Operation Killian: Everyone has a PG, So Why is it So Hard To Get One?
By Prez and Tyrese London
To the Knicks, the idea of a franchise point guard has been nothing but an enigma since our beloved Clyde Frazier was traded to the Cavaliers. There have been moments where it seemed like one front office or another was able to solve the equation for X: Mark Jackson winning Rookie of the Year; the Stephon Marbury trade; and for the younger generation, the national phenomenon known simply as “Linsanity.” All of these PGs fizzled out at one point or another, leaving Knick fans reminiscing about Raymond Felton, wondering if modern medicine could have saved Derrick Rose’s knees sooner, and pondering how many more goat sacrifices would have caused Jason Kidd’s 2013 deal with Satan to hold up during the playoffs. If the Knicks’ history over the last 40 (!!!) years is any indication, the Knicks cannot afford to wait much longer for a franchise point guard. Clearly one isn’t going to land in their lap by chance, so let’s examine the different ways a franchise can land a long-term PG and then see what the Knicks can do about it.
Drafting a PG, Historically
Let’s look at all of the PGs (loosely defined to include some combos and big initiators as well as traditional PGs) taken in the last 10 years and where they were drafted:
Picks 1-5: John Wall (1), Kyrie Irving (1), Ben Simmons (1), Markelle Fultz (1), Ja Morant (2), D’Angelo Russell (2), Lonzo Ball (2), Luka Dončić (3), Trae Young (5), De’Aaron Fox (5), Darius Garland (5), Kris Dunn (5), Dante Exum (5)
Picks 6-10: Damian Lillard (6), Marcus Smart (6), Jamal Murray (7), Coby White (7), Emmanuel Mudiay (7), Collin Sexton (8), Brandon Knight (8), Frank Ntilikina (8), Kemba Walker (9), Trey Burke (9), Dennis Smith Jr. (9), Elfrid Payton (10), Austin Rivers (10)
Picks 11-20: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (11), Michael Carter-Williams (11), Kendall Marshall (13), Cameron Payne (13), Dennis Schröeder (17), Wade Baldwin (17), Eric Bledsoe (17), Shane Larkin (18), Jerian Grant (19), Delon Wright (20)
Picks 21-30: Nolan Smith (21), Aaron Holiday (23), Reggie Jackson (24), Tyus Jones (24), Shabazz Napier (24), Ty Jerome (24), Greivis Vásquez (28) Norris Cole (28), Dejounte Murray (29), Derrick White (29), Marquis Teague (29), Nemanja Nedović (30).
You probably have to go back one year further to the 2009 draft (Jrue Holiday 17th, Ty Lawson 18th, Jeff Teague 19th) to find players from the 10th pick onward who really became fixtures on good teams., though White and Murray are Spurs’ing their way toward that. Most good PGs on the whole have come out of the top 7 or from 8-20 with outlier development. The skills you need to be a great PG -- advanced handle, vision, and either top-end athleticism or top-end shooting -- usually manifest at a very young age. If a player develops that later in their career (second contract or later) it is generally considered a plot twist.
Zero of the guys from 7-20 since 2010 came in and immediately crushed it -- many faced a steep, long learning curve, and most didn’t pan out. The best of the bunch is Kemba (who had outlier development), Bledsoe (good, if unspectacular, after years of being CP3’s understudy) and SGA and Jamal Murray (both of whom have had the luxury of not needing to do much point-guarding and focusing almost wholly on their strength: scoring).
Now, let’s detour a tad and take a look at the “point guards” for each team that played in the second round of this year’s playoffs, with big initiators in italics:
Lakers: LeBron James, Alex Caruso, Rajon Rondo
Clippers: Patrick Beverley
Nuggets: Murray/Nikola Jokić
Rockets: James Harden/Russell Westbrook
Bucks: Giannis Antetkounmpo/Bledsoe
Raptors: Kyle Lowry/Fred VanVleet
Celtics: Kemba, Smart
Miami: Goran Dragić/Bam Adebayo/Jimmy Butler
Of the remaining guards — as in actual guard-size dudes — the majority were not the main initiators of their teams. Instead they played next to jumbo/wing initiators and offensive hubs who directed the offense in the halfcourt. The exceptions are Beverly on the Clippers, who sorely needed a true PG, and Lowry, FVV, and Kemba -- all of whom had outlier development. Murray is the other guy here who was expected to be pretty good initially and finally is delivering after a few years of good-but-underwhelming play. This isn’t meant to write off the other PGs from earlier rounds like Dame or Mike Conley (both were drafted highly and expected to be good,;both were even better than expected), but more just to point out how tough it is to be an impact PG on really good teams.
