The Cleveland Indians’ name change won’t take effect in time for the 2021 season.

Team owner Paul Dolan — the cousin of Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan — told the Associated Press on Monday that the name “is no longer acceptable in our world.”

Still, the changes will be phased in over a “multi-stage” process, Dolan said, and the American League club will continue to be called the Indians until a new name is chosen.

“We’ll be the Indians in 2021 and then after that, it’s a difficult and complex process to identify a new name and do all the things you do around activating that name,” Dolan said. “We are going to work at as quick a pace as we can while doing it right.

“But we’re not going to do something just for the sake of doing it. We’re going to take the time we need to do it right.”

Dolan acknowledged “it’s time” to move on from the nickname that Native American groups have pushed to have removed for several years. The team has been known as the Indians since 1915.

“It was a learning process for me and I think when fair-minded, open-minded people really look at it, think about it and maybe even spend some time studying it, I like to think they would come to the same conclusion: It’s a name that had its time, but this is not the time now, and certainly going forward, the name is no longer acceptable in our world,” Dolan said.

The former Washington Redskins of the NFL similarly rebranded to the Washington Football Team this season after pressure mounted from corporate sponsors to change it.

“We don’t want to be the Cleveland Baseball Team or some other interim name,” Dolan said. “We will continue to be the Indians until we have identified the next name that will hopefully take us through multiple centuries.”

The Cleveland Spiders, the name of a defunct professional baseball team in the city, is considered among the favorites for the renaming. Dolan added the commonly used nickname “The Tribe” will not be used as the replacement.

“We are not going to take a half-step away from the Indians,” he said. “The new name, and I do not know what it is, will not be a name that has Native American themes or connotations to it. Frankly, that (Tribe) would have been a name that I would have loved to pivot to.

“But in talking to these groups, they made it very clear that the issues that are attached to the Indians don’t go away with Tribe, particularly since Tribe has been tied to the experience of our team for many decades.”

Dolan added that profits generated from the sale of merchandise bearing the Chief Wahoo logo this season will be given to Native American groups and causes supporting Native Americans.

Dolan said his “awakening or epiphany” was spurred by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while being arrested by Minneapolis police officers in May.

The Dolan family purchased the team in 2000, and the move comes despite a portion of Cleveland’s fan base pushing back against the proposed change.

“There is definitely some pain in this,” Dolan said. “It’s the end of an era, or the beginning of an era. But accompanying that is the recognition and maybe even excitement that we’re going on to do something that is better. It will be better for the community. It will be better for our team. And it will be something hopefully that unites everybody. It’s not anything that we have to feel any kind of reluctance about expressing,” he said.

“It’s going to take some time for everybody to embrace but I think when they do, we’ll all be better off for it.”