I’ve been watching the NBA bubble games. I’m sure you have, too. I’m even more sure we’ve all felt that sense of “It’s really fucking annoying there’s all this young talent popping off while the Knicks are stinky butt talent deficient wahh wahhh!”

Don’t deny it. I won’t either. But then I throw on the highlights of the Rockets and Bulls games at MSG towards the end of the season —  the Knicks’ season, anyway —  and I feel better. The Knicks don’t have a lot of talent, but they do have talent. 

RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson are not insignificant pieces of the puzzle. Frank Ntilikina showed signs of developing into a valuable utility player off the bench who needs his 3-ball (and confidence) to tick upwards to really pop up a notch. The upcoming No. 8 pick could certainly yield another key piece, and while Kevin Knox has had his struggles across the board, hope is eternal (unless you’re Dennis Smith Jr.).

However, the current young players on the roster and the draft are not the only routes available to the Knicks in order to add talent. The Knicks are flush with cap space, and even in a relatively bare free agent market like this one, there are players, some young ones even, that can help improve the team’s talent deficit.

Some, like Christian Wood, who will be just 25 years old at the outset of next season (whenever the fuck that ends up being), are unquestionably talented. However, it’s his fit in the front court alongside Robinson that is questionable.

To talk through such a complex matter, I recruited our resident basketball professor, Matthew Miranda.

Shwinnypooh: Quarantine gave me an opportunity to really dig in on Wood (lol). He was somebody I was vocally skeptical of in the wake of reports that the Knicks were interested in him as a free agent this summer. Some of that is contract related.

His incumbent team, the Detroit Pistons, seem ready to embark upon a long-term rebuild. Much like the Knicks, they have their own talent deficit to address. Blake Griffin’s still a talent, but his age (31), injury history, and contract make him more of a candidate for trade than a part of the solution moving forward. Aside from that, they do have some interesting pieces, but Wood is the one who shone brightest last season, in what was a well-timed coming out party for him on the cusp of free agency.

For the season, his per-36 averages were 22.6 points, 10.6 rebounds, 1.5 blocks, and 0.9 steals on 56.7/38.6/74.4 splits. You could counter he played just over 21 minutes a night, though. How can we know at all whether those numbers could scale up in a bigger minutes load?

Lucky for us, we saw what that would look like following Andre Drummond’s trade to Cleveland at the deadline. In Detroit’s final 13 games following the trade before the season was suspended, Wood averaged 22.8 points, 9.9 rebounds, 1.0 blocks, and 0.8 steals on 56.2/40.0/75.7 splits in 34.2 minutes per game. Pretty good!

You may be asking yourself, why did Shwin leave out his assist numbers? Good question, and one I’ll answer in a little bit, but suffice to say I do think Wood is a quality player who is just coming into his own, and may have more room to grow than a player in a similar vein the Knicks signed last summer in Julius Randle.

What are your initial impressions of the man, Professor?

Miranda: My first thought is “Wood’s the same age John Starks and Anthony Mason were their first seasons with the Knicks!” followed by “That’s the same age Julius Randle and Bobby Portis were last year,” followed by wondering whether it’s the search for symmetry or fresh scarring that burns brighter in our hearts.

My second is: What would the Knicks be signing Wood to do, and how much would it cost? The Pistons hold Wood’s Early Bird rights, meaning the most they can pay him next year is $9.7 million, unless they dip into their approximately $30 million in projected cap space. The Knicks paid Portis 50% more than that to be their top scoring bench big. Both averaged 21 minutes a game last season, Wood for the league’s fifth-worst team, Portis the sixth-worst. They were the same age. That’s where the similarities end. 

Wood was better from the field (57% to 45%) and on two-pointers (64% to 49%). He was better shooting threes, and threes are, like, Portis’ thing. Per 36, Wood tripled Portis’ shot blocks and nearly tripled his free throw attempts. He out-rebounded Portis. Literally the only thing Portis did better than Wood was take shots. So, upgrade, yes? Depends how much. A costly upgrade often becomes a costly setback. 

Is a better bench big worth the years and dollars it’d take to land him for a roster whose holes are, to put it delicately, ample? Tom Thibodeau is going to give Mitchell Robinson all the minutes he can get. Would Wood and Mitch complement one another? Or would the Knicks — brace yourself — be adding a redundant skill set?  

One potential key to Wood succeeding in New York could be Kevin Knox. Detroit’s lineups last year show a consistent theme: in lineups featuring Wood, the Pistons’ three best five-man and four-man lineups, as well as four of their top-five three-man lineups, also featured Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk. Possessing the league’s most beautiful name, Mykhailiuk also possessed a mighty fine 3-point shot, launching eight attempts per 36 and canning 40%, doing what Knox was projected to do. Pairing Wood with Knox could pay off for both players. 

While Knox’s second season was mostly disappointing, he still hit two or more threes in nearly a third of his games. To mix sports references, Knox is a .220 hitter who strikes out too much but hits some dingers. And he just turned 21, and went from a rookie who led his team in minutes and shots taken and shots maken to this year playing less than Frank Ntilikina, a man whose lack of playing time was such a source of frustration an exasperated home crowd chanted “We want Frank!” 

