The New York Knicks have not exactly been the NBA’s shining example of competent front-office management over the past few decades. A team whose best moments came from a combination of savvy transactions and developing premier talent has stumbled quite a bit, too.
In particular, the Knicks have often been too quick to move on from young players. Always chasing the next few wins, they have sent young guns packing in order to add veterans again and again. That’s something many teams are guilty of, but the Knicks have some really standout examples as well, dating all the way back to the very beginning.
Let’s look at nine players the New York Knicks gave up on too soon, starting with a recent example.
9. Tim Hardaway Jr.
The New York Knicks drafted Tim Hardaway Jr. in 2013, adding the son of the Hall of Fame point guard Tim Hardaway they battled with in the 1990s when Hardaway was on the Miami Heat. Hardaway the younger got off to a solid start, averaging double-digit points as a rookie and landing on an All-Rookie Team.
Things soured quickly, however, as Hardaway had a less efficient sophomore season. The Knicks flipped Hardaway to the Atlanta Hawks for the pick that became Jerian Grant, a point guard who would be out of the league within five years. Hardaway went on to have a breakout fourth season…leading the Knicks to drop a significant free agent offer sheet to claw him away from the Hawks!
If they had simply kept Hardaway in town, they would have had the leverage of being able to match an offer sheet, not dropping in trade kickers and a player option and a high salary. The Knicks eventually sent Hardaway away yet again in the Kristaps Porzingis deal, and he proceeded to have another career year in Dallas.
8. Robin Lopez
Most of the players on this list either began their careers with the New York Knicks or joined them as young players. Robin Lopez played half of his career before coming to the Knicks, spending seven seasons in the Western Conference before arriving in New York in 2015 as an unrestricted free agent.
Lopez had a great season for the Knicks, starting all 82 games and averaging 10.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game. The Knicks were a 30-win team that season with Carmelo Anthony, a rookie Kristaps Porzingis and little else; Lopez led all rotation players in win shares per 48 minutes — he was not the reason they had a losing season.
The Knicks had Lopez under contract for another three seasons at $13.5 million per season. With Porzingis at the 4 and Anthony at the 3, their task should have been to build out the backcourt and the bench. The Knicks decided to do so by trading for Derrick Rose, sending Lopez packing and reuniting Tom Thibodeau with his former MVP. The reunions continued, as the Knicks were comfortable shipping out Lopez because they were signing Joakim Noah to a four-year, $72 million contract.
Instead of a 28-year-old Lopez who had just played all 82 games for $13.5 million per season, the Knicks decided on Joakim Noah: 31 years old, coming off of multiple injuries. After playing just 29 games the season before, Noah would last only 46 for the Knicks that season and played just 7 the next before he was waived. Derrick Rose played just 64 games with the Knicks in a year plagued by off-court issues before he left and signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Lopez played 81 games the next season in Chicago and averaged 73 games a year over the rest of that contract. He wasn’t a star, but he was a steady option at center. The Knicks could have used their resources in so many better ways than trading for Rose and signing Noah.
7. Trevor Ariza
Close your eyes and picture Trevor Ariza. What basketball jersey is he wearing? Perhaps it’s a Los Angeles Lakers jersey, from when he was a key rotation player on the 2009 title team. Perhaps he has a Houston Rockets jersey, where he was a starter in two different stints, especially on those James Harden teams. The Orlando Magic? The Washington Wizards? You have plenty of options, as he has played for 10 teams in his career; the NBA record is 13.
What many might not remember is that Ariza began his career as a second-round pick of the New York Knicks in the 2004 NBA Draft. Ariza spent a season and a half with the Knicks, averaging 5.5 points in a small role across 116 games. He was then a throw-in along with Penny Hardaway in a trade for Steve Francis, starting Ariza’s pinball career around the league.
Ariza has played 1,118 games all across the league, emerging as one of the league’s premier 3-and-D wings. Only recently have those players started to get their due, and even so they are often the most undervalued player archetype. By his fourth season he was playing in the NBA Finals, and in his fifth he was a key rotation player on a title team.
