Recapping & projecting the Knicks 2024 draft with Prez
Isaiah Hartenstein was never gonna stay. Quit moping and think about the future.
First off: what the fuck happened?
If you missed last week’s NBA Draft, the Knicks entered with the 24th, 25th and 38th picks. They left with Pacôme Dadiet, Tyler Kolek, Kevin McCullar Jr., Ariel Hukporti and three future second-round picks. Seems simple! However, if you watched, you know the way by which the front office arrived at their destination was the most circuitous of routes; hence my fuck-laden initial inquiry.
The first round
New York began picking Kyshawn George 24th on behalf of the Washington Wizards, who sent back the 26th pick and – care of Phoenix – the 51st. At 26, in what was a massive surprise to me, the Knicks then selected the 18-year-old wing Pacôme Dadiet. On the clock again at 26, the Knicks made another trade, selecting Dillon Jones for Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for five future second-round picks:
2025: the more favorable between Memphis and Boston
2026: Golden State’s pick
2027: Minnesota’s pick (traded later in the evening)
2027: the second-most favorable between Oklahoma City, Houston, Indiana & Miami
2027: the third-most favorable between those teams
Brock Aller and Sam Presti went at it again, as they did a few years ago, and it wouldn’t be the last time.
The second round
We were waiting for the Knicks to make their designated pick at 38. Instead, the 34th pick brought news: they acquired the draft rights to Tyler Kolek from the Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for the draft rights to Daniel Díez, that 2027 Minnesota second-rounder they’d just acquired, the least favorable 2029 second between Indiana and Washington and the Knicks’ second in 2030.
At 38, the Knicks picked Prez favorite Ajay Mitchell and sent him to Oklahoma City for the draft rights to the 40th pick, center Oso Ighodaro, plus cash. At 51, the pick they got from Phoenix in the first round, the Knicks picked another Prez favorite, Melvin Ajinça, whom they promptly dealt to Dallas (great fit, sadly) for the 58th pick, the draft rights to Petteri Koponen (now a coach for the Spurs!) and cash.
They then sent the draft rights to Ighodaro to Phoenix Suns for the draft rights to the 56th pick, Kevin McCullar, Jr., plus a conditional 2028 second belonging to Boston. Then, with the draft’s final pick at 58, the Knicks took Togalese center Ariel Hukporti. Got all that? Good! This is what it looks like in chart form:
Player analysis/projections
Hey, Prez, don’t beat around the bush. You had hoopers you wanted us to take. Unlike 2020, the Knicks didn’t take your favorites – in fact, they actually took two of your favorites (Mitchell and Ajinça) for other teams. Did the Knicks mess up?
No! I would have preferred keeping those players, but the players did all have some level of upside and fit that makes them very solid picks. The Knicks also picked up a gaggle of second rounders for all their trade shenanigans, which is nice. Let’s go through the players one by one.
Pacôme Dadiet
In my estimation, this was always going to be a very eye-of-the-beholder draft. I knew they were moving differently after their first pick was Dadiet. There was no smoke, and the Knicks haven’t taken a 18-year-old in the first round since RJ Barrett.
They immediately defied my expectations. I had a late first-ish grade on Pacôme, a home-run-swing of a project. He’s got size and shooting off the bounce and off the catch but needs to learn the finer points of professional hooping, which can be tougher to teach. He’s the kind of prospect I'd expect rebuilding teams to swing on, not contenders like the Knicks, which is why it was surprising.
And a pleasant surprise it was. Despite him not being one of my guys per se, I was very much feeling the idea of pairing with more ready players, especially after the Mikal Bridges trade made us by far the deepest team in the league. We’ve unlocked scoring upside in Deuce McBride enough that he could be an impact starter in playoff minutes; we’ve unlocked $175 million worth of upside in Immanuel Quickley. Who knows what we could do with a 6-foot-9 shooting wing equipped with a few ancillary skills like foul drawing, pull-up decision making and transition attacks?
