Way-Too-Early Knicks Trade Primer

It's never REALLY too early.

Morning guys! With no game until Friday and an abbreviated newsletter coming tomorrow, I figured today would be as good a day as any to go deep on a topic that is already on the forefront of many minds: trades!

Way-Too-Early Knicks Trade Primer

This upcoming weekend marks the 20-game mark for the Knicks. That’s about a quarter of the season - enough time to get a good read on this roster, what it needs, and what moves can and/or should be made.

Not that we should expect any trade to happen next week. December 15 is the unofficial start of trade season, as it’s the earliest that free agents who signed contracts this summer can be traded, including Mitchell Robinson, Isaiah Hartenstein and Jalen Brunson. There’s another subset of players who signed certain types of extensions that can’t be traded until January 15, and a little less than four weeks after that, we get to the trade deadline on February 9.

All of this is to say that this column might be a bit premature. But it’s Thanksgiving week, which is as as good a time as any to zoom out. So let’s do it.

Players the Knicks would love to trade if they can get “fair” value

Julius Randle

The quotation marks around “fair” are doing Mr. Universe era Schwarzenegger-levels of heavy lifting here.

I’ve called Julius Randle the most frustrating Knick to root for in my lifetime. Why is that? Because we know the dude is talented. He’s one of three players to average at least 20, 10 & 5 over the last three years¹, with the other two guys having combined for the last four MVPs:

Even with all the caveats in the world, a guy who shows up with these names on this list should have real value, especially when he’s outside of the top 50 highest paid players in the league. Unfortunately, other teams employ scouts, and those scouts have eyes. And even if they didn’t have eyes, there’s enough text-to-talk technology out there to read off basic advanced stats and efficiency numbers, all of which paint Randle in a drastically different light than Jokic and Giannis.

This dichotomy is what has put New York’s front office in such a tough spot. For a variety of reasons (attitude, Obi, style of play, etc, etc), I’m betting they know very well that their ideal future is one without Randle in it. In theory, there should be some team out there who views Randle favorably, and more importantly, as a better fit on their roster. But the Knicks clearly have shown no inclination to “sell low” on a guy who has put up Ju’s counting stats, especially at Ju’s price tag.

My gut feeling is that the Knicks would move him, and would even be willing to take back some bad money in the deal, but would want at least one semi-premium asset back in the trade. Otherwise, they’ll just hang onto him in the hopes that he can be the central salary in the star trade they hope to make down the line.

Players the Knicks might be happier to trade than we think

RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley

Sad but true: some of what I wrote about Julius above could also be said of RJ Barrett.

Like Randle, he’s a premium asset on the surface. He’s still young, he’s on an extension that everyone considered to be pretty fair when it was signed, and he plays the most sought after position in the league. Also like Randle, you can run a search that puts RJ in some awfully impressive company. For example, he’s one of seven players in NBA history to amass at least 3000 points, 1000 rebounds, 500 assists and 300 made threes by his 22nd birthday. Here’s the list:

Of course, just like with Randle, the efficiency numbers and advanced stats make it very clear that RJ doesn’t really belong in the company of most of these names (and also comes up in less flattering statistical comps, like the one I ran in Monday’s column).

We know the Knicks tried to capitalize on the fuzzier outline of Barrett while ignoring the icky crevices of his game when they tried to ship him to Utah this summer, but were thwarted when the Jazz refused to value him at that level. Not much has changed, except for RJ taking an early downturn this season - one that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the dip in production fellow Canadian Andrew Wiggins took after signing his rookie extension.

But Wiggins’ presence on the above list and his subsequent bounce back as an elite role player with the Warriors - one who just earned an extension that pays him almost the exact amount in annual salary as RJ - is a positive sign for Barrett’s long term value. That said, Golden State took on Wiggins as a salary dump. He was also a distressed asset grab, but a salary dump nonetheless. In short, with his current level of production, no one is going to pay the same premium the Knicks nearly got for RJ this summer.

So will the Knicks just be happy to wait out Barrett’s struggles in the hope that they themselves could reap the rewards of the future-Wiggins version of RJ (or, if you’re a hopeful sort, his transformation into a true star)? Maybe, but that goes against how they already showed us they want to use him: as their ticket to a star player. That ship has sailed for the moment, and Barrett can’t easily be traded until the summer anyway due to the poison pill provision in his contract. But come July, I think all possibilities are back on the table where Barrett is concerned

So if you’re keeping track, neither Julius or RJ seems like an ideal trade candidate right now, and yet, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, there’s a case to be made that keeping them together will only exacerbate the issues. There are in house solutions, such as more staggering. Thibs has been doing more and more of this as the season has gone along, and especially since he went to a nine-man rotation. On the west coast trip, RJ and Julius have player just under 23 minutes a night together compared to over 30 minutes a night in their first two years under Thibodeau. Will that be enough to help them each increase their value? Time will certainly tell.

Second up in this category is Immanuel Quickley, who presents a fascinating case study in value - far more so than either of the big names above.