NY Knicks: Should Evan Fournier have a bigger offensive role?

Evan Fournier, along with many other NY Knicks, has had an up and down season so far, no doubt about it. As a result, there have been numerous trade rumors surrounding the French International sharpshooter.

Some rumors have reasons such as poor performances and others are saying the front office needs to make room for Quentin Grimes and Cam Reddish. While I agree Fournier needs to be more consistent and would love to see Grimes and Reddish get some more burn, we have to take a look at this recent stretch of games for the Knicks.

NY Knicks: Evan Fournier has turned it on

Fournier has averaged 17.4 points, shooting 51.6% from the field and 47.6% from behind the arc in his last five. While he did put up some dud performances versus the Heat and Cavaliers, you cannot ignore that he also had 30 point, 18 points, and 25 point games in that same stretch.

5 games is too much of a small sample size? Ok fine. If you go back and look at the past 35 games, Fournier is shooting 42.1% from three while averaging 7.5 per game, thanks to Jeremy Cohen of Knicks Film School.

Should the Knicks be looking for Evan Fournier more?

There is no one right answer to explain the lack of consistency with the Knicks. Doesn’t matter if it’s the first, second, third, fourth, or all four, at least one quarter the Knicks always seem to crumble.

I was watching the MSG Broadcast of Mike Breen and Clyde Frazier the other night and noticed how Clyde was in awe that Fournier gets all these looks in the first quarter and then disappears.

Whether that is his fault, the designed offense, or a combination of both, I don’t know. But what I do know is that Clyde was right, Fournier averages 4.2 first quarter field goal attempts and just 2.6 fourth quarter attempts. 

So to me, this says that if Fournier gets more consistent shots throughout 4 quarters his impact on the result of the game would be much more immense.

Now, this may not seem like a huge difference but the NBA is a shooters league and the fourth quarter is where your shooters win you games. Whether that is protecting a lead or in the Knicks’ signature case, trying to climb back from a huge deficit.

Just last night against Memphis we saw the Knicks down 20, and start to close the gap a few times. But every time the NY Knicks looked to take their swing, the Grizzlies dodged by hitting dagger three after dagger three.

It’s always important to have a shooter capable of catching fire and we’ve seen Fournier do this many times. I fear that if the Knicks do decide to move on from him, we will be missing a huge hole in our already subpar scoring.