A development plan for Dadiet has to involve three primary components:
Continuing to flesh out his off the dribble scoring package. His role in Germany was almost exclusively attacking from three, from midrange or attacking the rim after the Ratiopharm guards rotated the defense and kicked it out to him. In Westchester I’d expect him to get more reps initiating and attacking out of the pick-and-roll – he grew up playing point guard, after all.
Ironing out defensive habits. This is probably best learned not in the G League, but by traveling and practicing with the very locked-in big boy Knicks. In Germany, he showed he could identify a help-the-helper situation, when to stunt, when to stay home or pre-rotate . . . but for every one time he did, there were five instances of him being asleep or ignoring his duties.
Continued physical development. He isn’t skinny at 217 pounds; however, his size and strength really only play up when he’s shooting midrange shots over smaller players or running into bigger ones to draw fouls. He’s been a poor rebounder, stocks producer and secondary rim protector. He also doesn’t quite leverage his physical strength on defense and is often fine letting a ballhandler make him shuffle backwards rather than daring them to go through his chest. So whether the Knicks choose to make him a leaner, more athletic big wing versus a tank will have meaningful implications for his game. I could see pros and cons both ways at the moment.
Tyler Kolek
After Dadiet, it was a more traditional draft from a Knicks’ perspective: lots of trades picking up future seconds and players they liked as late as possible. The odds of the Knicks making two first-round selections were low, as they get paid more and we know the Knicks are balancing a calculator on a knife’s edge this summer when it comes to their free agency plans. So trading their second first was not a surprise.
In the second round, the player they clearly coveted was pick-and-roll maestro point guard Tyler Kolek, out of Marquette. I was not personally enamored with him because he’s an older prospect at 23 and measured 6-foot-2 with a 6-foot-3 wingspan – two key factors limiting his likely upside.
In order to be a high-value starting-level player, he needs to have a pretty elite offense with those measurables. While he was arguably the best point guard in college, he still is not close to being an elite scoring threat. In fact, despite being a deadeye shooter off the catch and from the free throw line, he struggles shooting pull-ups, the prime currency for shot creators and pretty much a strict requirement for unlocking offensive upside in guards.
Can he do it eventually? Sure. Tyrese Haliburton and many others have. Haliburton came into the NBA as a sniper off the catch but a shaky off-the-bounce shooter, due to a weak handle and weak transfer from dribbble to shot. Once his handle was proficient enough he was able to get from his dribble to his elite jumpshot, and it transformed the nature of his offense. Perhaps Kolek can similarly take a good-not-great handle and improve it to where it allows him to access clean jump shot mechanics whenever he wants.
If he eventually shoots off the bounce that could unlock some significant offensive upside, but unfortunately it doesn’t change his defensive projection as a small guard. So for now he’s sort of role-locked as a caretaker backup point who can start in a pinch, like Tyus or Tre Jones. And though we have capable backup point guards in McBride and Donte DiVincenzo, having an end-of-bench player capable of running pick-and-rolls and setting up the talented scorers on the Knicks is actually a useful role, so I understand it from the front office perspective. It’s almost like instead of signing a Tre Jones/Ish Smith to fill that fifth guard role, they spent a first-round pick on it, buying a smidge of offensive upside, too.
So what does Kolek’s developmental plan probably look like to become a rotation guard?
Work on the baby pull-up jumpers. He doesn’t need to achieve cross-tween-hesi-3 proficiency from year one. He just needs to begin getting comfortable with the easiest and most important pull-up three, called a ‘’sit behind’’ three. These are the pull-ups you’ll see ball handlers take when they get a screen, take one or two dribbles to ‘’sit behind it’’ and pull-up from deep.
Be for real on defense. At Marquette he had a ton of offensive responsibility, but did not really work hard on defense. Occassionally he could calculate when to jump in the passing lane for steals, but he wasn’t particularly physical at the point of attack or responsive after being screened out of plays. Both those things need to change ASAP. Even the smaller players on the team like Jalen Brunson go hard as far as effort and knowhow goes.
