Happy (Belated) Father's Day

We celebrate pops everywhere with a Monday Mailbag and a deep dive on a possible trade target.

Good morning and Happy (Belated) Father’s Day to all the dads out there. I’m a day late, but I’d like to shout out my mom, who did the work of two parents for pretty much my entire life. Love you mom, and thanks for going above and beyond without ever complaining.

Monday Mailbag

The first question for today’s three question mailbag comes from Arel, who asks:

Is this season seen as a success? We lost second round albeit with a lot of injuries. If we were healthy and lost in the second round how would that be viewed?

Before I answer, as an aside (and this is no shade on Arel, because I’ve asked myself the same question he poses here), does it matter?

The goal of every good front office before each offseason is to complete an honest evaluation of their roster and overall operation. To do that, everything needs to be taken into account, including whether or not the team met expectations in the previous campaign.

To that end, I think everyone within the team is disappointed they weren’t able to advance to the conference finals, but they’re also realistic. On a recent Roommates podcast, Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson were open about the fact that the loss to Miami in last year’s playoffs was much harder to get over than this season, purely because they were so banged up. If they were healthy, this wouldn’t be the case, but they were, so it is.

That discrepancy matters only in as much as a disappointing season is more likely to spur changes, whereas a satisfying (or at least acceptable) result might not. In this sense, the real kicker with the injuries isn’t just that they deprived the Knicks of a chance to compete for the Finals, but that they gave the front office an incomplete body of evidence from which to base their decisions off of.

On that note, the one thing that has stuck in my craw since the end of the Pacers series is that New York lost despite scoring at a more than acceptable rate, putting up 119.3 points per 100 possessions over those seven games (by contrast, they scored 108.1 in their six-game defeat at the hands of the Heat last season and 116.7 in six games against Philly this year). This came despite having only one subpar defender (Brunson) in the rotation for those games.

Is their 123.8 defensive rating vs Indy merely a reflection of the importance of OG Anunoby, who helped limit the Pacers to a 113.2 offensive rating in the 70 healthy minutes he played over Games 1 & 2? Is it a sign that they simply ran out of gas approaching the finish line because their healthy players needed to exert so much extra energy? Or is there some fundamental flaw in their defense that needs to be fixed? And will the return of Julius Randle amount to borrowing from Peter to pay Paul?

Everyone who watched the Knicks this season will have their own answers to these questions, and surely the individual members of the front office have formulated their own opinions. The important thing is to have the discussion. Whether the season was a rousing success, a colossal failure, or somewhere in between, 29 teams have to figure out a way to get better this summer, and the Knicks are no exception.

That leads right into our second question of the day, courtesy of Robbie Eisen:

How confident or how much belief do you have in this front office on a scale to 1-10? For me, I have complete belief in them and am expecting whatever they do to be the best decision they could make.

I’m at about a nine.

It hasn’t all been perfect. The Obi pick seems pretty silly in retrospect given Tom Thibodeau’s very clear standards for defensive aptitude, but it was made right at the beginning of his tenure when I’m guessing he didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. No one could have known Kemba was as physically spent as he turned out to be, and I didn’t see many people predicting the Fournier fit being as bad as it was. As I’ve written, the Cam trade has always struck me as them offloading a draft asset they didn’t really want to begin with.

For the most part, it’s been all positive, with one massive, franchise-changing home run in the form of Jalen Brunson.

The difference between that move and the next potential swing for the fences is that they had more inside intel on Brunson than any team has ever had about any free agent in the history of professional sports. That isn’t likely to be the case with the next big acquisition, even if it is a player Leon Rose used to represent and/or Tom Thibodeau used to coach.

We also know from the reporting on the Donovan Mitchell trade negotiations that there are a lot of voices in the room, as they say. Healthy disagreement can be (and likely has been) a reason why this front office hasn’t made any massive missteps, because more opinions just make it harder for everyone to agree. It’s also fair to wonder whether they’re at the top of the bell curve, and with serious salary cap concerns on the horizon, inertia could be their undoing.

