The Firsts Not Taken
What does the past tell us about when and for whom to trade away future first round picks? Plus, the Knicks make a hire.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
In a league that long ago recognized the value of drafting and developing homegrown talent, the fact that the New York Knicks have often treated first round picks like stale chewing gum in an old pack of baseball cards has indeed made all the difference. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been for the better.
In light of Ian Begley’s report yesterday stating the Knicks are more open to trading future first round picks than they have been in the recent past, the plan today was to look at New York’s checkered past when it comes to dealing away their future, and what it might teach us about the prudence of such a path now. We’ll get there in a bit.
But first, thanks to Ian always being one to outdo himself, we have a bigger bomb to digest first:
“Chief strategist” and “right-hand man” are welcome titles to grant someone from the outside of the Knicks organization. Regardless of Aller’s resume (and FWIW, Begley notes that the man who will help Rose build out the front office is “highly respected in league circles”), just having a new set of eyes in the building has to be considered a plus.
As far as his credentials, he probably deserves ample credit for recently helping Cleveland pull off the type of salary dump trade many Knick fans yearned for last summer when he took on Brandon Knight’s cadaver and got Houston’s 2019 first round draft pick for his trouble (also of note: the contract given to Dylan Windler, who the Cavs took with that pick, is incredibly team friendly, featuring not one but two team options on a four-year deal).
Rodney Hood (who was later dealt to Portland for two second-rounders) was also a savvy signing in 2018, as was getting two second-rounders from Utah to take on Dante Exum’s contract for Jordan Clarkson back in December (the Cavs pulled off a similar move the previous year when they sent Kyle Korver to the Jazzz for two seconds). Getting a Bucks’ first for George Hill was also nice, as was the sneaky little trade to turn a bunch of Cleveland’s extra second rounders into Kevin Porter Jr. on draft night.
How much credit Aller gets for any of this is, of course, up for debate, as is how much blame he gets for some of the bad stuff (the Larry Nance Jr. extension has not aged well, and the Kevin Love contract is one of the bigger “is it an asset or an albatross” question marks in the league).
By and large though, Cleveland has been a savvy operator when it comes to wheeling and dealing since Aller became the Senior Director of Basketball Operations in July of 2017. This is all good news.
Hopefully, he can help talk some sense into a Knicks front office that seems to have forgotten its past, which gets us to our main topic of the day.
Over the last four decades, the Knicks have made 33 first round picks - a number which actually undersells how cavalier they have been with their own selections over that time.
That isn’t to say they’re always the team sending out draft assets. Nine of New York’s first round choices - the 23rd pick in 2007, the 20th and 29th picks in 2006, the 30th pick in 2005, the 18th and 19th picks in 1996, the 26th pick in 1994, the 19th pick in 1988, and the 18th pick in 1987 - have all been selections that originally belonged to other teams. A few of them - David Lee, Rod Strickland and Mark Jackson, most notably - have even turned into pretty good players. But several of those picks have been made in place of New York’s own pick, and that’s where things start to get dicey.
In total, the Knicks have sent out their own first round pick a staggering 15 times over the last 40 years, and I’m not even counting draft night trades, which would bring Nene for (pinches nose) Antonio McDyess into the picture.
What have those 15 picks turned into? Basically it’s a grab bag filled with mostly pennies, some quarters, and several $500 Amex gift cards:
1981: Kevin Loder, 17th pick
1984: Vern Fleming, 18th pick
1987: Scottie Pippen, 5th pick
1988: Will Purdue, 11th pick (Bill Cartwright also sent to Chicago in this trade)
1989: Byron Irvin, 22nd pick
1995: Loren Meyer, 24th pick
1998: Bryce Drew, 16th pick
2001: Jason Collins, 18th pick (Patrick Ewing was also sent out)
2004: Kirk Snyder, 16th pick (Howard Eisley, Maciej Lampe, Antonio McDyess, Charlie Ward, Milos Vujanic and a 2010 1st round draft pick were also sent out)
2006: LaMarcus Aldridge, 2nd pick (Jermaine Jackson, Mike Sweetney, Tim Thomas, and a 2007 1st round draft pick were also sent out)
2007: Joakim Noah, 9th pick
2010: Gordon Hayward, 9th pick
2012: Royce White, 16th pick (Jordan Hill and Jared Jeffries also sent out)
2014: Dario Šarić, 12th pick (Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Timofey Mozgov, Eddy Curry, Anthony Randolph, two future seconds, and a 2016 1st round draft pick were also sent out)
2016: Jamal Murray, 7th pick
It’s a pretty clear divide: any time the Knicks dealt away a future first that ended up in the top 10, it turned out to bite them in the ass, big time. Also, the trend isn’t going in the right direction. Is that a coincidence as the rest of the league continues to get savvier, what with the influx of Morey-esque nerds infiltrating front offices everywhere? Maybe, maybe not.
Now, for the players and picks New York acquired in exchange for those outgoing selections:
‘81: Randy Smith: spent one season in New York. He retired a year after leaving.
‘84: Ray Williams: spent one season in New York before leaving in free agency.
‘87: Gerald Henderson: played 74 total games for the Knicks before being waived (the pick that became Mark Jackson was also acquired in the Pippen trade)
‘88: Charley Oakley: still a Knicks legend, despite recent shenanigans (the pick that became Rod Strickland was also acquired here)
‘89: Kiki Vandeweghe: spent four seasons in New York, including ‘90-91 when he averaged 16 points and started 72 games
‘95: Rolando Blackman: spent his last two seasons in New York, and was a contributor on the ‘94 Finals team
‘98: Chris Dudley: middling but useful backup C on the ‘99 Finals team (New York also acquired the pick that became Quentin Richardson in this deal, but they traded it a year before Q-Rich was drafted for…wait for it…Mirsad Türkcan)
‘01: Glen Rice: Spent one unmemorable season with the Knicks before being traded for Howard Eisley and Shandon Anderson (I covered the massive Ewing trade in more detail here.)
