Langston Galloway's qualifying offer will almost triple once he plays 2 minutes tonight

Langston Galloway has played 1,998 minutes in total heading into Wednesday night's finale against the Indiana Pacers. If (once) he passes the 2,000 mark, it'll mean more than just a nice, round number; it could cost the Knicks more than $1.5 million in cap space. Per Ian Begley:

If Langston Galloway plays more than two minutes Tuesday, he reaches a threshold that increases his qualifying offer this summer from $1,180,431 to $2,725,003. Galloway's increase would, obviously, decrease the Knicks' cap space. (This assumes that they extend the qualifying offer to Galloway, thereby making him a restricted free agent.) Kurt Rambis is aware of Galloway's contract structure but says it will not impact how he decides to use the second-year guard Tuesday against Indiana. "That has no bearing on any decision that I would make," Rambis said. "It never has and never will have a bearing on what I do."

Players above the 2,000-minute threshold qualify as starters for the purpose of qualifying offers, even though Galloway has only started 7 games this season.

The Knicks didn't seem to even consider an effort to keep Galloway from reaching the minutes threshold -- had they started it a few weeks earlier, they could have easily managed his playing time. This would lead us to believe that the front office is fairly certain there was no way they would have been able to keep LangStarr for $1.1 million.

In the cap space orgy to come, a player of Langston's skills -- steady, slightly below-average, with youth and a clean bill of health -- will draw offers from other teams. There's no reason to piss off the player and his agent with some late-season playing time shenanigans.

I'm one of Galloway's biggest fans, and I think they need to do everything within reason to keep him in New York next season. And that is going to cost them, regardless of how many minutes he plays in Indy.