I’m not worried…not yet, at least. But I do think that the next several weeks will be the biggest test yet for this regime as various opportunities will present themselves. Teams are facing pressure across the league - both to win, and to stay fiscally responsible. The phone, I’m sure, will be ringing.

On that note, here’s our last question, courtesy of Dylan:

What non-directly Knicks storylines across the NBA do you think have the most direct impact on the Knicks? For example, the potential of the Lakers imploding can have ramifications of AD becoming available and us putting in our chips...

We recently drafted our “dream” Knicks offseason on the KFS Pod, and I picked Anthony Davis as my ideal semi-realistic star trade target. That said, I’d be shocked if LA botched this coaching search to the point that Davis would demand a trade, which is the only scenario in which he’d be dealt.

So if LA isn’t a team to watch, what teams are? Putting aside the obvious (OKC making a play for I-Hart), here’s my top five:

1. Cleveland - No, I don’t think New York will be in on Donovan Mitchell if he doesn’t agree to an extension, but his decision is arguably the domino that will have the most impact throughout the league, so this is No. 1 by default.

2. LA Clippers - The Paul George situation remains unresolved, with a recent report indicating that he and the Clips aren’t on the same page. Maybe this is all a ruse to get Philly to offer a max, which would in turn force LA’s hand, but the potential exists for something to happen, and New York has been interested in George in the past.

3. Minnesota - I don’t think the ownership situation will be resolved anytime soon, but maybe it doesn’t need to be for them to explore a financially-motivated KAT trade.

4. Miami - I buy the Jimmy noise. Like with Donovan, maybe the Knicks won’t be the team he ends up on if he’s moved, but they could be impacted by the trickle-down effects.

5. Philly - Obvious, but still needs to be here. They’re going to leave no stone unturned in an effort to get a third star in the building. If Mitchell is the biggest player domino this offseason, the Sixers are the biggest team domino.

Honorable Mention: Chicago, who could blow it up if they find a workable LaVine trade. If that happens, I’m sure the Knicks would be in on a few of their guys.

Trade Target of the Day

We’re keeping this gimmick going strong with a question from Ken, who asks about a player that I’ve gotten countless inquiries about:

What about our old friend from last trade deadline, Dejounte Murray? He can certainly run the point on the second team and is no worse of a defender (probably better) than DiVincenzo on the first team. Should be easy to find him 30 minutes between the two positions. Atlanta is almost certain to trade him or Trae (and I want no part of Trae).

Aside from Mikal Bridges, I’m not sure there’s an object of greater fascination among a significant population of the Knicks fan base than Dejounte Murray.

As best as I can tell, this is due to two factors:

Narrative - Dejounte went from being the second to last pick of the first round, averaging 3.4 points as a rookie, to being a 25-year-old All-Star who nearly averaged a triple double, overcoming a torn ACL along the way. That journey helped solidify the impression of him as a worker who will keep improving every step of the way. It also helped that he came up in a San Antonio system that fosters sound defensive principles. Between making the All-Defense team at 21 and leading the league in steals a few years later, Dejounte’s reputation as a plus defender was sealed…and he’s been living off that reputation ever since.

Numbers - I mentioned the near triple double of 21.1 points, 9.2 points and 8.3 rebounds. Only Oscar, Russ, Harden and LeBron had ever hit those marks in the same season when Dejounte did it, and only Jokic and Luka have done it sense. Do something that puts you in that company, and it tends to stick in people’s minds. Murray has also kept his scoring average above 20 in the two seasons since. There’s something notable about that mark, even as scoring has exploded in the league over the last few years, and DJM notching 20 a night has colored the general perception that he’s a high-level scorer.

