All year long the NY Knicks have consistently struggled to simply just stay afloat within the Eastern Conference standings and now, as things currently stand, they find themselves submerged underwater down in the deep end of this proverbial pool with their mere .500 record of 21-21.
As a result, they are slotted into the undesirable 11th seed in the East and, should they not see any drastic changes take place soon, they easily could just continue to fall deeper and deeper down the leaderboard where all hope is then essentially lost on the season.
Luckily, however, this time of year is generally when we begin to see team decision-makers stepping into action and looking to execute the necessary shakeups that could ultimately better their respective ball clubs moving forward.
For Leon Rose and co., there appear to be several different roads New York’s front office could embark on in order to help them potentially get back on the right track towards making their second-straight postseason appearance and, perhaps the most oft mentioned route in order for them to accomplish this is by way of mid-season trading.
Over the past several weeks, fans and media outlets alike (admittedly including ourselves) have all been thinking up ways in which the Knickerbockers can ultimately land that much-needed game-changer to help salvage the remainder of 2021-22, and, as a result, we’ve seen numerous names linked as being potential trade targets, with talents ranging from mere role players to, more often than not, star performers.
Amongst this group of players, however, there has been quite a number who seem like they’d be odd fits with the NY Knicks and, with this in mind, today we at DK present to you 3 rumored trade targets that just seem to make no sense for the team to pursue:
Rumored NY Knicks trade target No. 1) Jerami Grant
Kicking off our piece we decided to go with arguably the biggest name recently linked to the NY Knicks as a possible trade target this season in Pistons’ big man, Jerami Grant.
According to Shams Charania of The Athletic (subscription required), it is being reported that New York is one of several organizations that appear to be interested in trading for the power forward who is on the second to last year of his $60 million deal with the rebuilding Pistons and, honestly, just hasn’t seemed to be a long-term fit with the franchise since the beginning of his tenure due to their tank agenda and, well, his high-end production that could ultimately halt their desires.
Because of this, many are under the impression that the franchise will look to offload Grant prior to the deadline and, as already stated, the Knicks could be a potential trade candidate though, quite frankly, we believe he’d be an awful fit if ever acquired.
Now yes, the power forward is a solid talent in this league who has been lighting up the stat sheet since taking on a larger role in Detroit, boasting stellar averages of 21.6 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 1.1 blocks over the past two seasons.
That said, we believe this major jump in numbers is undeniably correlated with his ridiculous usage percentage of nearly 28 percent, which is a number he most certainly will not be replicating with the NY Knicks.
On top of this, what makes a Grant acquisition even more troubling to envision is the fact that the team already has a high volume power forward who needs the ball in his hands in Julius Randle who, like the Pistons star, has historically struggled to space the floor, thus making it unbelievably likely that the duo would just end up getting in each other’s way on the offensive side of the ball.
As we’ve already stated, Jerami Grant is a very talented player in this league, but he’d just be an awful fit with Randle and the Knickerbockers.