Knicks Rumors: Team eyeing Harrison Barnes ahead of deadline

The Knicks lost out on two of their biggest potential trade deadline targets within just a few hours yesterday and now, there’s not a whole lot to look forward to tomorrow.

CJ McCollum was traded to the Pelicans and Sacramento decided to hold onto De’Aaron Fox and instead trade off their second-year phenom in Tyrese Haliburton in quite the puzzling deal.

But in recent news, the Knicks have supposedly turned their attention toward Harrison Barnes instead.

So that’s proof that there were some serious talks going on between the Kings and Knicks.

Should the Knicks trade for Harrison Barnes?

Marc Berman of the NY Post said:

"The Knicks, however, have also asked the Kings about the availability of veteran combo forward Harrison Barnes as the trade deadline approaches.Before the Haliburton trade, multiple sources said the Kings would be amenable to trading the 29-year-old Barnes, who played for the Warriors’ super teams. In fact, word around the league was everyone on the Sacramento roster is fair game.There were rumblings the Knicks, who suffered a 132-115 blowout loss to the Nuggets on Thursday night, would have given up Julius Randle in a package for Fox, but he should be safe now.Barnes is a 6-foot-8 combo forward similar in size to Cam Reddish, whom the Knicks recently acquired. The Knicks believe they need a 3-4 type player, which is why they traded for Reddish."

Barnes is having himself quite the comeback season, looking more like his former self this season.

He’s averaging 16.9 points per game which is the most since the 2017-18 season and he’s also shooting it from deep at nearly 41%, which is also close to his career-best.

Above is just a trade that would make sense financially but wouldn’t exactly fix the problems the Knicks currently have on their roster.

Sure, consolidating some of the older guys in a 3 for 2 swap would help to create a roster spot, but the Knicks currently have far too many wings on the team today.

If a deal like this went down, it would still force the Knicks to play another non-point guard meaningful minutes while out of position such as RJ Barrett or Immanuel Quickley.

They’d likely have to make yet another trade to solve the issues that this trade causes.

All in all, Harrison Barnes is a nice player and he’s on a pretty fair contract for next season as well, but just wouldn’t make any sense for the Knicks today.

The goal at this deadline should be to find a way to create a spot in Thibs’ rotation for newly acquired Cam Reddish who the team just traded a first-rounder for a few weeks back.

Final Verdict: Hard Pass