Kevin McCullar
As free agency unfolds, the Knicks may have to move one or both of their strong, late second-round gambles while they navigate ‘’The Second Apron of Hell’’. For purposes of this overview, I am operating thinking they will remain Knicks.
McCullar began this year as the best player on one of the best teams in college, frequently mocked in the middle of the first round even though he, like Kolek, is an older prospect at 23. His jumper had taken a step forward from broken to janky-but-somewhat-functional, with McCullar taking a career-high seven 3-pointers per 100 possessions. As recently as late January he was shooting 38% from three. For the year, he cleared 80% from the line. His offensive box plus/minus was 4.5, more than double his prior high.
A nagging knee injury resulted in him missing swaths of February and March, ending Kansas’ ambitions for a national title. The games he did play every now and then those months were uneven, with three of the five resulting in negative on/offs and negative game BPMs, roughly the same number of bad games he had his first 19 games. McCullar ended up dropping because of injuries, age and concerns that he relied too much on thin margins which won’t exist in the NBA. He doesn’t finish above the rim and doesn’t always blow by defenders, often reliant on a mix of brute force and touch. As we know from RJ Barrett, that is a hard diet to subsist on.
Finally, McCullar’s defense, his calling card his first four college seasons, slipped from elite to just very good. Over his first four years his DBPM never dropped below 4, which is actually insane, but if you watched him you understand why. Dude was an absolute DEMON on the perimeter, too fast laterally to blow by and too strong to bully. He put up a 3.4 steal rate and 2.2 block rate, all the while being a top-notch help defender.
This year, perhaps because he gained more mass to shoulder a regular diet of drives and perhaps because he knew he would be Kansas first option on offense, his defense visibly slipped. His steal and block rates fell to 2.5 and 1.3; he still defended well, but not at the bulldawg level he previously displayed. Given the shaky jumper and offensive creation potential, McCullar’s defense not being incredible was probably the second nail in his coffin, with injuries the third and final one.
And yet, getting someone mocked in the teens (pre-injury) at 56 is unequivocally fine as a risk-free gamble. The things McCullar needs to work on – ironing out the jumpshot; refining the offensive attacks – are actually things you can develop in the offense-first environment of the G League. And if we have a rash of wing injuries, you know he can at least step in and give you some dogged defense along with a sprinkle of dribble-pass-shoot-Josh-Hart-your-way-to-success minutes.
Expected developmental goals for McCullar include:
Get healthy!
Get the jumper to passable off the catch. Pretty straightforward as a roleplaying wing.
Get back to elite on defense, maybe by losing a little mass. His offense in a scaled-down role is a risky proposition given his shaky jumper, but what he can control is becoming a lockdown defender again. No team minds a shaky-shooting-yet-elite-defending wing off the bench; the Knicks are no different.
Ariel Hukporti
Hukporti’s been in and around the draft world for years now as a prospect.
I think my first tweets on him were in 2020. He’s a classic rim-running giant with long arms and some hops, a menace on the glass, too. He doesn’t pass much or shoot at all, which is why – along with being 22 – he could be had at the end of the draft. However, from a skill development perspective, forcing him into the zero-bag/zero-skill batch of centers may not be necessary. In Australia’s NBL he had perhaps too much responsibility, frequently posting-up, driving from the 3-point line and more. While he won’t be doing that stuff in the NBA, he could be catching passes on the short roll, letting off floaters, etc.
Some of his many, many turnovers were the result of his own over-ambitiousness; some were by necessity, as an assigned mismatch attacker for the team. On the Knicks, his role would be more Jericho Sims than Isaiah Hartenstein. And hopefully he could do that better than Jericho, who isn’t good at defense, due to Hukporti being way bigger as a deterrent and rebounder.
It was a busy draft night for the Knicks. The next few years will determine what it all ends up meaning.
