Jordan Clarkson has yet to even suit up for the New York Knicks, but his spot in the rotation may already be in serious jeopardy.
Read between the lines, and the team does not seem the least bit sold on its secondary guard rotation. They have one veteran minimum contract left to give, and signed a bunch of—you guessed it—guards to training camp deals to compete for it.
Not only that, but the Knicks have become a team to watch on the trade market. They apparently have designs on offloading some salary so that they can make room for, in all likelihood, both Malcolm Brogdon and Landry Shamet.
This doesn’t seem like an organization that trusts the guards in place behind Jalen Brunson. That feeling only intensifies when you consider they may even be prepared to obliterate their already-shallow wing depth in the name of adding two more guards to the fold.
Many paint this as a lack of conviction in Tyler Kolek, and maybe even, on some level, Deuce McBride. But it might be a referendum on Clarkson, too.
The circumstances of Jordan Clarkson’s arrival matter
Along with Guerschon Yabusele, Clarkson was among the Knicks’ first offseason moves. Surely they would not have recruited him so early if they didn’t intend to guarantee him playing time.
Of course, this presumes they recruited him at all. It does not sound like they did. Clarkson himself admits that he had his agents reach out to the Knicks, and a deal was hashed out from there.
This is not to say they didn’t want him. If that were the case, they could have refused to sign him. But we should not assign too much meaning to a minimum contract. Such signings get romanticized every year. Sometimes, they prove to be steals. In most cases, teams dole them as a stab in the dark.
Either way, players who receive them are seldom guaranteed much of anything. Clarkson is no exception—especially if New York ends up with Brogdon, and Shamet. Though he provides more from-scratch shot creation, the other two bring more defenses, and a longer track record of hitting three-pointers at a higher clip.
Clarkson will get an opportunity to play a bigger role for the Knicks
Fortunately for Clarkson, he will likely be given a chance to establish himself as the go-to guard off the bench. He is the one on a guaranteed contract. Not Brogdon, not Shamet—him.
Beyond that, Clarkson’s trademark skill is the one New York needs most: half-court shot creation.
Knicks plays other than Brunson ranked in the 29th percentile of half-court shot creation last season, according to BBall Index. For his part, Clarkson finished in 91st percentile of this category, while playing for a Utah Jazz team that wasn’t trying to win.
When you see people pondering whether the 33-year-old can win Sixth Man of the Year for the second time of his career, this is why. He just might just be the second-best self-creator on the Knicks’ roster. That could buy him degrees of stability.
Then again, you could have said the same about Cam Payne last year. Look how that turned out.
All of which is to say: Clarkson is both important to the Knicks, and guaranteed absolutely nothing.