In the second part of the October mailbag, Matthew Miranda ponders Fred VanVleet’s value, makes a case for a polarizing former Knicks point guard in the modern NBA, and lays out a plan for the Knicks (and US politics) in the near future.

Hey there, neighborinos! In part one of this mailbag we talked about upcoming draft prospects and one transaction from Knicks history we’d undo. Today we touch on free agent options, the past, and the future.

1) Regarding Fred VanVleet and power forwards...

In light of reports that Fred VanVleet is expected to pull in a similar deal to Malcolm Brogdon’s four-year, $85 million from the Indiana Pacers last offseason, my first thought is that I don’t wanna invest that heavily in a 26-year-old who’s never making an All-Star team. But this may be one instance where one’s first thought is short-sighted.

Next season the Knicks will pay Julius Randle $19 million. The Big Apple Turnover got a lot of heat for his performance last season, and I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t lose my shit the 8,794,853rd time he spun into a triple-team and turned the ball over rather than kick it out to any one of three wide-open teammates. But — and I know this hard for a lot of us to swallow — Randle is in all likelihood waaaaay smarter about basketball than you or I. Fans like to ascribe morality to events, so when something negative continually befalls a player, we often search for reasons to explain it, e.g. Randle won’t pass because he’s selfish, and therefore immoral, and therefore get him off the team.

The truth is he’s pro’ly not passing because he knows his wide-open teammates are wide open for good reason. If your life was on the line in a pickup game and you were the best player on your team, would you kick out to people you know can’t shoot? Or won’t? Or would you force the issue? What if forcing the issue had paid off in middle school, high school, and college? What would your instinct be in the pros? To force it, right?

I don’t think Randle’s skill set meshes well with this Knicks roster. He shouldn’t be a primary option, yet he is; he needs to play with people who can shoot, but doesn’t; he’s ideally a finisher but is miscast as a creative hub; he should be paired with good defensive players to hide his foibles, and is not. So while I’m not sure I’d ever feel comfortable typing “Fred VanVleet is a better basketball player than Julius Randle,” I’m more at peace typing “FVV’s skill set is a better fit with the Knicks than Randle’s.” A guard who can defend, can shoot a little, and who’s willing to pass to others.    

Put it this way: if you could have VanVleet or Randle next year for the same price, who would you take? VanVleet, yes? What if FVV cost a million or two more? I’d still do it. Once the years or dollars go higher than that, then it becomes a question of what context you’re fitting the man into. A Brogdon-length deal means committing to VanVleet through his age-30 season, which hey, fine: that’s the prime of his career. But if the Knicks are intent on star-chasing, then that contract will become an albatross. How many teams in the future will have the need for a third guard and the cap space and willingness to pay $20-plus million for one?

Take the salary structures of last season’s four semifinalists: the Lakers, Heat, Nuggets and Celtics. L.A. and Boston had three players making $10 million or more, Denver had five, and Miami had six. You can pay Danny Green $14.6 million when you have LeBron James and Anthony Davis atop your payroll. Boston can make Marcus Smart their third-highest paid player because Jaylen Brown’s extension doesn’t start til next season and Jayson Tatum hasn’t re-upped yet. 

Same for Denver: this year Jamal Murray was their seventh-highest paid player, making Dennis Smith Jr. money; next year he begins a five-year, $170 million extension. Miami can feature Andre Iguodala, Solomon Hill, Kelly Olynyk and Meyers Leonard as their third- through sixth-highest paid players, because one unholy night years ago Pat Riley sold his soul to Beelzebub, and now somewhere in an abandoned attic in Schenectady, N.Y., a portrait of the young Riley grows older and monstrous while the human face we see stays sleek and stylish against the odds and the ravages of age. 

Mid-level teams like Utah and Dallas can pay Jordan Clarkson and Terrence Ross more than other teams because Donovan Mitchell and Luka Dončić are still on their rookie deals. Up-and-comers like Phoenix, New Orleans and Memphis can pay veterans salaries they wouldn’t in a few years. Kelly Oubre Jr. won’t go down in history as a third wheel of the ilk of a Kevin McHale or James Worthy, but since the Suns don’t have to pay Deandre Ayton what he’s worth yet, they can overpay Oubre. The Pelicans enjoyed a year of Brandon Ingram on the cheap as well as Zion Williamson; the bill on Ingram is now coming due. As for the Grizzlies, to correctly identify their three highest-paid players you’d pro’ly have to be the team’s accountant. Suffice it to say that triumvirate does not include Jaren Jackson Jr. and Ja Morant. 

If the Knicks continue with a youth movement and focus on development and the draft, then they could carry FVV’s money for a while without it being problematic. They could give him a four-year deal and likely remain flexible when RJ Barrett comes due for his first extension.

As for power forwards, despite all the wanna-be stand-up comedians picking on the Knicks last summer, the truth is the team doesn’t have a lot of depth at the position. There is Randle, and... there is Randle. Bobby Portis will not have his option picked up. Taj Gibson is more of a center. I don’t know what Kevin Knox is or will be, but he’s certainly no cinch at the 4. The Knicks are one of the only teams with money to spend this offseason. Don’t be surprised if they spend some of it on a power forward. And don’t be cruel if they do!

