With Jalen Brunson inking a four-year $156.5 million deal to stay in New York and taking a massive $113 million pay cut from what he could have made next year, the Knicks have been on Cloud 9 after securing their superstar at a cheaper rate. However, their happiness took an abrupt halt as the league’s revenue sharing policies on the reported $74.6 billion media rights deal did not sit well with Knicks owner James Dolan, as he criticized Adam Silver’s strategy with an old Lakers ownership reference to get his “one size fits all” point across.

Addressing all of his concerns in a letter to the Board of Governors, Dolan criticized the league’s revenue-sharing policies, “The NBA has made the move to an NFL model, deemphasizing and depowering the local market.” Sure enough, Dolan has had issues with the league distributing the money coming in from sponsorships and local media rights from big-market teams to the small-market franchises bringing in much lesser revenue.

“Soon, your only revenue concern will be the sale of tickets and what color next year’s jersey will be. Don’t worry, because due to revenue pooling, you are guaranteed to be neither a success nor a failure. Of course, to get there, the league must take down the successful franchises and redistribute to the less successful. This new media deal goes a long way to accomplishing that goal,” Dolan wrote in the letter.

While the new media rights deal will help increase the financial value of every franchise in the league, including a major hike in salary cap space, James Dolan does not appreciate that the new policies are taking control away from team owners. “Once again, pride of ownership is what is sacrificed. We are well on our way to becoming a one size fits all, characterless organization. Just remember we did this on the backs of owners like Jerry Buss,” as revealed by Adrian Wojnarowski and ESPN.

Mentioning the Lakers’ former owner, who won ten Championships during his tenure and was a major reason why the LA side became one of the most storied franchises in the league, James Dolan expressed his dissatisfaction with the direction the league is heading toward. While the league is set to enjoy the perks of their massive deal, it was big-market owners like Jerry Buss who paved the way for the NBA to reach this level of success with their hard work and innovative approach.

James Dolan calls out league’s plan to retain $6 billion while risking RSN’s downfall

Continuing his criticism in the letter, Jalen Brunson’s franchise’s owner also highlighted Adam Silver’s plan to secure the $6 billion of the NBA-related fees with the new policies, that too without “sufficient justification… nor transparency into how it arrived at the sum, how these fees will be allocated or to what extent the league will utilize this purported revenue growth to incur new and incremental costs and further expand the league’s ever-growing expense level.”

On top of that, with the rise of streaming platforms in the past decade, the NBA’s new media rights deal partners with players like Amazon Prime Video and Peacock, Dolan fears for the Regional Sports Networks. “The inclusion of streaming partners in the proposal allows fans in all NBA markets to bypass their RSN to watch certain games in their local market. The proposal offers no local protections for RSNs,” he wrote.

With the viewers’ ability to watch any game on their mobile screens on their preferred platform, the RSN model will likely become unviable with the new media deal. And now that the Jalen Brunson-led side is finally turning into a title-contending team after years of misery, James Dolan likely doesn’t want to let go of the control that he had until now and miss out on the chance of enjoying the perks of being a big-market team like Jerry Buss did for so many decades.

What are your thoughts?

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