3 Sharpshooters the NY Knicks Should Target at the Trade Deadline

NY Knicks: Davis Bertans could be reinvigorated

Knicks trade Austin Rivers, 2nd round pick | Wizards trade Davis Bertans

Davis Bertans has seriously underperformed for Washington after signing a 5-year $80 million contract this past offseason. In the 2019-2020 season, Bertans shot a near career-high 42.5% from behind the arc and averaged a career-high 15.4 points per game.

This year, he’s been in and out of the lineup with injury and had his role regressed as he now comes off the bench logging about 26 minutes per game. It’s evident here that Bertans on the NY Knicks is simply a better fit.

If traded to New York, he’d replace Reggie Bullock at the starting small forward spot, increasing the high volume shooting of the starting lineup, and bringing Bullock’s solid 3 and D play to the bench, or exchanging him in a separate trade (see below) for a different asset.

With it being proven that Bertans isn’t worth $80 million over five years as well as the uncertainty that is the Wizards franchise, I think it makes a lot of sense for Washington to trade him. They have a lot of younger players similar to him in rookie Deni Avdija and sophomore Rui Hachimura that are also being paid a lot less. They should take whatever they can get for him now and avoid him being an issue in the near future.

On the other side of things, it’s clear that Austin Rivers is no longer part of the Knicks rotation. Due to the fact that he has a team option after this season, it would baffle me if the Knicks decided to just let him walk instead of getting anything back for him at all.

With Raul Neto being the current backup point guard for the Wizards, it would make a lot of sense to me if the team would be interested in acquiring Rivers, especially after the periods of time earlier this season where he displayed lights-out shooting. This is a deal I think makes sense for both teams and the Knicks should do everything in their power to get it done.