New York Knicks assistant coaches did not receive their championship rings during Tuesday's title ceremony ahead of the season opener, while a number of team employees instead were targeted by a Madison Square Garden phishing scam and will not receive rings at all, according to a report.

The Athletic reported Thursday that the assistant coaches were handed empty boxes during Tuesday's ceremony, in part because they had not yet been fitted for the rings.

The coaches' reaction to the delayed rings ranged from annoyance to anger, according to The Athletic.

But for some team employees in Knicks' business operations and at Madison Square Garden, no rings are coming. Instead, they reportedly received an email last month saying "your Employee Championship Ring is here" that claimed that they could choose from a pair of options at "no cost to you."

When the employees clicked on a link in the email, The Athletic reported, they were informed that they had failed a phishing test and would have to attend a mandatory cybersecurity class.

What are people’s predictions for this season?

Who’s winning MVP?

Are we going to have a dark horse win the championship?

Will the new lottery rules reduce or eliminate tanking?

Hi Everyone,

The new NBA season is starting Tomorrow Tuesday October, 20th!

I meant to get this out sooner but have been very busy the last few months with work/family and the season ended up sneaking up on me.

As was posted at the end of last season we will be migrating to instances. Looking at the voting Piefed.ca and Piefed.zip are the top choices. I'm working on getting accounts on both, assuming there's no issues I think the top vote winner Piefed.ca will be the new location but I'm creating both just to be safe in case approval of my account takes time.

Once I'm able to get familiar with the community flairs and poll features I'll post a summary of how those works and instructions on how to set team flairs which will be a cool new addition to the community.

To the other Mods I will be adding all of your same accounts as mods over there, I don't believe there's a need to create piefed accounts but if there is for some reason (flair features, etc.) we can discuss that.

With the new season on us I'll be posting news/analysis a lot more and will likely create a poll to see what type of content people would like to see more of.

Please let me know if there's any questions and I'm looking forward to another new NBA season!

Update:

My accounts on both instances have been approved but are too new to create a community, once I’m able to I’ll create the new community and we can start the move.

All-NBA and All-Star center Jalen Duren has agreed to sign a five-year, $200 million fully guaranteed contract to return to the Detroit Pistons, agent Chafie Fields of THE•TEAM tells ESPN. This ends a prolonged restricted free agency dispute between the two sides.

Feel like that’s a bit too light on Thanos FF, they probably should’ve adjusted the soul shot if they didn’t want people to be upset still.

Overall decent changes but surprised they didn’t touch new Thanos. Also feel like Isca is a dead card now but that one is a tough one to balance.

The NBA has ruled on the Los Angeles Clippers in for salary cap circumvention investigations on Kawhi Leonard after yearlong probe -- stripping the franchise of 5 first-round picks, issuing a $30 million fine to owner Steve Ballmer and suspensions for Ballmer, Lawrence Frank and Gillian Zucker, sources tell ESPN. Kawhi Leonard will have to pay $700,000 in restitution for improper benefits by the Clippers for his uncle and former business rep, Dennis Robertson.

Season pass/premium are cool designs and could be strong.

Sam Wilson Captain America

• [Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Add Cap's Shield to another location. Ongoing: Cap's Shield is Moveable.
• [Change] 2/3 > 2/2

Our lone nerf today is to Sam Wilson Captain America, who has been an outlier among 2-Costs for quite some time in many decks. These days he is most often played in Batroc and Aurora (with Thanos) decks, which have both been excellent all season and in previous seasons as well.

We believe this change flattens 2-Cost strength and encourages more experimentation. Aurora has been the best-performing Thanos deck in Fractured Frontier. Thanos is popular in a healthy way: players keep exploring different shapes of strategies with him instead of settling into one list, which is where other build-around cards at similar play rates have gone wrong. This change should keep that experimentation going.

Mister Fantastic First Steps

• [Old] 3/4 - End of Turn: Give a card in your hand -1 Cost or +2 Power.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Strong Guy

• [Old] 3/3 - Ongoing: +6 Power if your hand has 1 or fewer cards.
• [Change] 3/3 > 3/4

Death Fractured Frontier

• [Old] 5/8 - On Reveal: Resurrect all your destroyed characters to random locations.
• [Change] 5/8 > 5/9

We’re handing out a couple of points to underperformers. Mister Fantastic First Steps was one of the strongest cards in MARVEL SNAP before his nerf to 3-Cost, but he hasn’t kept up with many other options at that Energy value, so we’re giving him a point to encourage more play. Strong Guy might be an excellent fringe option with the upcoming Inversion Magneto, so this felt like a good opportunity to hand out a buff.

Death Fractured Frontier has been a tricky puzzle piece to figure out, as expected. We shipped her at a modest rate because her ability can swing games dramatically. In practice her win rate is low and the over-the-top outcomes aren’t happening often, so she can handle another point of Power.

Spider-Sense

• [Old] 5 - On Reveal: Give your characters here +2 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you've played.
• [New] 6 - On Reveal: Give your characters here +3 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you've played.

Klaw

• [Old] 5/4 - Ongoing: The location to the right has +7 Power.
• [New] 4/2 - Ongoing: The location to the right has +6 Power.

Here are some larger adjustments. In practice, Spider-Sense has been harder to fully reduce than we expected, and it often plays as a reasonably statted card rather than a real payoff for building around Moveable. We’re raising its Cost, but as an effective 2- or 3-Cost 9-Power card it should be a meaningful strength increase for Moveable decks.

Klaw is an early Series card that we’re giving a sizable buff as an experiment. Hopefully the lower Cost widens his range of play beyond the new player crowd. Stay tuned, it may have more potential to be paired with new cards in the not so distant future!

Additional Changes:

Draft also spotlighted a weird Bruce Banner interaction that we didn't like, so we're changing it! From now on, Bruce Banner will not carry over power changes that "Set", such as Bast or Valkyrie. However, additions and subtractions will continue to carry over. To put it simply, it's now good to play Bruce Banner in Quantum Realm, instead of bad. This change will apply to cards that transform themselves into something specific (e.g. En Sabah Nur).

Jonathan Kuminga has agreed to a two-year, $13M deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves

DeMar DeRozan has agreed to sign with the Denver Nuggets on a one-year, $3.9 million deal, sources tell ESPN.

Surprise win by a C3 deck!