The Knicks could certainly have used a player like Ariza, and it’s hard to imagine that the Orlando Magic would have insisted on Ariza as a part of the Francis trade. Ariza was on bargain contracts for most of his career and well outplayed them, and if the Knicks had not given up on him he could have been playing important minutes in the blue and orange.
6. Channing Frye
The New York Knicks used a premium pick in 2005 on Arizona big man Channing Frye, drafting him with the eighth pick. Frye was a standout college player who led the Wildcats to an Elite Eight berth as a senior before entering the draft.
Frye did not get off to a shining start with the Knicks. He averaged 12.3 points per game as a rookie, then in his second season became a (mostly) full-time starter but slipped back to 9.5 points, hitting only 16.7 percent of his sparse 3-point attempts. Frye wasn’t exactly playing in the best ecosystem, with a hodge-podge of ho-hum names from Knicks history around him (Eddy Curry, Jared Jeffries, Nate Robinson, Quentin Richardson) but he was certainly a late bloomer in the NBA.
The Knicks lost patience with Frye after his second season, tossing him into a deal along with Steve Francis to the Portland Trail Blazers for a package including Zach Randolph (he may pop back up later on this list). Frye had a couple of middling seasons in Portland before joining the Phoenix Suns in 2009-10, where his career took off.
Frye was never an All-Star, but he did develop into a reliable stretch-big with the Suns. His 3-pointer was unleashed playing for Mike D’Antoni and Alvin Gentry; he hit 20 3-pointers through four seasons in the league, and suddenly hit 172 in his first season in Phoenix. Suddenly, Frye was stretching opposing defenses in ways they were not used to, and he became one of the most effective offensive centers in the league. As the Knicks cycled through mediocrity at center, Frye could have made a difference.
5. Jeremy Lin
The story of Jeremy Lin is known to virtually every fan of the New York Knicks. He was signed as something akin to emergency point guard depth in 2011, then was pressed into service amidst injuries and poor play. He erupted for 25 points in his first substantial action, then was moved into the starting lineup and led the Knicks on a seven-game winning streak, all without star forward Carmelo Anthony.
“Linsanity” led the Knicks to a 16-10 record in his 26 games in the rotation, and New York recovered to make the playoffs. Lin went down with a knee injury in late March and missed the playoffs, having averaged 18.5 points and 7.6 assists per game in that stretch.
Lin became a restricted free agent that summer, and the Knicks had every opportunity to re-sign him. Instead, they encouraged Lin to seek other offers, not wanting to pay Lin after such a short stint in the league. That led to Lin signing a creative and punitive contract with a balloon payment in the final year, known as a “poison pill” that made it really hard for the Knicks to match the offer.
New York should have offered Lin a fair deal. Then, they should have matched the offer sheet; the Knicks instead captured lightning in a bottle, with a player who brought genuine joy to the franchise for the first time in years, and let him walk for nothing. Lin wasn’t a star in his other stops, and injuries eroded the rest of his career, but he was worth re-signing and the Knicks just let him go.
4. Danilo Gallinari
The New York Knicks in the 2010-11 season had started to amass an intriguing young core in the midst of some aging veterans. The problem with young cores is that they tend to develop slowly, and the Knicks (to no one’s surprise) proved too impatient to wait. Instead, when Carmelo Anthony was interested in joining the Knicks, they sent that young core to the Denver Nuggets to bring Anthony into the fold.
Danilo Gallinari headlined the group that was sent to Denver. The sixth pick in the 2008 NBA Draft out of Italy, Gallinari exploded in his second season, averaging 15.1 points while shooting 38.1 percent from 3-point range. He was averaging basically the same numbers the following season when he was traded.
The Knicks sent Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Timofey Mozgov and a bevy of draft picks to the Nuggets for Melo, Chauncey Billups (who was waived later that year) and some bit players. Anthony was a pending free agent and could have simply signed with the Knicks that summer. The Knicks could have surrounded Anthony with that young core, including Gallinari, and instead jettisoned him to the mountains.
