Of all the myriad areas of potential on-court improvement for next season’s New York Knicks, one towers above all others: shooting. This meta-need is dipped in chocolate, sprinkled with gold dust, with the aroma of a thousand just-cut lawns and perched on a pedestal the size of a moderately-sized planet. Shooting, shooting, and a little more shooting. It’s the need around which all other offseason needs orbit. It has gravity, this need, something few Knick players have possessed in recent years. Long range reinforcements — after a near decade of subpar 3-point shooting, by modern NBA standards — are well overdue.

The Knicks pick eighth, 27th and 38th in the upcoming draft. One name that should be on Leon Rose’s radar is Isaiah Joe out of the University of Arkansas, because that kid can seriously shoot.

Joe is projected to go anywhere in the 20-40 range on November 18th, but the way the league puts a premium on pure shooters, it’d be a shock to see him slip out of the first round. In two years at Arkansas the 6-foot-5, 21-year-old wing was incandescent from deep. An injury in the middle of last season contributed to an unremarkable 34.2% from three in his sophomore campaign, but he did launch a whopping 10.6 triples a game, the second-most in the country. This after shooting 41% on eight 3PAs per game as a freshman for a two-year average of 38% on 9.1 3PAs.

Only 12 collegiate men this century have hit more than 37% on more than nine 3-point attempts per game. Yes, that is Steph Curry’s name at the top of the list — but apart from his, none of the other names will mean anything to you, because they all played at schools far below the caliber of Arkansas in the SEC, and most of them (Lester Hudson’s cup of NBA coffee notwithstanding) never came close to sniffing the NBA.

As well as sharing some rarefied collegiate 3-point shooting air with Mr. Curry as an extremely high-volume, high-efficiency long-range shooter, Joe stands out among the players on this list — literally. He’s the tallest of the bunch at 6-foot-5. Most college players who attempt such a high volume of threes are diminutive, Mighty Mouse lead guards. Since 2000, of the 52 to average 10-plus 3-point attempts per game in a single season, only Carsen Edwards, Trae Young, Kendrick Nunn and Steph have made a dent in the NBA. 

Shooting 10 threes in a college basketball game is in and of itself pretty wild, with the games being significantly slower and shorter than in the NBA, where only the best of the best — Curry (three times), James Harden (three times), Damian Lillard (once) — ever averaged more than 10 3-point attempts per game for a full season. That number of attempts demands a deep bag — off the dribble threes; deep pull-ups; catch-and-shoot looks. Just having the green light to let it fly with this kind of indiscriminate abandon is testament to how pure a shooter Isaiah already is. Should he end up a Knick, his prowess from range will no doubt be cherished and appreciated, with John Starks’ 7.6 3-point attempts a game in 1994-95 still the highest volume of threes any Knick shooter has ever launched in a season.

It’s been almost 10 years since the Knicks made the playoffs, back in 2012-13, when New York seemed to be on the front lines of the 3-point shooting revolution. That season, the Knicks were one of two teams — alongside the Houston Rockets — to make more than 10 threes a game. Fast forward to 2019-20, and the Rockets were still pushing the long-ball boundaries, knocking down a league-leading 15.6 triples a game. Remarkably, the Knicks were the only team in the league last season to make fewer than 10 threes a game. The Knicks have slept a nightmarish sleep through an Association-wide sea change, and it’s time to wake up. 

Isaiah would be a nice cup of 3-point Joe to wake up with, who’d start to shake the dusty hangover of seven sinful seasons. If he’s still on the board at 27, or somehow at 38, his combination of shooting and length (6-foot-10 wingspan) will be difficult to pass up. He’s one of the best shooters in the draft, and if you’re not willing to take a flyer on elite shooting, in the year 2020, in the depths of the first-round, then some serious one-on-one time with a mirror is in order.

Not only does Joe have relative size as a differentiator from most high-volume college snipers, he has defense, too. Here’s a section of draft guru Spencer Pearlman’s defensive synopsis on Joe, for the Stepien:

“Good defender overall, but not a defensive playmaker — uses quick hands to get steals, but not someone who really shoots the gap/gambles. Uses his length really well to take away passing lanes and contest shots. Quick laterally, quick reflexes, and high level anticipation. Good team defender who knows how to position himself well off ball in help”

He’s a serviceable defender, limited predominantly by his slight frame, but as a cog in a well-defined and well-drilled defensive scheme, he should be a plus in the pros. The combination of effort, IQ, and length should earn the trust of Tom Thibodeau, who has a reputation for maximizing his players’ defensive value by casting them in roles where they can play to their strengths. Thibs will also no doubt have the full scouting report on Joe already, sharing a long history with Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman, whom he worked with in 1990 while both were assistant coaches with the Minnesota Timberwolves under Bill Musselman — Eric’s father and Thibs’ longtime mentor.

There are a glut of tantalizing prospects the Knicks could justify taking a swing at with their two later picks in this draft, not least because we’ve had time to trawl through film and talk ourselves into seemingly way more than 61 prospects since March, some seventy months ago. Mangled pandemic brains notwithstanding, Isaiah Joe is one of the easier methodological swings on the board, because shooting is such a low-risk skill to bet on that late in the draft, and arguably no team in the entire league needs a syringe full of grade-A spacing pumped into the clogged veins of their roster more than the New York Knicks. 

This rationale for why Leon Rose would be taking a risk by passing up Joe’s day-one gravity is exactly the reason he likely won’t get the chance to make this mistake. Every team in the league lusts after shooting, irrespective of positional need, irrespective of roster specifics. Shooting transcends context in 2020’s NBA, and where this draft is so cross-eyed, as a skill that will always be worth the investment, Joe is more likely to rise than fall on draft night. He was taken 22nd by the Denver Nuggets in the Strickland’s own inaugural mock draft.

Come November 18th, if the Knicks’ braintrust are faced with a choice between a role-playing point guard and a role-playing floor spacer with the 27th or 38th picks, it will be interesting to see which need they prioritize, given each archetype’s league-wide equity and suitability providing value in limited minutes. Second-string point guards may be less suited to specialist roles than elite floor spacers, and Leon’s relative evaluation of guys like Desmond Bane, Aaron Nesmith, or Isaiah Joe when weighted against the likes of Malachi Flynn, Tre Jones, or Grant Riller may well reflect the premium placed on genuinely floor-bending gravity.

The draft will be fascinating from a thousand angles, and Leon Rose has too many boxes to tick, too many needs to fill, not to at some point plant his flag firmly on whichever need he feels is most important. His sense of the fast-approaching and in-flux free agency landscape will factor into any of these difficult decisions come draft night, but as a rule of thumb for all NBA teams, especially his, is there’s no such thing as too much shooting.

The Knicks are a long way from having too much of anything. Isaiah Joe launched more threes per game last season than the Knicks made per game as a team. The kid would be an immediate offensive laxative. A sleeper in this drunken year’s drunken draft to wake up a franchise blinking itself to life after a seven-year snooze. He’d be step one for a franchise that needs shooting, shooting, and more shooting as desperately as the world needs 2020 to end.