Knicks Morning News (2023.08.06)

First of all, the pick you claim has a median outcome of 25 already conveyed at 27.

…but we did not make that pick, we traded it for the MIL 2025 pick. When evaluating a trade, it’s common to include the return from subsequent trades that use some or all of the return from the inchoate trade.

When you make a trade, being able to make another trade using an asset(s) received is a plausible, foreseeable outcome.

Second, the Detroit Pistons won 17 games. Teams that win 17 games tend to stay at the bottom for a while.

They won 17 games in 2022-2023. We have their pick through 2026-2027, when it is only top-9 protected. They have four seasons to stop sucking.

It is, of course, absolutely possible they never get their shit together and are a bottom nine team four seasons from now. This was not a risk-free trade. But 15 seems like a reasonable median outcome, given that Cade, Duren, Ivey, and Thompson plus whoever else they add between now and then should all be in their primes by then. I think they’d really have to flop outcome wise to still be in the bottom nine in 2026-2027.

As for the Wizards pick, I did a run down of the last 30 years not too long ago and that franchise’s pick falls inside the protection zone more often than not. And they are outright tanking.

This is the one I think is least likely to convey and I account for that in my median outcome. That said, top-8 protection is fairly minimal and it would hardly be shocking if the Wizards aren’t a bottom 8 team three seasons from now.

The scenario you forecast is much more akin to a worst case scenario than a median. I don’t even think this was a home run trade–I’d give it a C+ or something. It’s just not in the same category as 2021, when it was obvious from the jump we incinerated value.

There will absolutely be opportunities to create value with these picks, and I’m not going to judge the trade until we attempt to do so in some way or another.

That’s not waiting for the benefit of hindsight, as it was foreseeable immediately that these picks came with the opportunity to create value.