Somebody check on New York Knicks team president Leon Rose. We need to make sure he hasn’t overheated with excitement at the prospect of Jaren Jackson Jr. becoming a trade candidate.
Rose is known to covet the 26-year-old, as Kris Pursiainen reported for ClutchPoints over the summer. And hey, who could blame him? Jackson won Defensive Player of the Year in 2023, and remains one of the most impactful anchors on the less-glamorous end. Cake in his development as an iso scorer, his floor-spacing ability, and yes, the fact he’s a former client of Rose’s from his Creative Artists Agency days, and you’ve got pipe-dream catnip.
Landing Jackson has been considered exactly that: a pipe dream. Except now, it’s a more attainable one thanks to Ja Morant, and more importantly, a shifting trade landscape.
The Memphis Grizzlies are inching closer towards a rebuild
The Grizzlies dealing Desmond Bane to the Orlando Magic preempted the report about Rose’s infatuation with Jackson. Despite what Memphis intimated, this was considered the actions of the team warming up to a rebuild.
Hitting the full-on reset button now seems inevitable.
Sources told ESPN’s Shams Charania that the Grizzlies are “entertaining” offers for Morant. Though the 26-year-old is slogging through the worst season of his career, he’s not someone you put on the block unless you’re considering a wholesale pivot.
Jackson is young enough to be part of any reset. Yet, this presumes he’s capable of being the bedrock upon which you build. For as far as he’s come, he’s not that. He still isn’t a heavy minutes player, and doesn’t generate a ton of offense for others. His ideal role is that of a second option, or third wheel.
So if the Grizzlies are indeed looking for a fresh start, they’ll invariably entertain offers for Jackson, too. And the Knicks, believe it or not, may be well-positioned to pounce.
The Knicks should revel in the start-trade landscape
New York doesn’t have the firepower to chase star-types in a vacuum. The fact that we’re all wondering whether the Washington Wizards might accidentally convey their first-round pick this year says all you need to know.
Still, the Knicks will have two-first rounders to dangle over the summer (2026, and 2033), along with plenty of matching salary. They will also be stepping into a trade market that’s not as hot for expensive players who aren’t consensus top-10 or top-15 players.
Jackson falls into this bucket. He is owed four years and $205 million after this season. That averages out to around 28.7 percent of the salary cap each year. Other teams will of course be interested. But after watching the Atlanta Hawks struggle to get value for Trae Young, and with the Morant trade market seemingly less-than-robust, stars with clear-cut flaws on big-money deals may no longer command a king’s ransom.
A willingness to foot the bill on these contracts could become the new market inefficiency. You can bet the deep-pocketed Knicks will be among the teams willing to capitalize on it.
This doesn’t make them the favorite to land Jackson, if and when he becomes available. But with more assets this summer, matching salary of various sizes, Memphis dancing around a rebuild, and most critically, a harder-to-navigate star-trade landscape, the idea of the Knicks acquiring JJJ is no longer as farfetched as it was before.
Or, for that matter, farfetched at all.