Denouement: Reactions to the Knicks’ 2020 NBA Draft
WHEW. OBI TOPPIN AND IMMANUEL QUICKLEY ARE YOUR NEW KNICKS!
What a wild ride the last 24 hours have been for Knicks fans of all stripes. Whether you are knee-deep in #DraftTwitter and getting notifications for every rumor reported by @JCMacriNBA, or someone who is less of a die-hard and only casually familiar with the college studs of 2020 tuning in, the draft experience was… quite something.
Reactions to Obi Toppin at No. 8
The reactions to the Toppin pick varied greatly depending on what circles of basketball fandom you place yourself in most frequently — and it’s not quite as simple as “On Twitter” or not, for the record.
Armchair Draftniks (like me) and those who take cues from them saw the Toppin pick coming once Pat Williams was picked at No. 4 (an epic leap of faith by new Bulls GM Arturas Karnisovas) and Isaac Okoro was picked at 5, and were thus pretty disappointed. Obi is a prolific offensive player with undeniable talent, whose elite skills are truly elite, but who also has potentially fatal flaws on defense which make folks like me worry about his perceived value outstripping his actual contributions to winning games.
Many New York basketball aficionados were quite happy with the pick — Obi is a hometown kid, and an undeniable hometown success story. Hs is a worker, and has improved his game every year at Dayton, a team player who gets his numbers within the flow of the game, and was very clearly the best player on the court in most games he played this year.
Some analytics-minded folks, both online and in sports media, were happy with the pick for the Knicks as well. Synergy can be misleading, but basically every single category on offense for Obi looks like a NBA 2K created player page, reflecting his elite production:
We’ll get into it more in the coming days, but Coach Thibs, Coach Payne, and Coach Bryant have their work cut out for them as they move Obi to, presumably, playing the 4 full time (he played it about 50% of the time, if not more, in college). Translating his counting stats into winning will be no small feat.
On offense, they’ll need to free him up to shoot more threes than he did at Dayton if he’s gonna be a 4, lest we crowd the paint with two rim rollers and three low-to-no volume players from the arc (RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson, Obi).
On defense, there are some ways they can mitigate his weaknesses if he’s not the primary rim protector, but it will be an uphill battle. Toppin is knowledgeable about the game, despite sometimes being caught sleeping or slow to react.
Similarly, and Mike Schmitz and Zach Lowe allude to this in the clip above, I hope our team biophysio staff is up to the challenge of increasing Obi’s flexibility and loosening his hips. His big glaring weaknesses are getting low, loading movements slowly, and moving backwards (his lateral movement isn’t great, but it’s not quite as bad as the other two). He’ll need to move smoother and quicker if he wants to improve as a 1-on-1 defender and as a help defender. Get this man daily hot yoga classes, salsa classes, and tire agility drills ASAP!
Finally, I’ll bring up the elephant in the room (to some): the CAA connection. New Knicks GM Leon Rose obviously was the former head of CAA’s basketball division, including employing his son on the team that was eventually assigned to Obi Toppin. I know folks who work or worked for both CAA and Roc Nation, and generally the team assigned to a guy like Obi has been in place for a long time — we know the behind the scenes story of how Leon joined the Knicks, and I promise you that the team assigned to Obi was in place and working long before Leon was approached in January. Personally, I don’t think they picked him because he was CAA — I think they picked him because he’s viewed by most front offices and many basketball people and the media as the safe pick because of his elite production in college and his toward-the-rim athleticism.
To me, the pick wasn’t a problem of nepotism, but an issue with lack of forward-thinking, creative evaluation. Having the analytics and the eye test doesn’t cut it anymore; the best evaluators work using a colorful kaleidoscope of factors, and the Toppin pick was black and white. Hopefully our development staff is ready to paint in color!
Reactions to the trades and to Quickley
In a series of alchemical moves that have Brock Aller’s fingerprints all over them, the Knicks turned the 27th and 38th pick to the 25th pick and 33rd pick without costing the team anything, which is objectively impressive in terms of asset management. They first consolidated 27 and 38 to 23, then traded that for 25 and 33. Neat! I will say one thing that is frustrating that most folks don’t know is that they did try to trade back up according to Jonathan Macri on his Draft Night Podcast, presumably for Tyrese Maxey, who went 21st. Ultimately, they were unable or unwilling to give up what it would have cost. He was high enough on my board that I really wonder what they offered, and hope they offered at least the ‘23 Dallas pick or Dennis Smith Jr. Maybe that wasn’t enough, who knows.
Nonetheless, at No. 25 they picked Kentucky’s own Quickley, who I had (funny enough) exactly 25th on my personal big board.
The Strickland’s Stacy Patton did a pretty deep dive on him, and the short version is he’s a short-but-lanky shooting guard who is an elite shooter with a few other strong skills — defense, moving without the ball, floaters, and drawing fouls — and projects to be at worst a very solid rotation player off the bench. He is also one of those basketball-obsessed kids who needs to be locked out of the gym, who has a level 99 work ethic, which bodes well. He’s absolutely not a point guard, so that’s still a hole on the Knicks’ roster, and it remains to be seen if they’ll let Frank Ntilikina (and Dennis, I guess) cook or sign someone (FVV? DJ Augustin?) to fill that hole. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t excited to see him and Frank on the court at the same time.
Finally, they traded their 33rd pick despite some shooters I had ranked highly still on the board, which was a little frustrating, but also entirely understandable. They already have many players who need minutes: RJ Barrett, Frank Ntilikina, Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle, and yes, it also includes Kevin Knox and Dennis Smith Jr. Even if they move Julius to accommodate Obi, they will likely sign at least two 20-plus minute per game players on top of that. I don’t think it is egregious to kick a second rounder down the road to a time when you will have more roster direction and definition, when plugging a hole may be an easier task. Or when you might need it for a trade. I personally would have taken a swing on a player with upside like Isaiah Joe, but I do think the move is reasonable, if a bit boring.
Final thoughts
If I had to sum up this draft for the Knicks, it would be uncreative. Picking Obi was safe from a PR perspective, but describing it as without risk is just flat out wrong, given his weaknesses and the difficulty of improving them. It’s disappointing to see the new front office lack a creativity of evaluation, and I am curious to see if the remaining front office trades and signings reinforce that (Hi, Russ) or push back against that notion.
In some ways, it’s not unlike what happened last year with RJ Barrett, another player with gaudy totals (though less efficiency) and shiny accolades whose contributions to winning games were questioned. Despite his inefficiencies, Barrett did showcase some new defensive potential while under the watchful clusterfuck of the Fizdale regime, and hopefully Obi shows new and improved dimensions both mentally and physically under Thibs once he is freed from the need to be used like a true center half the time and is instead paired with a real one.
