NY Knicks: 3 trades for players who fit perfectly with Julius Randle

NY Knicks best fit with Julius Randle #1 – Lonzo Ball

I just mentioned in an article yesterday that I believe Lonzo Ball will be a Knick one way or another in the near future.

How he makes it onto the team is the interesting part.

Whether it be a mid-season trade, signed outright, or a sign-and-trade situation is to be decided.

There has been speculation that Lonzo will be looking for a contract (subscription required for link) somewhere in the realm of $20 million annually, and that just doesn’t sit right with me.

I love the idea of bringing Lonzo to New York and I believe he’s the point guard the team has been searching for, for the past 20+ years.

But I am absolutely sick of the Knicks always having to overpay for talent when players get so many more opportunities to make money outside of just basketball just by being in New York.

Supposedly the asking price for Lonzo is high, but as the days progress, I think the Pelicans will realize that they can’t get as much for him as they initially thought and the price for the acquisition will go down considerably.

Here is a trade I thought up that I see working for both sides:

I spent about 5 minutes tinkering with the NBA Trade Machine and I ended up coming up with the same exact trade as I had in my “3 trades involving Elfrid Payton” article from last week.

This trade fulfills all 3 needs of the Knicks’ and both players would fit tremendously next to Julius Randle.

JJ Redick is obviously one of the best shooters in the NBA and Lonzo is having a surprisingly good season shooting from deep, shooting almost 39% on nearly 8 attempts per game.

Both players can facilitate on offense as well, JJ Redick when necessary, and Lonzo could be a 9-10 assists per game player with this Knicks’ roster.

Lonzo would bring an element of ball-movement that the Knicks sorely need.

They’ve been getting by just fine splitting the ball-handling duties between several players but that has created a very isolation-heavy offense.

Having a player with the basketball IQ of Lonzo Ball would help open up the offense that much more and creates more open looks for Julius Randle instead of constantly having to overpower his defender.

While Lonzo wouldn’t bring the offensive firepower that the following 2 names I’ll be mentioning do, he’s an incredible defender and can guard pretty much anyone on the other team’s offense on the perimeter.