Keep your trade-hungry fingertips away from my rookies
The Knicks’ rookies have shown so much in so little time… so doesn’t that mean it would be foolish to trade them at this juncture for a non-star?
A couple of weeks ago, in a more innocent time, I was chatting with the esteemed Jonathan Macri of Knicks Film School fame, and like a total moron, expressed support for the idea of including Miles McBride in a trade for Myles Turner. To be fair, I drew the line in the sands of negotiation at Quentin Grimes, who I was and am extremely high on, and to be fair, this was before Grimes went nuclear against the Bucks.
Counterpoint: my rationale was still ridiculously dumb.
The only reason I was willing to include Deuce was that we hadn’t seen him play, but this is precisely the reason — in a trade for one full season of Myles Turner, at least — that we shouldn’t be including either rookie. We don’t know what we’re trading. No, worse that that. What we can claim to know, from the splinter-sized samples we have — 119 minutes of Grimes and 69 of Deuce — literally could not have gone better.
Which isn’t to argue they are untouchable, but that this would be the absolute worst time to move them imaginable, because their value is very likely heading in one direction. They will earn a combined $3.8 million dollars next season. $4.3 million the year after that. If they ink rookie extensions, both stand to be Knicks through 2028. That’s over 500 regular season games, each, in exchange for 82 guaranteed evenings of Mr. Turner. And that’s to say nothing of the fact they’d be the youthful decoratory cherries on the trade pie, with Obi Toppin or Immanuel Quickley representing the meat, both of whom's progression should be reminders of why you don’t trade rookies a couple of hundred minutes into their careers. Let's not be on the wrong end of a Khris Middleton situation now, Leon.
I like Turner. He’d be a great fit for Thibs. I look forward to talking to him in the summer of 2023 if the asking price is what it’s rumored to be.
There are reasons beyond don’t-do-dumb-shit asset management that make shipping either rookie out for Turner specifically a flawed idea, too. The reason we need Turner is because he’ll shore up a defense that relies on consistent production from the center position that it’s not had this season. The reason the center spot is so important is because the Knicks' perimeter defense is from the bead curtain school of preventing penetration.
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