Prodigal Son

In the first of installment of a 5-part series, I look at a young player who has become an afterthought, but could represent the easiest way to changing New York's fortunes.

Happy Opening of Training Camp!

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Now on to the newsletter…

News & Notes

About as light a news day as you could imagine on the eve of camp (the calm before the storm, perhaps?) with the only real item of new business being Stefan Bondy’s nugget about reaching out to Sergio Llull’s camp regarding whether he’d consider coming to play for the Knicks. Their response? “Llull isn’t planning on making a statement on this subject.” Ok then.

Since we’re light on news, here are a couple snippets from a few articles on some of the newest Knicks that I thought were worth passing along:

From The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker, regarding how Immanuel Quickley popped in a few key areas at the NBA’s virtual combine:

He ranked second in the 3-point star drill (20 spot-up attempts off movement) at 75 percent. He ranked second in the 3-point endurance drill (five straight minutes of game-speed spot-ups) at 76 percent. He sank 94 of 100 free throws – a distinctly Tyler Herro move. Those two friends rank 1-2 in school history for single-season percentage at the line.

And from Adam Zagoria, who wrote about Obi Toppin and Myles Powell training together with strength and conditioning coach Chad Hallett in South Jersey before the draft:

Obi’s main thing with us when he came was his mobility,” said Hallet, adding that Toppin weighs about 220. “We kind of worked on that. His range of motion is a lot better than what he came into us [with]. We got him a lot stronger. He’s going to be a better athlete that the Knicks are getting.”

Ask Macri

Darryl Genovesi @darryl_genovesi

@JCMacriNBA Beyond making room for another camp invite, and besides the two-way guys, which three of the remaining 18 are least likely to make opening day roster? Evans, Iggy, Powell, MKG, or, if I may be so bold, Randle?

I’ve been pretty clear that I think there is another move coming, and that the Knicks are not simply going to cut two players between now and the start of camp.

That prediction has gotten a lot more tenuous over the last several days, with camp now here and teams theoretically wanting to settle into their rosters. I’d still be mildly surprised if a trade didn’t happen, but who the hell knows.

In any case, to answer the question I think Evans and Powell are the easy choices to not make the cut. On the other hand, Randle is not going anywhere.

The choice for the third cut would be MKG. My guess is that the front office has already assured Kidd-Gilchrist that at some point this season, probably sooner rather than later, he will be on their NBA roster. It might take them a bit to open up that roster spot, but as I wrote yesterday, he considers one of the men running this team to be family, so I’d guess he’s willing to put his trust in their word coming to fruition.

(There’s also the small matter of MKG’s game being a difficult fit with the modern league, and it’s entirely possible the line to offer him a guaranteed NBA deal wasn’t terribly long.)

All told, the notion that they would cut Iggy in favor of the former No. 2 pick seems a bit far fetched to me, especially given the promise Brazdeikis showed in the G-League last season. Scott Perry, who reportedly wanted to trade up for Iggy, is also still here, and while his voice may not carry the weight it did this time last year, it still matters.

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With Knicks Training Camp opening today, I’m going to spend the next handful of newsletters going through my top five most impactful questions facing the franchise as it heads into Leon Rose’s first full season at the helm. First up, a look at a young man who not long ago was still considered among the organizations most vital assets and has since become the walking embodiment of a question mark in every way possible.

My No. 5 Question entering the 2020-21 season: Is Dennis Smith Jr. lost for good, or can he be New York’s…

Prodigal Son?

It seems like a million years ago now, but once upon a time, Dennis Smith Jr. didn’t look like the worst rotation player in the NBA.

(I cannot emphasize how little hyperbole is contained in the above statement. Seriously, if LeBron James doesn’t use actual footage from DSJ’s 2019-20 season in some sort of post-Monstars-soul-snatching sequence in Space Jam 2, everyone at Warner Bro’s needs to be fired immediately)

There are no shortage of highlight tapes from his rookie year in Dallas that will remind you of this fact, and the contrast between those moments and last year are nothing less than startling. It is like watching a different player. Like, the same dude we all saw morass his way around the court last season is also the guy who did stuff like this just two years ago:

Many of us were aghast when LeBron had the nerve to say aloud that New York had screwed up by not drafting DSJ ahead of our boy Frank, but part of the pain came from the simple fact that the truth hurts. Early indications were that James may have been acting like a dick, but he also wasn’t wrong. Smith was far from perfect, but he looked the part of someone who, with the right coaching and a lot of nurturing, could turn into a difference making player for all the right reasons.