The analysis is clear: point guards who can be a high-level initiator and be a high-level playmaker are rare, whether you define rare as a top-seven pick (Conley, Dame, Murray) or rare as outlier development (Kemba, Lowry, FVV).
Not to mention big initiators just being rare on top of that. You need a little bit of luck, and we ain’t had that.
What’s a Leon Rose to do?
Signing a Stopgap PG, or Fred VanVleet
Of course if you have the chance to sign a max-contract PG, you want yourself in the running for the most part! We cleared space for Kyrie to no avail, but he was certainly worth a max given his prodigious talents despite his weird 3rd eye instagram captions. Kemba came out and said he would have been down to play in NY, just not by himself, which is completely sensible.
So if you’re the Knicks and you’re not in a position to sign a max-level PG (to say nothing of max-level big initiators), and you find yourself drafting outside of the top seven, what are you to do? It’s more likely you can stumble into an All-Star wing after the seventh pick than an All-Star PG, and even more likely to draft a lower-ceiling contributor a la Mikal Bridges or Isaac Okoro or Devin Vassell. Usually, picking a PG after seven is risky business.
So that brings us to the next option for an erstwhile front office: signing a stopgap PG.
What are the advantages? Well, the number one advantage is the flexibility. You have a range of price points, styles, and generally a steady supply. You want a slightly higher-end, plus on defense organizer of men? Here's a Ricky Rubio, jumper not included. Someone who can drive, kick and fake shoot? I got your Reggie Jackson here. Don’t wanna pay for the fake shoot? Here’s an Elf on The Shelf. Get outbid for VanVleet? Here’s the Canal Street version, DJ Augustin: shooting and spacing for the kids, penetration for the adults, and absolutely nothing else, all in a tiny package. You can usually sign any of these for the low low price of single-digit millions to one- or two-year deals.
I won’t spend much time on VanVleet, and instead recommend you check out the Free Agent Profile on him from earlier this summer. VanVleet falls into a unique category: the non-max PG who is more than a stopgap. Malcolm Brogdon was the most recent iteration of this. FVV is entering his prime but also entering free agency, a rare combination for a two-way player who does things which help the team’s skills compound (drive, space, defend, play multiple positions) as well as things that help the team directly (hit a variety of tough 3-pointers, score the pointz). He may be tough to acquire precisely because these strengths will drive up the urgency for his incumbent Raptors to keep him…but the Knicks will likely try.
Should they fail to get FVV and decide against drafting a PG, they are left with the mediocre brunch buffet of low-end starters we mentioned earlier. And that’s completely fine! But surely there’s another option for the Rose brigade?
Trading for PGs
There is the option of trading for your starting PG, which might give you the opportunity to sift through a higher tier of point guards than what’s on the free agent market in theory. Additionally, trading offers a lot of versatility — multiple front office goals can be achieved at once through trades.
Looking back at previous deals, stars like Kyrie and Russell, who fit the mold of franchise PGs, were moved through trades. However, in most cases, when trading for a PG the return is usually low level (ex: the sell-low/buy-low Brandon Knight or Fultz trades) or the point guard is passable but overpaid (Schroder, Jeff Teague). It is hard to find a high-end point guard worth his contract who wouldn’t command a hefty price because teams are usually reluctant to let those players go. More common is shuffling low-end PGs in hopes of finding a bench contributor or upside play. Just look at which PGs were dealt last year: Teague, Exum, Jordan Clarkson, Napier, IT3, Knight. In 2018: Fultz, Shelvin Mack, Avery Bradley, Knight, Tyler Johnson, Burke, DSJ, George Hill, Matthew Dellavadova. Not many answers for Leon Rose!
