The Knicks have had as much of an offseason as a franchise that could have a 20-year streak. They hired the best man available for their open coaching job in Tom Thibodeau. They have made a very excellent hire to spray out his staff and the front office, especially assistant coaches Kenny Payne and Johnnie Bryant.
They had a bad lottery night, but that’s par for the course for the team over the past 35 years, and if there was a design to take a positional hit, it probably was this one. There was no obvious franchise cornerstone, though it would certainly be interesting to see if LaMelo Ball is equal to his reputation.
The important business will start soon enough. The most essential part of the Knicks’ direct blueprint is also the simplest, in theory: getting better players. Get more talent. The Knicks have been a raging, epic failure for two decades and there is not much mystery as to why: most nights, all the way back to 2000, they had inferior players than the other man. Basketball is a simple game to figure out in one way or another.
The inner core – RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle (average age 22.5) – is the building block for now, and all three are players who need to thrive in Thibodeau’s system, which will be heavily dependent on player development.
The immediate need, the crying, crying desperate need, is for a professional point guard. Frank Ntilikina has shown flashes, but by Year 4 the Knicks should see more than flashes. Dennis Smith Jr. has been a tease his entire career, and the Knicks can no longer afford to be tempted by what-maybe-but-probably-will not.
There will be a lot of points available in the draft, starting with Ball, but the most intriguing one that seems likely to fall to the Knicks at no. 8 is Cole Anthony.
Anthony could be the futures bet, a city boy (Archbishop Molloy) who would be a legacy of the Knicks (his old husband is Greg, an NCAA champion at UNLV and a member of the ’94 Knicks finalists). But it’s a gamble. He had an injury-plagued and disappointing New Year in North Carolina, he wrestled as a shooter (.380) and his assist-to-turn ratio was 4.0 / 3.5.
For the Knicks, the worse game is to find an established point guard and make him a direct part of that building block foundation – and freeze them to take on the best player at no. 8 is to be taken, or to become into more assets for their deep stack of the same. And assuming the Knicks have given restrained attention to the Nets’ adventures in the NBA bubble, they need to think seriously about making Fred VanVleet an offer he can not refuse.
VanVleet appeared in last year’s playoffs for the Raptors and this year has blossomed into a just-below-elite-level point guard who can score (17.6 ppg), shoot (39 percent from 3), distribute (6.6 assists ) and play defense (his 1.9 steals per game are double his previous high). He has also played his entire career in the kind of winning environment that Thibodeau wants – and needs – to create here.
Is he a no-brainer? That’s not him. He’s small (6-foot-1), and even though he’s young (26), you even talk to him 2-3 years before the Knicks play the kind of big games with regularity that Toronto now plays. VanVleet has said he wants to stay in Toronto, which makes perfect sense on many levels, and that means the Knicks have to pay for the privilege.
And although they will have plenty of room for salary, there will forever be the hard spectacle (no matter how deep a long shot it may be) of Giannis Antetokounmpo.
But the Knicks have spent too many years – too many decades – on hopeful future outcomes instead of building an immediate infrastructure that can last. Kevin Durant never came here. LeBron James never came here (multiple times). Anthony Davis is a free agent in a few months; does anyone have any hope that he would come here?
Players want other players to play along. Say what you will about Carmelo Anthony, but when he was looking for the Knicks nine years ago, he did so knowing he would carry the weight of the franchise on his back. Nobody wants that anymore. The very best players want to know that they are coming to something solid, and determined.
You build that with talent. You build by collecting players that good players want to play with. Fred VanVleet puts the Knicks one step closer to being that kind of destination, one that has not existed at the Garden since dial-up internet still ruled the day. It’s the right time. He is the right player.
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