Trade Deadline Mini-Mailbag: Part III

Plus, a look at some of the latest trade news & rumors.

Good evening! I hope everyone has been enjoying the multiple newsletters. Quick note: I will have an edition out sometime tomorrow morning, but not at 5am, as I want to recap any news and rumors from the overnight and get out the most relevant edition possible. After that, if the Knicks do something before the deadline, expect a breaking news edition to hit your inbox ASAP. Let’s get to it…

News & Notes

🏀 The Knicks’ beat reporters have been all over this for weeks, but ESPN’s Tim Bontemps is the latest to report that New York is expected to move Jericho Sims before the deadline. For my thoughts on what a trade might yield, check the newsletter from this afternoon.

🏀 Jonas Valanciunas has been mentioned as a potential Knick target if Mitchell Robinson’s health was in doubt, but the Wizards shipped him to Sacramento for Sidy Cissoko and two second-round picks early this evening.

(Sidy Cissoko is the cousin of Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects, in case you were wondering)

Valanciunas never made a ton of sense to me, so this falls under “no harm, no foul” in my book, although I wonder if the Knicks and Wiz ever had any serious discussions.

Trade Deadline Mini-Mailbag: Part III

We start MMB 3.0 with a question from Alex:

Mailbag Question: As the resident Josh Hart Truther, I was surprised by Bill Simmons ranking him at the 38th best trade asset. But then I looked at the list and only found 4 players (plus OG) below him on the list that I would trade him for. That means, in my eyes, Hart is at worst the 43rd best trade asset/player in the NBA. So here are the questions: 1) does this mean I love Josh Hart?; 2) is something wrong with me, do I need a doctor?; and 3) how many players on that list behind Hart would YOU trade him for??

1. Yes

2. No, precisely because the answer to question one is Yes.

3. This will now force me to give Bill’s list far more consideration than I have.

Let me say at the top that when I first heard Bill’s pod, without thinking too deeply, I thought that putting Josh Hart in his top 40 was pretty wild. Given how many a) awesome players there are in the league and b) how many interesting first, second and third year players exist, a ranking closer to 50 or 60 struck me as more appropriate.

That was my first impression. Taking some more time to consider it though, the ranking really comes down to how much you value the threat of outside shooting versus literally every other skill in the game.