There are some exceptions. The most controversial topic comes into play here: a potential trade for Chris Paul. The fan base has long argued about the positives and negatives of the trade , but at the end of the day, it would shore up the gaping hole at the position for the time being. He would be the Rolls Royce of stopgaps, and he has the cost to match. There are other exceptions: we heard whispers of the Knicks grabbing Conley and assets from the Jazz due to COVID cap constraints, for example. If the Knicks were to pivot and look at filling the position in with someone who is promising, but hasn’t been given the best opportunity to flourish, a trade with the Pacers for Aaron Holiday may be intriguing. Perhaps it’s a one-year, low-cost rental of Victor Oladipo. Hell, we came a Dolan veto away from stealing Lowry from Masai Ujiri - the trade market is nothing if not unpredictable.
Find Your “PG” Next Year, Make Due in 2020
The other possible situational advantage Leon Rose has is that if the front office commits to a top-10 pick in the 2021 draft, there is a good chance you can find your big or small playmaker there.
By my count, you have a few guys projected to run offenses: Cade Cunningham (the crown jewel), Jalen Suggs (6’5” do-it-all dynamo scoring PG), Scottie Barnes (6’8” non-shooting do-everything-else point wing), Jalen Johnson (“traditional” 6’9” big initiator), and Caleb Love (UNC’s next 6’3” high recruit PG, following in the footsteps of Cole Anthony and Coby, because we have to get that Carolina PG some day). Those are the guys who project to organize offenses, not including other possible big-time scorers who don’t move the needle via passing as much. You could draft BPA in 2020, sign a stopgap PG (or #FreeFrank and let Jared Harper cook!!!), shoot for an initiator in the loaded class, and if you miss you can circle back to the market as the league becomes more flush with playmakers of all sizes.
The Frank Option shouldn’t be slept on either, as it has precedent: fellow large defense-first PGs like Smart, Murray and White developed into legitimate starting-caliber PGs around the same age after serving a few years on the bench before finally blooming a bit late. The counterargument is what happened to Exum, but we won’t talk about that. It would take some certainty derived from watching Frank kill training camp, but I wouldn’t put it past the front office…after all, we just saw how many break-for-emergency PG’s get moved every year, and should Frank sputter out they could always do that for pretty cheap.
Anyhow, the risk here is obvious: even in a good outcome you may end up with a good player (a combo-guardish Frank and a blue chipper from the 2021 draft), but still no long-term PG! In that case you will need another stopgap, or to trade for a youngish PG who is either expensive or cheap for a reason, since young PGs usually fall squarely into those two categories. Which brings us to our favorite option of all:
Drafting a PG, Preferably Named Killian Hayes
After all of this, you can see why it might be reasonable for Walt Perrin to give a little additional weight to legitimate point guard prospects. A little extra credit on their test score, so to speak, relative to other prospect’s grades.
I’m not saying taking BPA is stupid, just that I don’t think it is unreasonable to factor the scarcity of the position and the difficulty of acquisition into the calculus. For most teams, they don’t need to factor this in because most teams have a franchise ballhandling offensive fulcrum because at one point or another they lucked into getting one through the draft or free agency or outlier development. The only exceptions are the Knicks and the Magic.
These lessons matter for NYK, and implicate two potential draft picks: Killian Hayes and Kira Lewis. Kira, despite being in the dreaded past-seventh-pick-range, grades out to many observers as a PG who actually could be your guy long term. An outcome in the VanVleet/Dragić/Mike Bibby range is maybe a little high-end, but wouldn’t be some crazy development.
Sir Killian Hayes is the real jewel here though. Let’s talk about him. Our whole draft staff stans him, perhaps unreasonably. Praise Hayes! He is a prospect who is not without flaws, but whose shotmaking off the dribble and at the rim has somehow gone unspeakably understated and underrated this year.
