The Kemba Walker cartilage preservation plan

While the Kemba Walker signing was a coup for the Knicks at his reduced price tag, the signing still comes with risks — namely, Kemba’s increasingly faulty knees. What can Tom Thibodeau do to keep the Knicks’ former All-Star healthy this year?

Folks, Kemba Walker is home. Rejoice and dream. Greet AM strangers with heartfelt good mornings. Whistle as you walk. Smile wistfully at random objects, seeing them through fresh eyes, in this glossy new world where Kemba is our starting point guard. 

I mean: Look at that lamp post, what a great lamp post! 

Although, maybe hold that thought for a second, temper that delirium slightly, because per Marc “The Lovable Beat-Troll” Berman and his boring medicinal buddy, Kemba’s knees are slightly closer to a state of pure dust than the ideal homecoming would like.

This is, if not slightly-to-completely devastating, at the very least understandable: the knee joint is the largest joint in the human body. Kemba is a small NBA human. A small NBA human thriving against the proportional odds in a sport dominated by very large NBA humans. Those knees have skittered across, and stopped on, and crossed over, and zipped away in the opposite direction along more than their fair share of concrete crime scenes. They’ve ridiculed reputations. Shattered ankles. Taken dignity. And this is before they started performing on hardwood stages, where they did all of the above again, game after game after game.

Watch the highlights: from the playground, to Rice High School, to the University of Connecticut, to the NBA. Watch them in slow motion. That handle is as devastating as it is demanding, tormenting defenders and testing the limits of biomechanical torque in equal measure.

For Kemba, the strain his game puts on his knees has reached a tipping point. It’s why the Boston Celtics decided to trade him to the Oklahoma City Thunder at the end of last season, and were willing to attach a first round pick to do it. It’s also why OKC’s general manager, Sam Presti — who appears at this point to be in some kind of romantic entanglement with the concept of a draft pick — decided to buy Kemba out of his contract, to the tune of $50 million dollars, rather than rehab his knees en route to more trades and more asset entanglement.

This doesn’t look good for one of the six total players 6-foot or shorter to make four or more All-Star teams in the NBA’s 3-point era: Tim Hardaway, Allen Iverson, Kyle Lowry, Chris Paul, Mark Price, and Kemba Walker. The Knicks’ new starting point guard is on the mini-hoopers Mount Rushmore, but is there anything left?

The publicly available details around his exit from Boston are head scratching.

Bill Simmons has mentioned on his podcast that prior to the 2019-20 playoffs in the bubble, Kemba allegedly didn’t complete the rehab exercises assigned by the Celtics, the ones necessary to get him ready for the postseason, which apparently sowed the initial seeds of discontent from the Celtics’ perspective on Kemba’s future in Boston. This is odd, considering he played in all 17 Celtics games that postseason. Boston’s bubble run eventually ended in the Eastern Conference Finals, where they lost in six games to the Miami Heat. In the previous round, they squeezed past the Toronto Raptors in seven games, with Nick Nurse literally building his whole defensive scheme around stopping Walker.

Something about this story doesn’t add up, especially since Danny Ainge has himself expressed regret about bringing Kemba back “too fast” in the bubble. I mean, it’s not as if the Celtics have a history of recklessly pushing injured and recovering point guards to play, right? Forgive me if I — along with Kemba, Isaiah Thomas, and Kyrie Irving — don’t entirely trust the process and methodology of the Bostonian medical staff. 

The Celtics’ potential mishandling of his injury leaves open the possibility that he never healed enough to settle into a sustainable minutes and games allocation, with the hope being that this offseason, with four full months off — or more, if he needs it — he can get himself right enough to wreak some righteous hardwood havoc again.

Boston-based buffoonery aside, he’s home, and the Knicks need a cartilage preservation plan to give this homecoming a chance. Luckily — or more likely by diabolically glorious design — Leon Rose and Co. have put together a roster with admirable depth at point guard. 

(D-e-p-t-h. At point guard. This truly is the organizational land of milk and honey.)

Here’s the plan: 1) No rushing back, the playoffs are more important than opening night. 2) No back-to-backs, Derrick Rose can take the starting reigns for the 12 back-to-backs this year. 3) Liberal deployment of the Immanuel Quickley and Deuce McBride “Quick Deuce” backup back court combination, because I — and I’m assuming you, as a human of hooping taste — love them both with the heat of a thousand angry suns. 4) Unleash “Deuce The Defensive Destroya” alongside Kemba, so as Walker chills on an off-ball wing, Deuce can have a friendly chat with that night’s primary ball handler. 5) And finally, the break-in-case-of-emergency Alec Burks at point guard alignment we know Thibs is fond of.

That’s the general plan: weaponize depth and don’t be dumb. 

And I suppose, if all else fails, if knee related reinforcements are needed: take mine. I have two. Happy to donate one to the Kemba-playing-MSG-like-a-harp-again cause. More than happy. I’ll cut that shit up right now, get all the way underneath that pesky patella, dig out some important looking stuff, extract and bag that cartilaginous gold, swim across the Atlantic Ocean with one good leg and one gore-exposed lump of shark food, Kemba care package held safely aloft, away from Knick-hating marine-dwelling marauders, all the way to New York City. 

Happily. Right now. Give me the word Leon, I’m ready.

Because we all must do what has to be done to protect those Bronx-born hinges, because those things were built to dance under MSG’s lights, and because we’ve been waiting far too long just to get impatient now.