Wild Night
The Knicks made a trade that was completely overshadowed by a significant exit from Brooklyn.
Good morning!
So, funny story…I had today’s newsletter fully written an completed by 8pm - a rarity that happens maybe once a week, if that. It dissected what was then the Josh Hart trade rumor, broke down all the reasons why it made sense to be barking up that tree, and ultimately concluded that it was unlikely to occur. Neat and tidy, wrapped in a bow.
After I polished that off, I took in this week’s episode of The Last of Us with my wife, and headed to bed around 9:30. As I was starting to doze off, boom…Woj bomb. New York had traded for Josh Hart. After a two-hour emergency livestream, I settle in to rewrite this newsletter, and BOOM, Kevin Durant gets traded to the Suns.
Life comes at you fast in the NBA. If you don’t stay up way past your bedtime, you might miss it.
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NY ❤️’s Hart
Let’s start with connections: Josh Hart is represented by CAA’s Aaron Mintz and Steven Heumann - the same agents as Julius Randle, someone Hart played alongside a as rookie with the Lakers five years ago.
He’s also a Villanova grad, and as a junior, won an NCAA title with then freshman guard Jalen Brunson. Brunson, coincidentally, was getting his ‘Nova jersey retired last night and found out about the Hart trade during the ceremony. Here was his reaction:
(Watch the clip with the sound on here. It’s worth it.)
Last and certainly not least, there is a long standing, long-distance love affair between Hart and Tom Thibodeau. Hart said on a podcast over the summer that Thibs “went to war” to try and draft him while he was in Minnesota and seemed keen on the idea of someday playing for the coach. Thibs, meanwhile, gushed about Hart while he was still the Wolves coach and more recently called him “probably the best rebounding guard in the league” after Hart grabbed 19 boards in a Blazers win over the Knicks.
Thibodeau, you may recall, recently lamented his team’s inability to grab a key rebound at the end of regulation in their loss to the Clippers. Much like his mentor’s mentor, Thibs understands very well that no rebounds means no rings, and as I wrote earlier this week, this team seems to live and die on the boards.
Between that and the CAA & ‘Nova connections, it was no surprise that New York’s front office had eyes for the soon-to-be 28-year-old guard who has averaged 9.5 points, 8.2 rebounds and 3.9 assists this season. We’ll talk to more about Hart the player in a bit and in the days and weeks to come, but before we get there, let’s start with the trade itself, and why both teams felt comfortable (or, more likely, compelled) to make it.
Knicks Get: Josh Hart
Blazers Get: Cam Reddish, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, Ryan Arcidiacono and New York’s own lottery-protected 2023 1st round draft pick. If the pick lands in the lottery and is not conveyed, it immediately converts into four 2nd round picks
I’ll get to the price New York paid shortly, but first it’s helpful to know: if Hart is a player worth getting excited over (and he is), why did Portland - a team ostensibly trying to make the playoffs in a tough Western Conference - want to give him up for so little in present day help?
The answer, as always: follow the money.
When Hart extended in New Orleans following his trade from LA in 2019, he signed a rather unique deal that featured a team option after year-one and essentially a mutual option ahead of year-three, which will be next season. Hart is set to make about $13 million in 2023-24 - a number that he is almost certain to opt out of in favor of a longer term deal that will give him a raise1. The Blazers were up against the tax this season and are facing the prospect of having to give a substantial pay increase to Jerami Grant, who just turned down a four-year, $112 million extension. Justise Winslow and Drew Eubanks, two rotation players for Portland, are also entering unrestricted free agency.
In other words, even if Hart wanted to re-sign in Portland, this trade signals that the Blazers did not have the stomach for that level of financial commitment. The fact that they moved him for nothing that will help their present day team - something I did not anticipate based on the reporting that was out there about how Portland was going to operate ahead of the deadline - signals that they really didn’t have the appetite for it.
Enter the Knicks, who are ideal suitors for a few reasons. Primarily, I suspect that the CAA connection has them feeling eminently comfortable in their ability to re-sign Hart when he opts out this summer (or, alternatively, to extend him off his remaining year if he opts in. This would get him either two more years at about $29.5 million, three more years at around $46 million, or four more years at $64 million. I’d probably still bet that it’ll be an opt out and a new deal, but you never know).