‘04 & ‘10: Stephon Marbury & Penny Hardaway: both eventually turned into contractual albatrosses, although Marbury also put up a lot of numbers, mostly in losses.
‘06 & ‘07: Eddy Curry: had one very good season before devolving into a punchline (Antonio Davis and the pick that became Wilson Chandler were also acquired here. Davis was later flipped for Jalen Rose, who was eventually waived, and the pick that became Renaldo Balkman)
‘12: Tracy McGrady; this was all about clearing space for Lebron, who went…elsewhere.
‘14 & ‘16: Carmelo Anthony: the best Knick this century, who also probably would have come that summer regardless (Chauncey Billups was also acquired here).
…deeeeeep breath….
Now exhale.
Good. Glad we survived that together.
So why did I just spend all this time taking a walk down the type of memory lane that makes you want to end up like R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? A few reasons…
It’s “What if Wednesday” and there’s no better “What If” than wondering how much higher our collective happiness quotient would be if none of these trades ever happened.
The trades New York made when it was already a good team generally worked out OK. The Oakley trade was a win (even though the guy they sent out helped the Bulls to their first three-peat). Kiki Vandeweghe, Rolando Blackman, and yes, even Chris Dudley were also useful contributors to good teams.
The one time the Knicks traded for a star and it arguably worked out OK was the Melo trade. I say “arguably” because even the harshest Melo critics would admit that if that was the only deal on the table (cue Dolan Dolaning), knowing what we know now, you still probably have to do it (and I say this as a pretty big fan of Murray). But again, the point needs to be made: when New York acquired Melo, they were already a good team.
In case it isn’t painfully obvious (and for those of you who have been rooting for this team for some time now, I’m sure it is), attempting to trade for stars before the Knicks got good, well…that hasn’t worked out so well.
Sure, laugh at the Marbury and Curry acquisitions as Isiah Thomas follies all you want. Now go back and check Marbury’s resume when he was acquired and compare it to a guy like D'Angelo Russell. It’s honestly not close. Even Curry, for the meme he ended up, put up 20 a game while playing 35 minutes a night in his second year here. For one season at least, he was legit.
But Marbury and Curry flopped big time in the long run. Why? Because you don’t mortgage the future for not-quite-real-stars when you haven’t laid a foundation in the present.
Quick: name me the team in remotely recent NBA history that traded for a star when it was terrible and went on to become good?
Kevin Johnson? Try again: he was averaging seven points a game when he was traded in the middle of his rookie year, and besides, that trade sent out prime Larry Nance to the Cavs and got back and additional first, later used to select Dan Majerle. That was a rebuilding move, not a win-now one.
Chris Paul? Sure, the Clips were a desultory 32-50 the season before they traded for him, but Blake Griffin had already established himself as a star in his own right, and DJ was further along then than Mitch is now.
Similarly, when the Celtics acquired Kevin Garnett, they already had a still-in-his-prime Paul Pierce just one season removed from five straight All-Star appearances, not to mention enough assets to accompany that mega-trade with the Ray Allen deal.
Chris Webber qualifies, but that was an absurd swap for the Wizards, who got only a washed up Mitch Richman and even more washed up Otis Thorpe…but no picks.
Perhaps the only real analogous situation to what the Knicks hope to pull off is the James Harden heist - a trade so unique and unprecedented in its own way that we might never see one like it again in our lifetime.
Point is, while there are many ways to skin a cat in the NBA, the order of operations has been well-established: you get good (or get a foundational piece) first, then make your big trade - not the other way around. Is RJ Barrett a potentially foundational player? I sure hope so. Have we seen enough to think he could be a Griffin to a theoretical Chris Paul (or an actual Chris Paul, I suppose)? Not even close.
If they can get a true “star” for the Dallas picks and Kevin Knox? Have at it. But in the process, hopefully they allow cameras from the MSG Network to tape a live video feed from that fantasy world, because I’d really love to see it.
Lastly, you may be asking yourself: “Wait a minute…isn’t this the same a—hole who was begging for a Donovan Mitchell trade, like, 10 days ago?”
Yes. Yes indeed.
That’s because there are some players you break the rules for when they become available. Sadly, those players rarely do. And guess what? If someone like Mitchell actually became available and the Knicks got him? History pretty clearly says it wouldn’t work out, and then I’d be the real asshole, wouldn’t I?
But that’s not even the most likely scenario. According to Begley’s report, this idea of trading picks & young players for name guys seems like New York’s new Plan A. As Begley quotes one current front office member as saying, “It's the best path for us.”
The problem with this blueprint is that you often wind up with those draft assets burning a hole in your pocket, especially when you feel like you have some to spare. When it’s combined with a win-now mandate, you get disasters like the Celtics/Nets trade, Detroit dealing for Blake Griffin, Orlando trading Oladipo and Sabonis for Serge Ibaka, and Boogie Cousins to New Orleans.
Again: no one’s saying to bypass the next Kawhi or Kyrie or Paul George (or yes, Melo) who asks out. But put yourself in a position to be good once they get here first so the clock isn’t ticking the moment they arrive, and you’re left with an empty cupboard. Drafting wisely and developing well are hard, which is why only the best teams are good at it. Be one of those teams. Please.
We heard the last front office say it a lot: We’re not going to skip steps.
They may have been full of it, but those are words Leon Rose (and now Brock Aller) should heed regardless. History says so, at least.