2018 Re-Draft: NY Knicks Land Elite Shooter and Backup Five
By Max Hoover
As we creep closer to the beginning of the 2021-2022 NBA Season, we here at Daily Knicks decided to conduct another re-draft, focusing this time on the 2018 NBA Draft.
I’m seeing my first live music for the first time since COVID started in just under a week. (Surprise to no one who reads my work: It’s country singer Sturgill Simpson.)
Sturgill has a lyric that applies perfectly to the whole concept of re-drafts: “Taking a 49 divine day vacation/From reality and all else in between.”
That’s re-drafting to a tee.
Let’s take a break from the realities of real NBA drafts (team play styles and needs, trades, pre-draft agent hype, etc.) and just rank who we believe to be the best players in that year’s draft class.
It’s a fun exercise that DailyKnicks has done here and here as well. Oh, look, here‘s another fun one too.
Who would you have drafted to the NY Knicks in 2018?
However, one thing I don’t see enough re-drafts is just pure, unadulterated data driving the drafting.
Too often, people let their personal biases about this player or that player come into play.
So, for this re-draft, we’re leaning heavily into data by compiling career win shares and VORP from Basketball-Reference and the LEBRON and RPM data from BBall Index to give a player one overall score.
The only rule here: when it is time to pick each team must take the highest scoring player left on the board.
Why?
Well, Sturgill has a lyric from that too: “Woke up today and decided to kill my ego.”
There will be people in this draft order that don’t pass your (or my, for that matter) eye test; they’ll be too high or too low.
Destroy my mentions if you want, but I’m merely a vessel for this beautiful, unbiased data.
Per this combined data, the 2018 draft has a lottery full of positive contributors, but things drop off from there.
Who will the Knicks end up taking with their 9th pick?