Catch a Spida?
Let's look at just how unrealistic a Donovan Mitchell trade is.
Greetings and salutations friends.
Thanks for bearing with me as I started to ease off the gas a little during the strange times we now live in. I felt a little like a fish out of water without these newsletters to write on Thursday and Friday, but it also gave me a chance to get to some other stuff I’d been putting off, and more importantly, I was able to look forward to getting to today’s edition that much more. You can count on three newsletters a week, in some form or fashion, from now on.
It also gave me a chance to sit back in the peanut galley and observe Knicks Twitter work itself into a lather over the still developing topic of the hour: swinging a trade with the Utah Jazz for Donovan Mitchell.
On Friday, Shams Charania, Sam Amick and Tony Jones of The Athletic released a comprehensive account about the Jazz and the days leading up to and following the night that essentially shut down the NBA season. In it was this snippet:
The Jazz have already begun working on the Mitchell-Gobert relationship, but sources say Mitchell remains reluctant to fix what might have been broken.
“It doesn’t appear salvageable,” one source with knowledge of the situation said.
Also of note was that while the rest of his teammates took a charter back to Salt Lake City on the morning after the positive COVID-19 tests, Mitchell went to New York (where he is from) because he wanted to be close to his mother.
While it would be lovely to imagine that this pandemic serves as a Come to Jesus moment for Mitchell where he realizes that every second of life is valuable and that he should want to spend as many of those seconds as possible with those nearest and dearest to his heart, such a notion is about a fantastical as the idea of the Knicks actually swinging a trade for Mitchell.
Also not helping: according to Yahoo’s Chris Haynes, Rudy and Donovan may already be on their way to kissing and making up:
For anyone hoping that this relationship was beyond repair, this was obviously a knock to those dreams.
That said, if we’ve learned anything about the NBA, it’s that once a rift is formed, it rarely fully heals, and it’s often just a matter of time before the fissure opens again (see: literally any star pairing ever). Also notable: Haynes seems to indicate that Gobert had issues with Mitchell in addition to the other way.
Regardless, as things stands, trading for Mitchell this offseason would be extremely difficult for the Knicks, as there are a number of impediments to swinging a deal, starting with:
The Jazz want to win now
When Utah swung a trade for Mike Conley last summer, it was confirmation of the fact that they were all in, as they sent out two first round picks to the Grizzlies, one of which was used in a trade on draft night to move up a few spots and grab Brandon Clarke.
It was a massive price to pay, both in assets and dollars (Conley is due $34 million next season).
Up until the trade deadline, fans peppered me with questions about the possibility of Utah salary dumping Conley to the Knicks. With all due respect, such a concept is laughable. Yes, the early going was rough and Conley was hurt for over a month (which just so happened to coincide with Utah resurrecting their season and winning 15 of 17 games), but both parties had righted the ship before the season got called, with Conley back in the starting lineup and shooting it well, and the Jazz winning five in a row before losing to Toronto the night before the shut down.
Point is, they were never going to ditch the Conley experiment for nothing more than cap space next season, and more to the point today, they have no interest in pivoting into a tank, not with Rudy Gobert, Bojan Bogdanovic and Joe Ingles also under contract.
Therefor…
If the Jazz traded Mitchell, they’d want win-now pieces in return
Newsflash: the Knicks don’t have any veteran players the Jazz would be even remotely interested in.
Utah wouldn’t go near Julius Randle with a 10-foot pole even if we weren’t all practicing social distancing. He makes about as much sense next to Rudy Gobert as he does next to Mitchell Robinson, which is to say not much, and the Jazz (unlike the Knicks, at least until Leon Rose makes a goddamn hire) have one of the more competent front offices in the league.
Even if Utah was interested in Randle, he’s certainly not better than the vets they already have, and makes too much money to be sent to the Jazz without someone better having to be sent back (and I’m not even talking about Mitchell yet).
So let’s get creative: maybe the Knicks can engage in a three or four-team trade whereby they send some young pieces and draft assets somewhere else and then that team sends a better veteran to Utah, with Spida coming to New York.
That would be great except…
(You’re probably not going to like this next part)
The price for the Knicks would be exorbitant
Look, I love me some Kevin Knox and Frank Ntilikina as much as the next guy. I believe in both of those dudes figuring it out eventually, and think each showed real signs of progress this season.
I would love to see that progress continue here in New York, but it’s not because of my personal feelings towards either guy; it’s because at the moment, their respective trade values are dogshit.