More than that, Portland likely had a difficult time trying to find a trade that split the baby - win now and get an asset for later - but that didn’t seem like a half measure. In other words, any decent player they were going to get back for Hart would have been worse than Hart and probably come with something less than a first round pick. The alternative was to find the best trade for their future, whether that future includes using this pick to draft a player or in a trade this summer.
As I went through a week ago, very few teams in the late lottery range have draft picks they’re either able or willing to trade. Portland can feel pretty safe that this pick will end up somewhere in the teens, which is probably the best they were going to do. That’s especially true because teams are leery of giving up future picks, what with the havoc that could wreck on their ability to make other pick-centric trades in the future. For proof of that, look no further than the Blazers themselves, who have a pick obligation to the Bulls that might be extended out for the next half a decade thanks to the Larry Nance Jr. trade. Nance, like Hart, is a fine player, but not someone you want to tie up your draft future on.
In protecting this pick both for the lottery and such that the obligations don’t extend past this summer, New York avoids any potential lingering complications. They can still trade four future unprotected selections for a star as soon as this summer, plus all the swaps.
As for he pick they’re giving up, as I discussed last week, the notion that New York was ever going to roster multiple rookies next season always seemed far fetched. They still have the Dallas pick, and there’s a chance the Washington pick could convey as well. They would probably have looked to move one of these selections eventually anyway. They’re just doing it sooner rather than later.
All of those logistics are a part of the reason Josh Hart is coming to the Knicks, and maybe even a big part, but this really comes down to the sort of player he is, and how many boxes he checks for what New York likes to do.
That starts with his aforementioned greatest ability: rebounding. At 6'4", Hart grabs nearly two more boards per game than the next closest player his height or shorter (Steph Curry, who pulls down an impressive 6.3 rebounds a night). The former Wildcat grabs as many rebounds per game as Karl-Anthony Towns and more than Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner. He has a gift for glass-cleaning on both ends of the floor.
That plays directly into what New York needs to do (on the defensive glass) and wants to do (on the offensive glass). He’s also dynamite in transition and around the rim, which is how he’s more efficient than two thirds of the wings in the league despite shooting just 30 percent from downtown this season.
Ah yes…the 3-point percentage. It’s the fly in the soup here, and the thing that will have skeptics wondering about the wisdom of this deal unless and until it works on the court.
Hart’s outside shooting is an issue, but it doesn’t have to be the issue, at least if past data means anything. For years now, his teams have scored far better when he’s been on the court than when he’s sat. More than that, they’ve shot it much more efficiently as well:
This isn’t an accident. Hart is a master of the little things on offense, and paired with his college teammate in Jalen Brunson, this has the chance to be really, really good. Also, there’s a difference between bad shooters and non-shooters. Bad shooters can torpedo you in the wrong playoff matchup, but you can go a long way in the regular season, and even further if you catch some breaks. Derrick White, for example, was a 34 percent career 3-point shooter coming into this season, and he helped Boston to the Finals. Hart’s career number is 34.3 percent and he was 41.6 percent from the corners before this season.
There’s also the matter of the other end of the court, where Hart will help the Knicks a ton. Put it all together, and it’s no surprise that Josh Hart has been Portland’s leader in plus/minus since the day he arrived. Tom Thibodeau will not want to take him off the court.
That, more than any shooting concerns, is by far the biggest question to me after this deal. The Knicks have been doing quite nicely with a nine-man rotation in which everyone has, more or less, been averaging an appropriate number of minutes. The issues have come in games where Thibs hasn’t trusted anyone outside of his top six guys, and he’s overextended those players as a result. Hart’s presence gives him a seventh player he will immediately place into his innermost circle of trust.
But that player is also in a contract year and has averaged 33 minutes a night over the last two seasons. That number will only go down so much. Even if you completely remove Deuce McBride, who has been averaging 15 minutes a game since he became part of the rotation, that still leaves another 15 minutes or so to account for.
Will those minutes be taken evenly from RJ Barrett (averaging 34.9 minutes a game), Quentin Grimes (30.5 minutes) and Immanuel Quickley (27.9 minutes on the year, but 30.5 in the 14 games since he’s returned to a bench role after RJ came back from injury)? Or will someone get more of the brunt than the other two? And will Grimes still start? Or will Hart take his place despite the seemingly necessary injection of Q’s shooting into the first five?
