Report: Knicks to Interview Cavaliers' Brock Aller for Assistant GM Position

The New York Knicks front office found a new leader when CAA agent Leon Rose, who's represented some of the NBA's biggest stars (e.g. Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony), became the team's president after Steve Mills was relieved of his duties.  

Rose has been on the job for less than a month but faces the task of building a front office and working on reconstructing a team in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the suspension of the 2019-20 NBA season on March 11.

Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News reported Thursday that the Knicks asked and received permission to interview the Cleveland Cavaliers' Brock Aller for an assistant general manager position.

News emerged on March 15 that Aller was a "strong candidate" for the job, per Bondy.

Aller is the Cleveland Cavaliers' salary-cap guru and helped orchestrate a deal that sent Iman Shumpert and JR Smith from the Knicks to the Cavs. Those additions helped Cleveland win four straight Eastern Conference titles and one NBA championship in 2015-16.

Aller was also an assistant to owner Dan Gilbert before his front-office promotion. Gilbert had nothing but nice words about the team's capologist in an interview with Chris Fedor of cleveland.com in 2017:

"He's probably one of the finer capologists in the league. He knows more about the cap than probably PricewaterhouseCoopers knows about the IRS code. He lives with the cap, with the collective bargaining agreement.

"He comes up with ideas on things that the league has never heard of, they have to go into their committees to check if it's OK or not. He's sort of a savant with this. He's a space-creator, the kind of space that [general manager Koby Altman] will need in the cap."

Aller might be one piece to the puzzle, but others include whether Rose will pick his own general manager or stick with Scott Perry from the Mills administration. Also on tap is what's to come for ex-Knicks great and current special assistant to the general manager Allan Houston, who Bondy said is "another strong candidate for a larger role in Rose's staff."

Regardless of who Rose chooses for his staff, the Knicks have a lot of work to do in order to become a perennial playoff contender again. They currently stand 21-45 and 12th in the Eastern Conference, on pace to miss the playoffs for the seventh straight season.