Similarly, I’m as hopeful as anyone that one or both of those Dallas picks turn into something good, but like Knox and Frank, they are not needle-movers when you’re talking about swinging a trade for one of the absolute bright young Stars in the NBA.
Yes, Donovan Mitchell gets a capital “S.” I don’t particularly care that he’s a below average 3-point shooter or that his decision-making isn’t what you’d ideally like it to be. There are a half dozen players in the league who we know can be the best player on a title team and there are another dozen or so that we think might be that guy at some point, on the right team. Mitchell 100% falls into that second category. Whatever “it” is, he’s got it, in spades.
All this is to say that the only thing a package of Knox, Frank and both Dallas firsts would be any good for in a Mitchell trade conversation, whether it’s involving one other team or 10 other teams, is recording a laugh track for a sitcom (if sitcoms still used laugh tracks, of course).
On that note, Ian Begley had a report over the weekend which stated the following:
An opposing team executive tells Begley that any package that doesn't involve Mitchell Robinson or RJ Barrett and two future first-round picks would probably be a non-starter for Utah.
Robinson, meanwhile, wouldn't be much of a fit for Utah with Gobert still in the mix, so the exec speculated that a package of Barrett and two unprotected firsts would get New York in the conversation for Mitchell.
My reaction: if the Knicks could get Donovan Mitchell for RJ and two unprotected firsts (with a guarantee that Mitchell signs a max extension with New York following a trade), they’d be getting off easy, and Knicks fans should commence building a statue to Leon Rose upon completion of the deal.
I’m sure this seems blasphemous, especially after the encouraging signs we saw from Barrett this season. He is a wonderful talent, and he is going to help NBA teams win for a long, long time, even if he doesn’t figure out the jumper in a significant way. He’s too smart, hard-working and crafty not to. Best of all, he deals with all the chicanery that comes with playing in this city and in this building like a 10-year vet.
But if the jump shot doesn’t surface as a weapon, Barrett’s lack of athleticism and shot creation render him as a complementary piece, as opposed to a top-two player on a contender. Simply put, there is little about what we’ve seen thus far which would indicate he can be the primary engine for an offense (and I say this as someone who is a huge fan of everything he brings to the table, especially since all those qualities I listed above have rarely been found here since the days of Ewing & Co.)
So yeah, Barrett would be going out in the deal, along with two firsts. Maybe there’s some version of a deal in which New York sends out another piece and the second first-rounder can be lightly protected, but even that’s a stretch, especially since the value of those picks decreases a great deal the moment Mitchell walks in the building.
That’s why I ultimately don’t think New York can swing a deal, even if they’re willing to give up what Begley mentions. With Donovan Mitchell here, and assuming they’re able to keep Mitchell Robinson (can I trademark 2Mitch2Quit right now?), building a solid team around them would be highly doable, especially with the Knicks’ cap flexibility.
Mitchell is a dude players will want to play with. He has that quality. The issue for the Knicks has always been getting the first big name in the door. Stat begat Melo. KP…well, KP begat Dennis Smith Jr., but there was a unique confluence of events (Phil pissing off KP, the torn ACL, the fact that everyone thought KD was a done deal, etc.) that pushed that situation over the edge.
With Leon Rose here, and with Mitchell being a CAA client, presumably Rose would have the know-how to keep Spida happy, at the very least. They’d then pivot to a win-now approach this summer, and surely keep enough flexibility to make the summer of 2021 interesting.
So with apologies to our collective nightmares about the Eddy Curry trade (and to a lesser extent, the Melo trade, which sent out the pick that eventually turned into Jamal Murray), not all future unprotected firsts are created equal. I don’t think they move the needle enough to be able to swing a deal, especially since at least a dozen other teams in the NBA would realistically be able to get in on the talks with trades that make more sense for Utah.
In addition, RJ is going to be good, but probably not on the same timeline as the Jazz are set up for.
Does anything that I wrote here stop me from secretly thinking there’s a chance this eventually gets done? Of course not. Mitchell being from the area and having just enough balls to think he can come here and be the guy who saves the Knicks (as well as the personality to finally instill a real culture at MSG, a’la Dame in Portland) gives me hope that he’ll flex his muscles just like Melo did once upon a time.
Plus, one last glimmer of hope: Mitchell is on a rookie salary for another year, so making a deal for more of a “win now” piece would be tough, as most players on rookie deals either aren’t good enough to help a team win, or they’re so good already that their teams won’t want to give them up, even for Mitchell.
So who knows…maybe this one is more realistic than we realize.
As far as dreams go, you can do worse.