But there’s also a reason why I was steadfast in saying that if we ended up regretting the Frank pick, DSJ wouldn’t be the guy to make us do it. Even during his exciting if inefficient rookie year (when his efficiency was in the 10th percentile league-wide, according to Cleaning the Glass), I had my doubts. I never got over him quoting his stats from NC State in his first interview after being drafted as an argument for why he fell too far in the lottery. His level of apathy in his lone college season was an embarrassment, and here he was, proud of the accomplishment.

Turns out, it was a sign of things to come. To say things have gone haywire since Smith’s rookie year is a bit of an understatement. It’s unclear exactly when the turning point occurred, but a good place to start is a look back to a game that may wind up serving as the pivot point for the Knicks as an organization over the second half of this decade.

I’d say that the guy we see putting up a triple-double here hasn’t existed in a Knick uniform, but that’s not really true. I’ll never forget his first road game in blue and orange, when he put up 31 & 8 and got to the line 19 times. He was a blur in Detroit that night, as he was frequently over his first six weeks with the Knicks before a bad back sidelined him, essentially ending his sophomore season.

But I also remember that he missed eight of those 19 attempts, the first sign of trouble after Smith switched teams. His free throw percentage inexplicably dropped from 69.5 percent over the 32 games he spent with Dallas that season to 56.8 percent with New York. His long distance shooting also plummeted from a respectable 34.4 percent to an untenable 28.9.

But his bread and butter remained unchanged. DSJ got to the rim a ton - 43 percent of his shots came in the restricted area during that abbreviated stint in New York, compared to 42 percent in Dallas - and he was respectable enough on those attempts, hitting 56 percent of them (versus 57 percent in Dallas). He also played his position admirably, finishing in the 85th percentile in assist percentage among point guards during those 21 games.

Then last season, it all went to shit - the free throw shooting (50.9 percent), the shots from close range (51 percent), the threes (still under 30 percent) - all of it. Do you realize that DSJ hit less than one out of every four midrange attempts he took last season? He took 79 midrange shots and hit 17 of them. That’s almost hard to do.

Forget 18 free throw attempts in a single night; it took DSJ 14 games and over 250 minutes to achieve his 18th trip to the charity stripe last year.

Much has been made of what precipitated this fall from grace, but I think the answer is quite simple. We know this is a kid who fancies himself to be the best player on the court, if not the planet, every time he enters a game. When the Mavs drafted Luka, it rattled him to the point that he went M.I.A. Dallas said it was an injury, but that was a thinly veiled attempt to hide the fact that their former point guard of the future wanted out, onto a team where he could once again be the headliner.

He got that chance with the Knicks, and the initial shooting woes, if I had to bet, were the result of wanting so badly to impress in his second chance at the limelight.

Then came the summer, and a visit to Kieth Smart’s Center For Young Players Who Can't Shoot Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, followed by the realization that he was no longer the organization’s great point guard hope, and instead was just another player in camp competing for a spot in the rotation - a competition he lost as the season got underway.

Spurred by one particularly ugly night in front of the unruly Garden faithful and then a personal tragedy, DSJ’s season continued to spiral, with the 22-year-old looking like he wasn’t fit to be playing in a beer league with a bunch of middle-aged dads. Just like I’ll never forget that game in Detroit, I’ll never forget the Memphis game I covered nearly a year ago, when Smith Jr. had four turnovers in four minutes of first half action:

The craziest thing about that stint was that the turnovers weren’t even the worst part. In almost three decades of watching sports, I’m not sure I ever saw a player display worse body language than DSJ did that night. Check out these back to back possessions and tell me this is someone who wanted to be anywhere near this game:

These clips really don’t do justice to what it was like to see him in person. He took not giving a shit to the next level.

Smith’s punishment for his behavior? He started the next game at Indiana.

I don’t think that start was as much an attempt to give Smith Jr. a jolt of confidence as it was a desperate plea to the rest of the league to take the mercurial guard off New York’s hands. The trade deadline was less than a week away, and as I reported at the time, Steve Mills and Smith had come to an understanding that the team would move him before the deadline, preferably somewhere he’d get more of a chance to play.

Unlike the Garden triple double that DSJ put up a year earlier however, Smith’s 2-for-9 effort against the Pacers didn’t get anyone to bite.