The guy still needs to work on his catch and shoot jumpers (he shot below 20% on them), but that is an easier fix than someone’s off-the-dribble shooting (where he shot over 40%). Not many players come into the league good off the dribble yet not off the catch, but it’s usually a simpler fix on the rare occasion which it happens. The most recent example is another lefty: Kevin Porter Jr., who was better off the bounce than catch at USC and closed his rookie year out as a 40% spot-up shooter for Cleveland. Not all skills are equally hard — or easy — to develop. The spot-up jumper will likely come around with good development staff, as it did for KPJ. It would be a whole ‘nother article so we will spare you the details, but usually if you can hit off the bounce and not off the catch it’s a simpler fix (centered on footwork) compared to turning a good spot-up shooter into a good off-the-dribble shooter (which requires improving ballhandling significantly, a notoriously tough task).
Back to Hayes: he shot over 40% on pull-up jumpers from 3. That’s NOT NORMAL for ANYONE let alone a teenager! Even if that comes down a bit, it is still a big asset. Look at this shot chart, and pay attention to the middle:
In the bubble, we’ve just watched guards with similar combinations of pull-up shooting, dribble-space creation, finishing prowess, and efficiency tear people up! You see that red rectangle? That means when running a high pick and roll, the staple of playoff basketball and of Killian’s possession diet, all the scoring options are there for him thanks to his pull-up skills. That’s big-time stuff when done efficiently, and that is what separates his pull-up game from Anthony and Lewis. This is big-time stuff:
What else have we seen in the bubble? Well, we’ve just seen smaller guards who can’t defend become FOOD. On defense, Hayes can’t be targeted by wings because he’s too tall and not lithe at all. No Lou Williams situations; not even Kemba/FVV ones where coaches are coming up with complex schemes to accommodate their smallness despite good effort on behalf of the lilliputians. Here’s two examples from the playoffs courtesy of Ben Taylor:
Hayes is no shorty. He’s an inch shorter than Okoro and has the same wingspan. It’s not crazy to say he’s better at defense on the whole for his position than Okoro is for his — and Okoro is arguably the best defender in the lottery, make no mistake. Big PGs who can defend are valuable even when they’re Caruso or Beverly on offense. With Killian’s offensive upside? DON’T TALK TO ME MAN! His combination of length, strength, instinct, and very strong hands go a long way. Yes, his hands, don’t laugh — you watch enough of his highlights (and Devin Vassell’s) and you’ll notice that when he gets any piece of the ball, a steal is in play and not just a deflection.
He’s also an impact offball defender, one of the tops in the lottery.
I say all that to say this: he is undervalued right now. He is not a top-four pick (at least publicly), likely because 1) he played abroad, 2) isn’t traditionally athletic, 3) has some poor 3-point shooting numbers and 4) isn’t quite dominant at any one thing. And yes, I’ve intentionally left out any commentary on his excellent passing because I think his scoring profile is underrated.
Remember all that shit we reviewed earlier about how most PGs after the seventh pick don’t pan out, or are mediocre? Looking at the past is informative but not predictive, as any good climate change model will tell you. Good GMs can buck trends and exploit inefficiencies in draft markets, and we would be well served to do this by trading up to seven or even to six or five. Pay up for it. Give up Knox or DSJ or the Dallas 2023 pick with very light protections (top three? Five?). Give up one of those and the 27th pick. Throw in cash, and a second-rounder. This kind of move has Walt Perrin all over it. Know the nuances, use a more advanced calculus, master your playing field, and act accordingly, rather than simply drafting with wishful thinking and blind optimism.
Wow, what a journey. Thanks for coming along! So what have we learned about this seemingly insurmountable, Sisyphean goal of getting a franchise PG?
It’s hard to get PG prospects who aren’t risky outside of the top picks, because outlier development is very unpredictable by definition, and because you usually know really good guards are really good by age 19.
It’s uncommon to find long-term, appropriately priced FA PGs with few exceptions.
It’s uncommon to find long-term PGs through trades - most PGs who end up traded are either low-level or stars changing playoff teams.
Killian would be BPA and fill the PG vacancy, and is acquirable at a lesser cost than someone like LaMelo, and thus our FO should have moving up to get him as the first, second, and third priority of this draft.
Boom. See y’all on draft day in November 2047!