(For whatever it’s worth, my guess is that Grimes remains the starter, even if I could see Hart playing more minutes than him in some games.)
Or, perhaps, are the Knicks not done yet? While I think it’s possible and maybe even likely that this is the last trade they make before the deadline, I wonder what this portends for the summer ahead. You can never have enough wings in the NBA, but something about the roster seems unfinished at the moment.
We’ll see what the future holds.
🗣 News & Notes ✍️
🏀 Holy ham sandwich, Batman.
The things that happen when you’re sleeping (or should be sleeping, at least).
This is, in all likelihood, the most seismic in-season trade in NBA history - a top-15 all-time player still playing at an MVP level dealt from a team that just days ago was trying to compete for a championship. It’s almost too much to wrap your head around, but I’ll try, in bullet-points, because that’s all my brain is capable of at the moment:
The Nets got basically everything they could have gotten from Phoenix, which is where KD wanted to go. Perhaps there was a world where Joe Tsai played hardball and sought out a better offer from a non-preferred destination, but then again, if a team knew it wasn’t getting a happy KD, would they have really beat this offer from the Suns? So from that perspective, good job Brooklyn.
Not a good job by Brooklyn: pulling in what was thought at the time to be the greatest free agent haul in the history of professional sports, only to turn around and have one playoff series win to show for it 43 months later. They are certainly well-stocked for a rebuild, even if they do owe a lot of draft capital to the Rockets, but still…this has to be one of the most disappointing outcomes in sports history given the expectations that arrived with KD and Kyrie on June 30, 2019.
I’d make the obvious “Maybe don’t turn your franchise over to the hands of a real life Looney Tunes character” joke about Irving, but without him, they never get KD in the first place. Worth considering.
I think the Suns are my favorites, at least to come out of the West. I know they’re top-heavy, but they’ll get a buyout guy or two before all is said and done. That said…
I’d be nervous about Chris Paul if I were them.
As for the ways this impacts the Knicks, obviously all eyes will be on New York passing Brooklyn in the standings, but I’m not counting any chickens quite yet. The Nets have something brewing with Cam Thomas, and adding Mikal, Cam Johnson, Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith to a decent allotment of rotation players doesn’t sound like a tanking outfit to me. The lead is three games with 26 to play. We’ll see what they can do.
🏀 In what turned out to be the afterthought of the night, the Lakers, Jazz and Wolves completed a three-way deal in which former Laker D'Angelo Russell was sent back to Los Angeles along with Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt from the Jazz. The Lakers sent Russell Westbrook to his home away from home in Salt Lake City along with a top-4 protected 2027 1st round draft pick, while the Jazz shipped Mike Conley Jr. to Minnesota. The Wolves also get Nickeil Alexander-Walker and three 2nd round picks in the deal. The Jazz took on Juan Toscano-Anderson and Damian Jones as well.
The Knicks had rumored interest in Beasley and Vanderbilt, but didn’t seem inclined to offer an asset on par with the pick LA gave up. As for Russ, the Clippers and Bulls are said to be interested in signing him if he agrees to a buyout with Utah.
🏀
That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. Also, a big thanks to our sponsor:
See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter
Based on past behavior, I think Deuce will be relegated to the bench and deemed situational moving forward. Hate to see that but understand if it happens. I hope this doesn’t kill the kids confidence just as he was just starting to come around. I would love to see a few less RJ minutes too. No need to play RJ 37 a night.
I really like this trade. Hart is a really nice add for this team, someone I liked more than basically all the other realistic options out there.
Overall, I think you said it best last night (and this is all being said with the presumption Hart resigns), IQ/Grimes/Hart is a great complimentary trio of role players who can play with basically anyone and with each other, and all bring something unique. This solidifies the roster, both short and long term.
As you prob have realized, I have been quite pessimistic about this FO and whats next (as we have spoken about before). But this is a good move and gives me more confidence in their plan, which is what has always worried me the most. If Hart resigns, this is a solid foundation building move for a good price, and expands potential horizons (even if its slightly).