If you’ve been following Daily Knicks ever since Adam Kester and I took over, you’d know that a Kemba Walker trade article was inevitable after the news broke yesterday.
For those of you who perhaps live under a rock and haven’t yet heard said news, Kemba Walker has been removed from NY’s rotation “for the time being” with Alec Burks as the team’s starting PG.
A sad but not at all surprising move by Coach Thibs and Co.
A statistical summary of why the Knicks are pulling Kemba Walker from the rotation:
— Fred Katz (@FredKatz) November 29, 2021
Knicks have the best defense in the league when he’s on the bench (99.0 DRtg) & are dead last (116.3 DRtg) when he’s on the floor.
They are 27th in offense with him playing, 9th with him off.
The above stats hurt my eyes to look at.
The fact is that in order to justify having a player of Kemba’s defensive caliber on the floor for extended periods of time, he must be able to put out the high-level scoring he’s best known for.
Should the NY Knicks move on from Kemba Walker?
Otherwise, all he is is a walking, talking, 34th Street train station turnstile by way of the Bronx.
In fact, Kemba has by far and away the worse plus-minus stat of the entire team so far this season, leading the Knicks with a -122.
The second worst player on the team has been Mitchell Robinson with just a -68 on the year…a far more respectable number through essentially the same amount of games played.
I think I speak for everyone when I say I was excited to see what Kemba would bring to the Knicks who’ve so sorely needed an above-average point guard for what seems like my entire life.
And I also wanted to see the synergy that Walker and Evan Fournier seemed to have created in Boston replicated while both wearing some sweet orange and blue uni’s.
But to be frank, the timing of this benching is uncanny, considering that December 15th is the first date that teams can trade newly acquired contracts from this past offseason.
The Knicks are about to experience one of the toughest stretches of their season so far, with matchups against Brooklyn, Chicago, Denver, San Antonio, Toronto, Milwaukee, and Golden State on the docket.
This 7 game sample size should more than prove to Thibs and Leon Rose if Kemba was the real problem and if a trade will have to be made.
I say ‘real problem’ but what I truly mean is that maybe the Kemba experiment was doomed from jump street and the fit within Thibs’ system was never a match.
Let us recall how free agency went, where the Knicks were in on guys like Spencer Dinwiddie, Lonzo Ball, and even Kendrick Nunn before they even considered Kemba as an option.
Perhaps Thibs wasn’t all that excited about bringing on the shell of what Kemba Walker once was, to begin with, and instead accepted the idea with having a short leash for him in mind.
Thibs moved on from Kemba in just 20 games whereas he refused to move on from Elfrid Payton all of last season, so we as fans should definitely commend him for doing what was best for the team as quickly as he did.
That said, let’s take a look at some trades the Knicks could consider if they do in fact decide to move on from Kemba in the near future.