The NBA draft is on this Friday and as usual there are a whole raft of questions and storylines to unfold. Who will go number one? Who is going to be a bust? Who is going to be a steal?
One thing we know is that building through the draft is critical and value can be found anywhere. We’ve just finished an NBA Finals in which the Finals MVP was a former number nine pick and the key defensive player on his team was a second round project. So making the most of the draft is essential.
But if you want genuine assessment of the draft prospects I can’t recommend Draft Express strongly enough. They’ve spent literally the entire year analysing the prospects and I wouldn’t for a second try to trump that.
What I have for you instead is a cast iron guarantee: the Knicks will find a way to screw up their draft.
Being a New York Knicks fan is a pretty unpleasant affair at the best of times. In a competition where more teams make the play-offs each year than miss them the Knicks have made a mere four play-off appearances and won a solitary series over the last 15 years.
Franchise owner James Dolan is a malignant clown who routinely tortures the public with his band of presumably coerced musicians and he remains the only person who believes that legendary Pistons point guard and serial administrative disaster Isiah Thomas should be involved in an NBA franchise.
Meanwhile, at this point general manager and franchise messiah Phil Jackson apparently legit believes he is a Zen master, comparing the alleged dire state of NBA offences to the alleged crumbling of American society in a recent interview.
Finally, of course, there is the franchise-wide and truly sad devotion to the ancient religion that is the triangle offence.
So it’s all pretty grim for a Knicks fan like myself, but draft time is a particularly miserable period. Start with this, most years the team doesn’t even own its own pick having traded it for, at best, a sack of potatoes. Eddy Curry and Andrea Bargnani I’m looking in your direction.
Then in the years that the club does have its own pick it generally falls just out of reach of a franchise changing player, one spot back from Steph Curry and Kevin Love, two spots back from Khawi Leonard and Russell Westbrook and so on. Or worse they pass on a future All Star. Taking Renaldo Balkman with the pick immediately before the Celtics took Rajon Rondo is a particularly painful example of this.
And finally some picks are just plain indefensible.
This year the Knicks have the fourth pick in the draft after somehow managing to even mess up deliberately losing to get a high pick.
Karl Towns would have been perfect but it is universally agreed that he will go first to the Timberwolves. Emphasis though on should. It only takes one owner or general manager to fall in love with a player to throw the whole deck of cards in the air.
In past years one might have worried that former Timberwolves general manager David Kahn might make a hilariously bad decision with the number one pick. However, Kahn is long gone and Flip Saunders seems to have a better grasp on reality than his predecessor.
So Towns will go first and the most likely scenario is that Jahlil Okafor and his gigantic hands will go second to the Lakers.
After that things could get a little funky. Sitting at third are Sam Hinkie’s pyramid scheme slash basketball team the Philadelphia 76ers and you’ve got about as much chance of understanding what they might do as you have of figuring out why Shane Watson keeps getting picked for the Australian Test team.
At the time of writing the relentless pre-draft chatter has D’Angelo Russell as the most common name associated with the Knicks at the four spot and with good reason. The Ohio State guard with preternatural passing ability would be a perfect fit for the Knicks. I don’t even have a joke here, I’m too busy crossing fingers and toes.
Justise Winslow would be interesting as from all reports he is the sort of wing defender the Knicks desperately need – a Danny Green/Wes Matthews type to play alongside Carmelo Anthony on the outside and, you know, do Melo’s job on defence. Taking Winslow straight up at four may look like a reach but that only makes him that much more viable as a Knicks selection.
Seven-foot defensive genius Willie Cauley-Stein is going to quietly anchor somebody’s defence for the next decade or so – a la Tyson Chandler or Andrew Bogut – but he would be a major reach at the four slot and probably doesn’t have enough wow factor for Dolan.
Another possibility is Croatian ‘Super’ Mario Hezonja who despite barely playing this season for his current team FC Barcelona still claimed that it was he, not that Lionel Messi bloke, that was the main attraction in the FC Barcelona family of teams. So it’s safe to say at least that he starts out with a great attitude for New York.
But the most terrifying name for Knicks fans is Kristaps Porzingis, which is not an East European name for Santa Clause, but rather the name of a seven-foot tall Latvian basketball player. Latvia of course being so small and insignificant that you’re going to have to Google it to find out exactly where it is and if it has any famous people other than Victor von Doom.
The 19-year-old Porzingis has garnered a lot of attention in the last week or so after a devastating pre-draft workout in Las Vegas in which he dominated an empty court. Porzingis’ combination of height, sweet shooting and ability to run up and down the court like a real person reportedly has a number of team executives very titillated
The thing is that it is possible that Porzingis really is the next Dirk Nowitski: a match-up nightmare for the opposition and cornerstone of a franchise for a decade or more. But there is also zero chance that he reaches that destiny as a New York Knick.
There are basically three scenarios for Porzingis. In scenario one he goes to the Lakers or 76ers at two or three. In scenario two he is available at four and the Knicks take him and in scenario three he is available at four but the Knicks pass on him.
In the first scenario his destiny is unclear, but he will probably be a solid contributor and part of a play-off team. In the second scenario he is a bust. Absolute Darko Milicic, Hasheem Thabeet, Yi Jianlian level disaster. No escaping it. This is just how it works for the Knicks. We can’t have nice things.
But what if it is door number three and Porzingis is still available at four but the Knicks pass on him? Woah baby here comes a combination of Dirk Nowitiski, Arvydas Sabonis and Vlade-in-his-prime. A shooting, passing Euro big man that dreams are made of. If the Knicks pass on him they essentially guarantee him a Hall of Fame career.
This is probably the most terrifying outcome for Knicks fans, years of opposition fans taunting us about how we could have had the ‘zinger’ but passed.
Finally of course there remains the possibility that the Knicks will make a draft day trade to try to acquire an established player (Eric Bledsoe perhaps) while trading down to select a projected role player. The most obvious candidate here, if only because he ticks all the old-school boxes that Dolan and Jackson seem to prefer, would be Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminisky
But the core premise remains. Whatever the Knicks do, whether they draft Porzingis or they pass on him. Whether they take a risk or make a safe choice. Whether they make a trade or stand pat. Whatever they do, they will screw it up.
ESPN and Grantland NBA analyst Jalen Rose, who himself had a short-lived, ill-fated stint with the Knicks, is fond of saying that happiness is a function of expectations. Whoever the Knicks draft or whatever trade they make, Knicks fans would do well to remember that adage and set their expectations accordingly.
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