in assembling the Cavs’ title-contending squads in the LeBron James return years, and helped bring key contributors to the Wine and Gold’s title-winning team in Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith to Cleveland previously via three-team trade involving the Knicks and Oklahoma City Thunder.

Those players were ironically last on the Knicks before they played for the Cavaliers, too.

Moreover, with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Altman having a potential sign-and-trade candidate in the expiring Tristan Thompson in the upcoming free agency period, as was suggested by Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, it’ll be interesting to see how that possible scenario would play out with Aller no longer with the Cavs.

In addition, the situation with Andre Drummond, per Fedor, is that he will “most likely” opt into his $28.8 million player option in the upcoming offseason (whenever that ultimately is), and I’ll be intrigued to see if the expiring Matthew Dellavedova will down the road be re-signed by Cleveland.

Hopefully even with Aller seemingly out of the picture, Altman and company can be able to bring back Dellavedova, who led Cleveland with 5.5 assists per game post-All-Star break, per NBA.com, on a team-friendly deal for one to two seasons.

I’d also hope a potential trade involving Drummond by Altman and the Cavs, feasibly near next season’s trade deadline, could play out with the Cavs not bringing back too much bad contract money for over an additional season.

Granted, I wouldn’t expect Aller going to New York to be all too concerning overall, and I’d imagine Cleveland should be able to find a competent replacement.

From this point forward, it’s more so about hitting on future draft picks, such as Cleveland’s in the 2020 NBA Draft, which is seemingly likely set to be in the top five with the team currently having the league’s second-worst record in 2019-20.