The combination of numbers and narrative has resulted in Murray being labeled a “star” player by many. Is it accurate? Maybe, maybe not, but the better question is whether the Knicks already have a better starting shooting guard on their roster.

When Murray’s name first came up in connection with the Knicks, Donte DiVincenzo had been a starter for less than two weeks and was averaging under 10 points per game. With Quentin Grimes underwhelming and Donte still somewhat of an unknown, it’s no surprise that some members of the organization viewed the Atlanta guards as an ideal trade target, as Ian Begley reported in late December.

Since then, quite a bit has changed.

For one, New York acquired OG Anunoby and discovered a formula that had them looking like a genuine contender when fully healthy.

Perhaps more illuminating for our purposes here, DiVincenzo emerged as a legitimate second option after Anunoby and Julius Randle were on the shelf. From January 29 until the end of the season, DiVincenzo averaged 21.0 points on a 56.7 effective field goal percentage. That gaudy efficiency was bolstered by 161 made threes - second only to Steph Curry in that time frame. Murray averaged 22.5 points with a 52.8 eFG% this season with 2.5 made triples per game - roughly half of what DiVincenzo averaged post-Julius.

This is where we get into the key point for a potential trade off, which is the role that New York’s starting shooting guard has to play in their offense.

In Atlanta, Murray often had the luxury of being the second most threatening outside shooter on the floor, playing alongside either Trae Young or Bogdan Bogdanovic. Those two flamethrowers strike fear into the heart of an opposing defense, needing to be accounted for at all times - and more importantly, from all distances. That’s especially true for Young, who hits more unassisted threes than almost anyone in the NBA.

(Although to his credit, Murray attempted more threes against “tight” coverage, where the defender is between 0-2 feet away, than almost anyone in the league, and nailed those shots at a relatively high rate.)

For the Knicks, DiVincenzo is arguably the only such threat in the rotation. Whether it was firing away in transition, coming off a curl, around a screen, or simply spotting up, defenses treated him with the utmost respect - and paid the price when they didn’t. Between the speed of his release and the depth of so many of his attempts, relaxing for half a second was all he needed to do damage.

Take that away, and defenses can load up even more of New York’s plethora of scorers who prefer to do their damage inside the arc. Murray got his 3-point attempt rate over 30 percent for the first time in his career, but it’s still in the 30th percentile for combo guards, according to Cleaning the Glass. His ideal workspace is in the midrange, where he took between 48 and 55 percent of his shots for five straight seasons before last year, when it dipped to 40 percent. On a Knicks team that already has a bunch of guys who excel in that real estate, Dejounte might represent diminishing returns.

On the other end of the court, DiVincenzo may not have Murray’s reputation, but the advanced stats make the case that he’s the superior player (and so does the eye test, at least this season). In defensive EPM, DiVo is a negative 0.6 whereas Murray is a negative 1.3 (negative is bad, in case you were wondering). In Estimated RAPTOR, Donte was a plus 0.7; Dejounte a negative 0.9. Basketball Reference notes an almost identical discrepancy in Defensive Box Plus Minus, and has DiVincenzo with almost double Murray’s defensive win shares.

All of these advanced stats sites denoted Donte as among the 30-60 most valuable players in the entire league last season. Simply put, there is no universe where he should be moved to the bench for someone like Murray, an extremely talented player who nonetheless might not make the Knicks better at either end.

The final question is whether he’d be amenable to coming off the bench, and something tells me the answer would be a resounding “no way.” Whether it’s comfortably referring to himself in the third person or saying Kobe would be proud that he took 44 shots to score 44 points, I’m not quite sure Murray possesses the team first ethos that defined these Knicks. It was also slightly concerning that Dejounte so thoroughly welcomed trade speculation this year, or at the very least, did little to diminish the noise.

If Murray was a little bigger and a little more willing to sacrifice his own stature for the betterment of the team, he’d be a perfect trade target, but as it stands, this doesn’t seem like a tree the front office should be barking up.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”