Diary of a Knicks Fan: Porzingis was traded for hope and cap space
Dear Diary,
There is an ancient proverb that goes something like —
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”.
As a child, I didn’t really understand what that meant… as it turns out, neither do the Knicks’ front office executives.
For the better part of 20 years, the Knicks have flown in the face of this axiom and exchanged conventional wisdom for chance — innovation for hubris, strategy for a would-be silver bullet, a smoked Boston Butt for a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a methodical rebuild for the hope of a free agent splash.
Each time they’ve fallen flat, making a large enough splash to make waves that reverberate for one or two seasons at most — waves never big enough to have Dave down at the marina give em a call and ask them not to ride the jet skis so darn fast in the no wake zone — then there would be two or three seasons of misery to follow — misery never “What’s in the box??” dark enough to land a top draft prospect. After years of slaloming between not great and not horrible, the Ponzi scheme I’ve managed to fall for finally lucked out… by failing to fail hard enough.
In 2014–15, the Knicks had a chance to truly tank and get the top pick. What did they do? They won two of their last three to move into the second slot in the lottery — a lottery that actually was won by the League’s worst team.
*It should be noted: a team with Alexey Shved running the show won two games in one week.
The Knicks failure to fail landed them with the fourth pick in the draft, which turned out to be the #blessing that saved the Knicks from themselves. Rather than drafting the modern relic they coveted in Jahlil Okafor, they were forced to take the Latvian basketball equivalent of James Franco — enigmatic, multi-talented, confusing to look at, probably good… does this analogy work?
I was okay with the pick, sure, but I didn’t know that I would soon have hope… Hope in the form of an 8 foot tall unicorn who could seemingly do it all. The Knicks had fallen ass-backwards into a player who could rectify their franchise and rid them of the McRib-esque Melo era once and for all… right?
What did they do with this 20-year-old, elongated cherub? They intentionally paired him with a 30-year-old, bucket thirsty veteran who is the on-court equivalent of Golden Corral — he makes everyone who interacts with him worse. (Is this analogy working?) What’s more? They give this player the authority to decide his own fate with a no-trade clause.
Rather than groom their young stars and plan for a strategic and creative long-term rebuild, they opted for a mixture of rebuild and playoff push — the Marie Calendar’s Chicken Pot Pie of NBA front office initiatives, and never as good as you think it’ll be.
Where did this “methodology” land them?
The same place it always has: not bad enough to get the top pick, and not good enough to compete for the playoffs. This middle ground (the 8th pick, to be exact) is where the Knicks have found themselves since deciding to eschew the League-incentivized approach: tank, for the love of God just tank.
But let’s get back to this actual trade… What did we as Knicks followers — the kids who can’t help but look down every time James Dolan tells us we have something on our shirts — get for the one and only bird we had in hand? Redemption for our not-so-elected officials own past sins:
- The cap relief they are telling me is such a coup? It could have been awarded by avoiding Joakim Noah (2 years past washed up when he was signed at a rate no team in the league would have competed with — oh and by the way, they had Robin Lopez on the roster for cheaper and fewer years before they traded him for Derrick Rose, who they then did not re-sign), Courtney Lee (excusable at the time, but still more years than most teams would have given him), and Tim Hardaway Jr. (Have you ever offered to pay Chick-fil-A $8 for a $3 chicken sandwich? No? No one else has either, and this same principle applies when signing Tim Hardaway Jr. for twice the amount any reasonable team in the league thought he was worth).
- Dennis Smith Jr, the best Knicks’ point guard since Stephon Marbury, you say? He’s an intriguing prospect for sure, which is why the Knicks should have drafted him in 2017 with the 8th pick in the draft. They didn’t… The player they drafted, Frank Ntilikina, has lost his job to the busts-turned-redemption stories of Mudiay and Burke. What’s more? He is about to lose his job for a third time, now to the player drafted one spot after him. Knicks: this is only a win if you refuse to consider that you just bought back the bike you sold in order to buy the roller blades that broke down on your way home from the pawn shop. You played yourselves.
- Two First Round draft selections? They’ve been selling us on the idea that the pony with a spike in his head and a sniper in his hand was a franchise cornerstone for four years… So if they end up being right, won’t his partnership with the Slovenian A.C. Slater on the Mavericks guarantee that these future draft picks are trash? Their own beetroot soup (Latvian Delicacy) hype train will be the very thing that makes this trade look eternally ridiculous.
Here’s the thing, journal… I’m upset, but not because I think the Knicks did the wrong thing in 2019. In fact, I think they did the right thing in trading away a distressed, uncertain and soon-to-be expensive asset for cap relief, picks, and an interesting young prospect. It’s the right gamble, but it’s also one they wouldn’t have had to make if they had being making intelligent, incremental strides for 1 or 2 or 5 or 8 or 20 years.
Instead, they are once again choosing to believe that two in the bush is greater than one in the hand. What’s more? This time, for the first time, they may be right.
But even if they are “right”, they’re still wrong. What the Knicks have done from the Eddie Curry trade until they drafted Kevin Knox in 2018 has been largely the front office equivalent of a doctor routinely leaving half-eaten meatball subs inside of 80% of her appendectomy patients. And yet, they still might get what they want: two unicorns for the price of one.
This is the new NBA: Take risks that give you a chance to land the ever-empowered top-flight players, or die trying. Ironically, this has been the Knicks strategy for 20 years, it’s just the first time they’re doing it right.
Here’s to hoping two in the bush is greater than one 7'3", sweet-shooting, shot blocking, bird in the hand.