Gallinari and that group of players helped the Nuggets maintain a strong level of success even without a true “star” and he averaged double figures every season of his career moving forward. His best year was in 2015-16 when he averaged 19.5 points per game. The Knicks with Gallinari and Anthony would have been lethal; instead, they bailed on organic growth and hamstrung their ability to truly contend.
3. Rod Strickland
The New York Knicks had not quite ascended to the level of perennial Eastern Conference contenders in 1988 when they drafted Rod Strickland 19th overall. That changed immediately, as the following season the Knicks won 52 games under head coach Rick Pitino. The rookie Strickland settled in as the backup point guard behind Mark Jackson and made the 1989 All-Rookie Team.
Having tasted success, the Knicks (stop me if you’ve heard this before) got impatient and decided to trade a talented young player for a much older veteran. They sent Strickland to the San Antonio Spurs for 33-year-old point guard Maurice Cheeks in the middle of Strickland’s second season.
Cheeks averaged 7.9 points per game the rest of that season and 7.8 points and 5.7 assists the next year before the Knicks sent him on his way. Strickland, on the other hand, put up 14.2 points and eight assists per game for a really good Spurs team anchored by a rookie David Robinson. Strickland became his starting point guard for the next few seasons
Strickland went on to have a 17-year career, leading the league in assists with the Washington Bullets in 1996-97 and making an All-NBA team in 1998. Not only should the Knicks have kept Strickland, but he was also probably the better choice over Mark Jackson. They gave up on Strickland way too soon.
2. Dolph Schayes
The New York Knicks have certainly made a long list of mistakes in the past few decades, but for the penultimate entry on this list we are going way, way back to 1948. The Knicks played not in the NBA but in the BAA, which was soon to merge with the NBL to become the NBA. At the same time, he was drafted by the Syracuse Nationals of the NBL.
Schayes grew up in the Bronx and went to NYU; playing for his hometown Knicks was probably something he would have loved to do. The problem was that the Knicks didn’t want to pay him; they offered him a contract for just $3,750. When Syracuse offered twice that, he signed with the Nationals instead.
Schayes went on to become one of the early superstars in the NBA. He averaged 16.8 points as a rookie, then led the league in rebounding as a sophomore with 16.4 rebous per game. He averaged a double-double for 11 straight years, making 12 All-Star Games and 12 All-NBA teams. He led Syracuse to the 1955 NBA Championship and was an easy induction into the Hall of Fame.
Schayes played his entire career with Syracuse, one of the best scorers and rebounders in the league. If the Knicks had simply offered him a decent contract, he very likely would have amassed all of those points, rebounds and accolades for the Knicks.
1. Zach Randolph
From one double-double machine to another, we return to the modern era and the most egregious case of the New York Knicks giving up on a player too soon. Zach Randolph was drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers in 2001 and became known for excellent post scoring and relentless behavioral issues.
Portland eventually gave up on Randolph themselves, trading him to the New York Knicks in the 2007 offseason for Steve Francis and Channing Frye (a double giving-up trade!). Randolph put up 17.6 points and 10.3 rebounds per game for the Knicks that following season. Still just 26 years old, he looked like a building block for a struggling Knicks franchise.
Then the Knicks said “sayonara” and sent him packing to the LA Clippers in exchange for Cuttino Mobley and Tim Thomas. Mobley would never play again because of a heart condition and Thomas was simply a bit player; the deal was to dump Randolph’s contract on the willing Clippers. The Knicks valued cap space more than Randolph’s contributions.
The Knicks would use that cap space to sign Amar’e Stoudemire when LeBron James spurned them in the summer of 2010, and Stoudemire had one good year for the Knicks before chronic injuries chopped him down.
Randolph, on the other hand, would continue doing the kind of basketball things you want from a big man: he scored, he rebounded, he grew as a defender. He made his way to the Memphis Grizzlies and became a beloved member of the Grit ‘N Grind Grizzlies, making numerous playoff runs. He would have been imminently more valuable to the Knicks than Stoudemire was.
The New York Knicks didn’t always give up on young talent, and they have had some players blossom under their watch. Yet their history features a number of talented players that were shipped out of town for win-now help, and the Knicks have to wish they hadn’t given up on them so soon.