2023 Knicks draft: The hell, man?
That type of thinking can’t get you nowhere/someone has to care.
One of my favorite albums by one of my favorite bands is the 2010 record How I Got Over by The Roots. Taking its name from an iconic ‘50s gospel hymn, How I Got Over was a post-Dilla meditation on the emotional connection between hope and hustling experienced by people in rough situations. It also featured fantastic guest spots by a mix of Philly Bouls like Peedi Peedi and Truck North and blog-era staples like Phonte and Blu.
One of the cool little things about the album is the cover. The Roots’ album covers usually are pretty meaningful, and this one is no different. Blue silhouettes of people running are foregrounded, with a soft white light emanating from the background. Looking at it, you don’t know if the people are running towards the light or away from it, or toward you — the viewer — or away from you. It’s a snapshot, and without more context you can’t tell what the people are doing, just like you can’t tell why folks in North Philly (where the Roots are from) might be doing whatever they gotta do to get by, without more context. It’s a call to check your assumptions, and a call for patience.
What on Earth does this have to do with the New York Knicks or the 2023 draft, in which the Knicks picked zero players? Where their only new acquisitions were Draft Strickland alumni Jacob Toppin and Overtime Elite league project wing Jalen Martin? Well, I’m glad you asked!
The Knicks are a team in movement. It sounds odd to describe them that way, since the short offseason has been filled with inaction, but it’s true. They are a team which, despite their playoff exit, is upwardly mobile. Even aside from being ready to trade for a star, their currently rostered talent is for the most part improving rapidly. In the case of their two All-NBA-level talents, Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson both had seasons well above what people thought they were capable of. The team made the second round and had a real shot at the conference finals, despite lacking a name-brand superstar. Instead, they relied on the aforementioned two hoopers and a number of starter-quality players — not only in their starting lineup, but well into their bench.
That depth was their hallmark. It was a product of smart signings like Isaiah Hartenstein, a shrewd trade bringing over Josh Hart, and a remarkable six recent draft products.
I want to say that again — six fucking players who are recent draft products who saw meaningful minutes at one point or another: RJ Barrett, Quentin Grimes, Immanuel Quickley, Mitchell Robinson, Deuce McBride and Jericho Sims, all of whom are capable of shouldering even more minutes. This is not normal. They make up the majority of the rotation. It’s wonderful!
But it is not without a downside.
Any player coming into the team has to compete with them for minutes, and compete with Brunson, Randle, Hart and iHart. If you think real NBA playing time is needed for player development, then you might as well consider any rookie a redshirt player for this Knicks team, barring a consolidation trade. This is one reason why the Knicks’ front office has been picky — perhaps unreasonably so — during the last two drafts. Why take someone who can’t help now, if you feel they need to play to develop into their best self? You’d be arguably self-sabotaging.
More notably, despite being a certified good team, we still don’t know the immediate next steps for this front office. We know the far-off goal is to cash in picks and players for a star at some point — maybe a sub-elite superstar, maybe a true certified top-10 player; maybe this offseason, maybe in 2024 or 2025. We don’t know how desperate they are. We don’t know how high they are on the current core, which played at a 50-plus win pace and was a Julius meltdown and Thibs face-plant away from a conference final. We don’t know, without more context, if they are running away from the light or towards it, running from something or to something. The draft punt didn’t really reveal much in the way of their plans.
I don’t want to excuse the draft punt, merely hypothesize about why they did it. I would not have done it, personally. Punting on two straight drafts should be a red flag. It reeks of the mid-2000s Mark Cuban Mavericks. It’s not something that happens often, because draft prospects are not only sometimes high-upside lotto tickets, but also useful low-salary role players and trade pieces. You can use them to diversify your team's skillsets, reinforce weaknesses and solidify short-term depth, even if most rookies are not positive impact players. Front offices know this.
Even teams like Denver, fresh off a title run with a core that is mostly returning, know the value of picks. That’s why they traded into the draft. Despite that, as I mentioned before, these Knicks are a very unusual team. Consecutive punts don’t happen often, but teams like this Knicks team also don’t happen often. They’re a real playoff team that lacks a true name-brand superstar at the core (Jalen will likely become one next season, if you ask me) and relies on depth, half of which was produced through recent drafts, half from one specific draft. It’s weird, man!
To put a finer point on it: the Knicks have punted on two drafts but have more meaningful minutes being allocated to developing young players than probably every single likely top-5 seed next season, except maybe the Kings and Grizzlies — two teams who the Knicks are more similar to than ESPN and other major outlets would have you think. So why does skipping on the draft rub so many the wrong way? Why does it not sit well when we hear that the Knicks considered trading in and ultimately decided not to?
Well, a big part of basketball fandom is investing in hope. We do it for rostered players, but there’s nothing like the blank canvas of a incoming rookie. Knicks fans in particular have invested emotionally in rookies more than fans of most other teams the last 10 years. Before the Rose regime, that hope was often all we had. We lived or died with ping pong balls, with Landry Fields’ performances, with Iman Shumpert’s highlights, with every Kristaps Porzingis jumpshot. To punt on that particular genre of hope is something completely foreign to us, and it does not sit well in either our Knicks-fan hearts or our armchair-GM brains.
What are the odds that a rookie guard could get minutes over Quickley and Deuce? What are the odds that we prefer to replace Obi minutes, if he is moved, with a rookie rather than a younger free agent? Those are questions we know the answers to, but we prefer the storybook low odds of a rookie stealing the limelight and playing so well that a ‘’good problem’’ is foisted upon us. It feels better to hope than to calculate, and Knicks fans are certainly more familiar with the former than the latter.
If I had to nitpick, my one real qualm strategy-wise with the Knicks’ decision to punt is it’s a misuse of the G League. You need minutes to develop picks, preferably NBA minutes. But the Knicks have used their G League to help develop McBride, and it could help develop other low-probability fliers. This is what they did by picking up Jaylen Martin from OTE as an undrafted free agent, but you could do that through purchasing a second-rounder as well (the Grizzlies taking GG Jackson 45th comes to mind). This is what the annoying Miami Heat love to do. That being said, this is ultimately a small qualm more than real beef with a front office that has exceeded expectations in major ways lately.
Everyone is entitled to hope. That’s why I’ll never begrudge a Knicks fan hating that they punted once, let alone twice. I would just encourage Knicks fans to consider that this is a snapshot in time. We don’t know what the next moves for this front office will be. I am not saying fans need to know that sort of stuff to cast judgment; that would be silly. What I am saying is that we should give this front office — and, more importantly, the young players on the roster — the benefit of the doubt. They have earned it, just as they have earned their minutes (and then some).