An effective Knox would open the floor for Wood, who does his best work 10 feet and in or out beyond the line. Wood is better at everything than Portis. But it’s Mitch I keep coming back to. Can they play together? If they can’t, is this even worth discussing?

Shwinnypooh: And therein lies the fundamental question which requires answering.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it would be an ideal pairing. Neither Wood nor Robinson are prolific passers, averaging 1.6 and 1.2 assists per-36 last season, respectively. Wood did demonstrate the ability to step out beyond the arc and hit the three at a respectable 38.6% clip, but it was on relatively low volume, and teams are not exactly rushing to close out on him. 64.3% of Wood’s shots came from 0-10 feet, the area where Mitch exclusively does all of his work.

Many of the concerns I have about Randle and Mitch operating effectively together offensively could certainly be levied to any potential pairing with Wood. Playing two guys who are at their best as inside scorers together in the frontcourt with minimal playmaking chops is a very ’90s persuasion. The Knicks have kept trying to zig in that fashion while the rest of the league zags into four- and five-out lineups.

However, there are some major differences stylistically between Wood and Randle, which provide some hope and are worth discussing. Yes, as I mentioned above, Wood, like Mitch, is not a plus passer. But what he does do, which Randle does not, is make quick decisions with the ball. 

There’s a far greater economy of movement in everything Wood does offensively. This allows him to operate as a wonderfully efficient and versatile cog within a system, whereas any Knicks fan who had the (dis)pleasure of watching Randle last season is all too familiar with how often things ground to a halt as soon as he got his hands on the ball. Wood averaged 1.90 seconds per touch and 0.72 dribbles per touch, whereas Randle averaged 2.71 and 1.67, respectively.

You can watch any of his highlight reels, but they’re all similar. Wood doesn’t waste time once he gets the ball. He is a quick decision maker when choosing whether to shoot, drive, or cycle into another action, usually a dribble hand-off or a swing pass into a pick-and-roll, both actions in which he excelled operating out of.

The two blocks on Joel Embiid jumpers in that video lead us to another key difference. Christian Wood is a good defensive player. His combination of size, agility, and hops means he’s more than able to defend as a 4 in space, but has the capability to anchor at the 5 as well. There are a lot of bigs that get shoehorned into having defensive responsibilities at both spots, but there are few as comfortable and adept at doing so effectively. Wood is one of the few.

This isn’t to say he’s a dominant defender, but he’s a fully capable one. There are certainly valid concerns over his fit alongside Mitch offensively, but he’s one of the only bigs in this free agent class and, quite frankly, in the league who has the ability to produce a quality defensive pairing alongside Robinson that could hang against proficient small-ball opponents.

Wood certainly wasn’t an empty stats accumulator in Detroit last season, either. The Pistons, who finished with a -3.7 net rating last season, were a +2.2 when Wood was on the court. In the 13 games after they traded Drummond — nine of which they also played without Reggie Jackson after his buyout and departure for the Clippers — the Pistons as a team had a -9.1 net rating overall, but with Wood on the floor posted a -1.1 net rating.

I have a much higher estimation of Wood after digging into his film and numbers, but I’d still be hesitant to make a run at him in free agency. It’s not that I believe he’ll prove to be a stats hunter who wouldn’t tangibly benefit the Knicks on the court or get in the way of the development of the team’s incumbent young pieces. It’s that Detroit, like the Knicks, are operating from a talent deficiency, and Wood represents the highest upside young player they have. Is he worth getting into a bidding war for? I’d be wary of doing so, especially when Mitch is likely to be getting a nice little payday next summer.

Miranda: There is another way of viewing Wood that supports the Knicks pursuing him in free agency. Say the Knicks offer Wood two years and $25 million — $12 million next year and $13 million in 2021-22. Say Wood takes the deal. That gives New York a year to see how he fits with other pieces that are hopefully presenting themselves as future cornerstones — Robinson, Knox, Ntilikina, Barrett and this year’s lottery pick. It also gives the Knicks a promising young big who turns 25 this month who scores, rebounds and defends, all on a reasonable contract. 

Asset management may not offer the fond nostalgia of Dave DeBusschere slotting in alongside Willis Reed or Charles Oakley next to Patrick Ewing, but it has its place. I bring up Portis again, for a reason: last year the Knicks had Portis on a one-year deal for $15 million. He wasn’t much of an asset. Forget for a moment whatever you thought of BP the player — was any team in the league going to look at Portis on a one-year deal at $15 million and think “I’m gonna get me some of that sweet”? Of course not: the money was an overpay and the length of the deal meant immediate depreciation.  

But Christian Wood making less than that on a multi-year deal is an asset, one you can add in a future deal to offer your trading partner upside, matching salaries and a shot at future financial flexibility. If the Knicks’ new front office is aggressive about upgrading the roster, they need young talent on reasonable deals. As far as this organization is from legitimacy, that might be the biggest, best role Wood can play on the Knicks — a short-term investment.