2) Some players are born in the wrong era…

I know your question specified a pre-2000 Knick, but my thoughts flew right to a player who grew up a Knicks fan and entered the league in 1996.

Riddle me this: which New York point guard averaged 22 and 8 on 46/35/83 splits this century, on a team whose second-leading scorer shot under 40% from the field and whose third-leading scorer was Kurt Thomas? A lot of fans have less than rosy memories of Stephon Marbury’s Broadway run. I get it. His four full seasons as a Knick featured teams who lost 49, 59, 49 and 59 games. His first year here, after a midseason trade with the Suns, the team was swept into oblivion by the Nets. There were countless low points. Proclaiming himself the best point guard in the league hours before losing one of the thousand games he lost against Jason Kidd (in Stephon’s defense, he put up 31/4/8 vs. Kidd’s 13/4/3 that night, making it his LaBradford Smith Game). “Are you going to get in the truck?” The Vaseline. We shook our heads, sometimes in disgust, sometimes in disbelief.

I’ve written about Marbury the man, how life placed too much on his shoulders too early, and how he seemed strained under the weight of that tonnage. But strictly in response to this question, as a basketball player, I think he’d benefit from the way the game has changed. In 2004, he led the Knick offense to the top-half of the league in 3P% and just outside the top third in 2P%. Stephon hit his peak as a Knick right as Allan Houston was on his last legs. Marbury and Keith Van Horn showed remarkable chemistry together; naturally, five weeks after acquiring Marbury, Isiah Thomas traded Van Horn for Tim Thomas. We shook our heads, disgusted and disbelieving.

But if you were there to witness that wee wonderful window of time when Marbury, Van Horn and Houston played together, right as the league was beginning to open up offensively, you caught a glimpse of what might have been. Stephon didn’t wisp around defenders the way Allen Iverson did. He had a way of kinda crouching and shielding the ball as he drove to the hoop that looked like a running back. You see it on the greatest shot of his career: he seems to seek out contact before launching from deep:

I think with wider driving lanes and the switch-heavy nature of the game today, Marbury would rack up more than two All-Star game appearances. Honorary mentions who’d also benefit from the modern style: John Starks (a combo guard who’d be All-Defense and have more room to drive and more license to bomb from deep) and Gerald Wilkins (super-athletic slasher who wasn’t a great shooter but who had his moments, and may have had more with the increased pace and space of today). 

3) What do you hope for in the upcoming 2-3 years? What would you like the team to focus on in the upcoming 2-3 drafts and free agencies? Swing for the fences or become a nice petri dish for young talent and development?

Following up on your [James Dolan] post on P&T, if you could redo the entire political system, how would you reshape it?

— Vesh

Three years from now I hope the Knicks are a team with a puncher’s chance at the second round of the playoffs, the kind of team great teams don’t wanna face. I don’t think they have anything established right now, so I’d like them to focus on everything: scoring, shooting, passing, defense, running, thinking, etc. That may be a broader answer than Vesh was seeking, but the Knicks are not the Hawks or the Grizzlies or some young up-and-coming team that has X but needs Y and Z. There’s no alphabet to speak of here, period. RJ Barrett is a syllable. Mitchell Robinson is a phoneme. Frank Ntilikina is a grunt or a click. That’s all there is right now. 

I would rather not swing for the fences until there are men on base. We already lived through that with the Carmelo Anthony deal, and the 2011 Knicks were light years ahead of this squad. Trading a half-dozen assets for Anthony Davis when you’re pairing him with LeBron is one thing. Trading a half-dozen assets for a superstar when there’s no one to pair them with, and then being out of draft picks and cap space to acquire another one, is what the French call “not good.” So for the time being, petri away, baby. 

Lastly, as far as fixing politics:

1. Abolish the electoral college. One person, one vote. Popular vote wins.

2. Shorter term limits for Congresspeople. Term limits and maximum age limits for the Supreme Court, the president, the House, and the Senate.

3. Ranked-choice voting for president. Nobody gets 50%? Drop the dregs and run ‘em again.

4. Corporations are not people. No more private financing of campaigns. Everybody gets the same publicly-supported budget to work with. That’s it.

5. Corporations wanna be people? OK: tax them like they’re people. I haven’t worked full-time since 2018. I shouldn’t be paying more in taxes than Amazon. Any company or individual that makes more than a billion dollars pays a great big fat tax on every dollar over a billion. That money goes toward building more housing and forgiving medical debt and student loans.

6. Fewer primary debates. More questions from real people. Mute buttons for anyone who interrupts or who goes over their allotted time. Three violations, you get a ten-minute time out. Only choose moderators who have the demonstrated knowledge and strength of character to push a candidate for an actual answer if they’ve lied or demagogued their way through without saying anything.

 Happy Halloween, everybody! See you after the election (fingers crossed)!