Assessing each team as Dec. 15th expands trade scenarios

New York Knicks

Players now eligible: Alec Burks, Evan Fournier. Taj Gibson. Nerlens Noel. Kemba Walker

After reaching the playoffs earlier than most anticipated in the restructuring under Leon Rose perhaps he re-signed some players with a certain recency bias at play. Odds are he wouldn’t replicate all those offers if he had it to do over today.

The Knicks are in desperate need of playmakers and the big elephant in the room is Kemba Walker who it turns out OKC Thunder GM, Sam Presti sure knew what he was doing. The fact the OKC Thunder GM didn’t even try to resurrect Walker’s career as he had previously with Chris Paul and Al Horford spoke volumes.

Perhaps that should’ve been a warning to Rose who now finds himself in a position of wanting to trade the guard but his coach didn’t just take him out of the starting lineup but the rotation altogether.

Moreover, the book is out on Julius Randle with teams sitting on his left and the MIP seemingly struggling to be as effective without as much of the offense focused on isolation plays for him. It’s a bit of a catch 22 where Randle feasted as the primary option and little help but the team was easily dispensed of once playoff defenses locked in on him.

Worse the grit and grind defense that ignited the Knicks’ success was weakened by the addition of supposed offensive improvements in the offseason.

Now the brain trust in New York has to figure out what assets they have to facilitate trades and how that impacts the identity of the club. Or perhaps they simply read the tea leaves and recognize it might be better to return to the original strategy of building slowly and deliberately through the draft and opening up cap space for free agency. That is if Rose can find trade partners for some of the more expensive (and longer-term) contracts on the spreadsheet.