Knicks Morning News (2024.06.12)

“We are giving away all of our savings on Brunson, Randle, and DDV by paying our bench through the nose. We will have one rotation player making less than $11 million next year.

We need to figure out ways to bring those costs down especially as we have to extend and resign our guys. Drafting and playing players on rookie contracts is the most surefire way to get production that outpaces pay in the NBA.”

This is fair, but I don’t think there’s a set formula for where, when, and how you spend your money or use your picks. Moreover, Bojan is only a placeholder, so looking beyond him, solid bench players on solid contracts, e.g. Mitch and Hart, and possibly DDV if we upgrade that position, are potentially fungible salaries to ship out in trades, whereas rookie-scale deals are just throw-ins. Also, having future draft picks increases the possibility that when you are finally capped out, possibly post-blockbuster, you still have some picks left over to do exactly what you are advocating for. And if you are a top-5 team, your own picks might have less utility than protected picks from other teams that have a reasonably good chance of conveying. So personally, I don’t share the same urgency that you seem to be conveying.

“That is true but I also think that if West had faded away instead of staying important to the league there might have been a logo change to someone like Jordan or Kobe.”

That’s true as well, although changing a well-established logo is always controversial. At the same time, it is unseemly (and was in retrospect) for a sport that has been dominated by black players to have a white logo, even more so with greats who were also civil rights activists like Russell and Kareem to choose from, or even Oscar.

“I think our urgency actually increased with our performance this year. Draft picks especially late ones will most likely take a year or two to become legit contributors so we need to bring them in now if we want to utilize them while we are still in our players prime.”

Yes but 80% of players drafted at out draft spots are unlikely to be contributors at any point, at least in any way more than an available minimum guy would contribute…either a youngish reclamation project or an aging vet. Personally, I’m with you. I just don’t see as much of an urgency as you do.

“The idea that finding talent late in the draft is rare is false.”

That’s not what I’m saying. I apologize for throwing out a number of 20%, which I agree was inaccurate, but it is probably at best somewhere in the 30’s, and it varies with the draft. The odds are that you will miss more often than you hit.
The Knicks seem to be taking the approach that you can pay a premium and find sure things who are likely to be productive during their entire deals, and that having excess future draft picks helps you do that. You can package this year’s picks and someone on the roster to add a sure-fire top-8 rotation player, or kick the picks down the road to add players after you are capped out, or to have picks left over after acquiring another star. Or you can use them to dump salary to manipulate the cap situation in other creative ways and still have picks to burn.

“The back of our bench was a pile of unplayable flaming garbage. Surely we could do better than Charlie “Good Grief” Brown, Obi’s brother and the other guys whose names I don’t even bother to remember. Take some swings in the draft! Maybe some pan out.”

I’m trying to think of a team that lost its entire starting front line to injury before or during the playoffs, but said “hey, good thing the guys we drafted in the last couple of years and who came into the year as our 11th-15th roster filler saved the day!”

Seriously, I don’t disagree at all. We should draft a couple of players this year. But for me, it’s more about the team being more fun to root for if there are draft picks on the roster than the theoretical utility of doing it. There’s probably a better non-draft alternative to rostering the DaQuan Jeffries’, Charlie Brown’s and Jacob Toppin’s of the world.

It sounds like the actual utility of the draft being argued for is to avoid paying for guys like DDV and Josh Hart, rather than for filling out the end of the bench.

“Well, if you draft guys, the hope is that they actually turn into something decent, so then they become something more than your 13-15 guys. Some players require development. I don’t know why this would be even mildly controversial— it seems better to have guys who actually might turn into something than to have no-hopers at the end of the bench.”

But the cost of having those guys who might turn in to something but probably won’t is the loss of the draft pick. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to draft the players, but the choice you presented left out an important component.