NY Knicks: Grading every Steve Mills transaction, Part 1

Signed Tim Hardaway Jr. to ridiculous offer sheet

GRADE: D

Does the headline give away the grade for this one? Steve Mills signed Tim Hardaway Jr. to an offer sheet that made it impossible for the Atlanta Hawks to match, but also ended up costing him future trade capital in discounting the price he was able to receive for Kristaps Porzingis by attaching Hardaway Jr.’s contract to the disgruntled star in the deal that sent both players to Dallas.

The four-year, $71 million deal shocked the NBA world at the time. Nobody else was going to offer Hardaway Jr. that kind of money, so the Knicks outbid themselves.

The young shooting guard was originally a first round draft pick of the Knicks, but was traded two years later to Atlanta, where he learned how to play defense under coach Mike Budenholzer, but must have left some of those lessons with his old furniture in the peach state.

There was a brief moment in 2017-18 when Hardaway went down with an injury and Knicks fans were convinced he was the missing piece to pair with Porzingis when the injury sent the team off the tracks. How fast narratives change.

Hardaway Jr. is not a terrible basketball player. He is quite capable of being a second or third scorer on a good team, as he has proven in Dallas. But for the price the Knicks paid, and as the number one scoring option once Porzingis went down, he wasn’t the right fit in New York. The expensive offer sheet that everyone “first” guessed as a bad signing at the time, ended up costing Mills in trade capital in the end.