NY Knicks: 3 players New York could trade draft picks for

This year’s amazing run by the NY Knicks may have ended back in early June when they were ousted in the first round by the Atlanta Hawks via gentleman’s sweep, but that doesn’t mean their good fortunes can’t flow right along into their offseason endeavors as well.

Surprising even the most optimistic of fans with their stupendous fourth-place finish in the 2020-21 Eastern Conference standings with a record of 41-31, Leon Rose and co. now look to the summer months for a chance to build off of the team’s recent successes.

Due to its placement on the calendar, the first task found on the docket for New York’s front office will be to make the most of their upcoming draft selections.

As things currently stand, during Thursday night’s Draft, the Knickerbockers will find themselves heading up to the podium three times, with two of those trips coming in the first round at pick Nos. 19 and 21.

Though there are some who believe the NY Knicks will be able to find some quality talents to nab at this spot on the board, should the team’s brass believe otherwise, they could theoretically look to package one or more of them together in an effort to try and nab a player more to their liking.

Should they go down this route and try to swap these assets for specific players, we at DK believe there are 3 relatively realistic options that are worth trading draft capital for:

Player worth NY Knicks trading picks for No. 1) Corey Kispert

Despite the fact that the NY Knicks finished third in the association in 3-point shooting this past campaign, they only placed 27th in such attempts per game, and both their efficiency and commitment to the long ball proved to be quite underwhelming during the postseason where they placed fourth-worst in 3-pointers attempted and sixth-worst in 3-pointers converted.

In other words, though they shot from downtown rather well for the most part of 2020-21, heading into 2021-22 the front office should still look into adding more shooters to add to the rotation, and perhaps the cheapest way of doing this would be to look into trading up in this year’s draft to nab Gonzaga wing, Corey Kispert.

Considered by many to be the best shooter in this year’s class, the four-year forward finds himself coming off of an amazing senior season where he posted 18.6 points and five boards on 53 percent shooting from the floor and 44 percent shooting from deep.

With him and projected top-5 selection, Jalen Suggs, running the show for the Zags, the Bulldogs managed to thrust themselves into the upper echelon of collegiate offenses last season as well as to a stellar 31-1 record.

Projected to go somewhere in the 13-17 range in Friday’s draft, Kispert is a player that the NY Knicks should strongly consider packaging some picks together for in an effort to move on up from 19 and snag him.

His ability to space the floor seems rather unmatched by the majority of this year’s class while his craftiness when fighting off screens is an underrated aspect of his game that could easily benefit the screen happy offense that coach Tom Thibodeau likes to run.