Shocker.

The rest is history: Steve Mills (and any promises he may have made) were ousted less than 72 hours later, the deadline came and went, and Smith remained. Smith Jr started just one more game, a loss in Houston when both Elfrid Payton and Frank Ntilikina were unavailable, but otherwise saw scant time before finally being shut down for good.

Which brings us to today. We’ve heard rumblings this offseason that Thibs still has hope for his young guard (he’s only 23!) and with the Knicks failing to bring in a clear upgrade at the point, one would think that Smith will get an honest chance to fight for the starting job. The question remains though: does he have any fight left in him?

The work he’s been putting in this summer with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (which I can confirm has been happening on a daily basis since at least August) to improve his shot is a good sign, as is the video evidence. Yes, take all offseason training videos with a silo of salt, but compare what we saw last week:

Too many intellectual inconsistencies in the world @nothinbutknicks

Dennis Smith Jr. puts the new jumper and slimmer, fityer physique on display at the @CP3 Basketball Academy gym

…to the horrors we witnessed last summer:

BenchWarmerPost🏀 @BenchWarmerPost

If this Dennis Smith Jr's shot.... I'm ready to start Frank Ntilikina. Really why is his hitch like that? He's not even elevating, hell the fact that a dude wanted the guy to stop recording proves how bad it is... #NBATwitter #NBA #Knicks

Put it this way: he has nowhere to go but up.

Or, put another way: the kid who was once the No. 2 recruit in his class, who appeared on a Rookie of the Year ballot, who made the All-Rookie Team over Bam Adebayo and De’Aaron Fox, who scored 20 or more 15 times during his rookie season, and who prompted Steve Mills and Scott Perry, however foolishly, to think he was part of a worthy return for the best young player the Knicks have had since Patrick Ewing…that kid is still in there somewhere.

How high he rises (assuming he rises at all) could wind up being the biggest swing factor in New York’s fortunes moving forward, which is why he’s number five on my list. Rightly or wrongly, the organization no longer seems to believe that Frank Ntilikina can be their point guard of the future, and Elfrid Payton is quite clearly a band aid. However slim the chances are that Dennis Smith Jr is the Knicks’ point guard of the future, they’re higher than anyone else currently on the roster.

Here’s the thing though: if he could simply turn back the clock and look exactly like he did during his rookie year in Dallas, it would represent a healthy bit of found money for the Rose regime. Right now, he is essentially a sunk cost. A return to form would make him at worst an interesting trade asset entering the deadline and at best give the Knicks an interesting restricted free agency decision next summer. If the revamped shot is actually a thing, then we’re really in business.

Is it possible? If his problems really do start and end above the neck, maybe a new president and coach both trumpeting their belief in him could get things back to the future New York hoped it was trading for nearly two years ago. They have little to lose by giving him one last shot, and if you believe in reincarnation, there’s a very real upside to that play.

Unfortunately, history is not his ally. Looking back through past All-Rookie teams, there’s no clear example of a player who started with the intrigue of Smith, fell to rock bottom, and bounced back in a significant way. That said, some have vaguely replicated what we hope is in store:

• D’Angelo Russell’s stock got low enough that he was used to salary dump Timofey Mozgov, and then had a bumpy start in Brooklyn, but he never plummeted to depths DSJ did last year.

• Michael Carter-Williams became a minimum contract player after winning Rookie of the Year, but I’m not sure he’s ever recaptured the flair of that first season.

• Perhaps the closest comp is Evan Turner, who didn’t make an All-Rookie Team but showed some promise in Philly, bounced around and became an afterthought, and then would up signing a $70 million contract.

Last point here: if its one thing every single previous Knicks front office has specialized in, it was selling low on talent. Phil Jackson did it with Tyson Chandler and JR Smith, Steve Mills did it with You Know Who, and even Donnie Walsh did it with Z-Bo and Jamal Crawford.

Thus far, Leon Rose has resisted the temptation to shuffle the deck chairs just because. Perhaps that’s because he’s had no good opportunities to do so, or maybe he’s acting like a good agent should: don’t go to the table for a negotiation until you’re operating from a position of strength.

Dennis Smith Jr’s value can’t possibly get any lower, so Rose is wise to see where it can go from here.

We just have to hope the patience pays off.

That’s it for today! See everyone tomorrow with another edition…if you’re a paid subscriber. If not, what are you waiting for?