Getty
ESPN sports analyst and former NBA player Richard Jefferson (right) laughs as people in the front row, including New York Knicks owner James Dolan (left), head coach Tom Thibodeau (3rd left) and Leon Rose (4th left), talk to him.
The New York Knicks Vice President of Basketball and Strategic Planning Brock Aller was appointed to The Athletic’s 40 Under 40 NBA Players List.
“Aller has been a key figure in the Knicks’ leadership, resurrecting a franchise that had long stumbled. New York has become one of the smartest organizations in the league since Leon Rose took over as president, and Aller has been seen as a key figure in making some smart decisions,” Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic, who compiled the list, wrote of Aller.
Vorkunov compiled the list, which includes rising NBA coaches and front office personnel, “after much deliberation and discussion” with front office executives, coaches, league office officials, agents and players’ union personnel, as well as others in the NBA’s orbit.
Aller, 39, was one of Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s trusted men in Cleveland before he moved to New York for a bigger role. He rose from intern to Gilbert’s personal assistant and then the Cavaliers’ senior director of basketball operations.
“Aller is probably one of the best capologists in the league,” Gilbert told Cleveland.com in a 2017 interview“He probably knows more about the cap than PricewaterhouseCoopers knows about the IRS code. He lives with the cap, with the collective bargaining agreement.”
“[Aller] He has ideas about things the league has never heard of, they have to go to their committees to see if it’s OK or not. He’s kind of a savant in that area. He’s a space creator, the kind of space that Koby is going to need in the salary cap. He’s been involved in probably every trade over the last few years in a creative sense. He was instrumental in the New York Knicks trade. [for J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert].”
Brock Aller’s Mark on the Knicks
Former Cavaliers general manager David Griffin, who is now executive vice president of the New Orleans Pelicans, once called Aller “an evil genius from a cap point of view.”
Since Aller’s arrival, the Knicks have made some shrewd trades since Ed Davis’s Business, which allowed them to obtain multiple second-round picks, extract additional protected first-rounders, and sign key players to decreasing contracts to manipulate salary space.
Going also facilitated the Josh Hart trade, according to Steve Popper Newsday, which has proven essential to the Knicks’ playoff run the past two seasons.
Brock Aller was named CEO of the department last year.
The NBA 40 Under 40 honor from The Athletic wasn’t the first to recognize Aller as a rising star in executive management.
Last year, Aller was also named to the next wave of promising senior executives, according to a Yahoo Sports survey of 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 the management ranks in Cleveland, and Detroit before that.”
Aller was Knicks president Leon Rose’s first hire when he joined the team’s front office three years ago after serving as an NBA agent. He’s a prime candidate to be recruited by other teams looking for their next front office manager, Fischer said.
Alder Almo is a basketball journalist who covers the NBA for Heavy.com. He has over 15 years of experience in local and international media, including broadcast, print and digital. He previously covered the Knicks for Empire Sports Media and the NBA for Off the Glass. Alder is originally from the Philippines and is now based in Jersey City, New Jersey. Learn more about Alder Almo
