If the New York Knicks plan on emerging from their pit of self-despair and saving their season, they need to make a trade. Multiple trades, actually. And there is no excuse for team president Leon Rose and the front office to wait any longer.
Facts are undeniable. And the fact of this matter is, the Knicks as currently constructed are not a championship team. Right now, they are not even a squad capable of making it out of the first round.
They have been telling us—and the front office—as much for a while. They now have a league-average offense, the 29th-ranked defense, and a bottom-seven net rating since the NBA Cup. That is not a rut. It is a breaking point, perhaps even a new normal.
The Knicks’ list of needs is overwhelmingly long
Rose cannot sit on his derrière any longer, and wait for the team to fix itself. That was clear before. It is beyond argument after the Knicks’ latest clunker, a beat down at the hands of an injury-decimated Dallas Mavericks squad that came despite the should-have-been life-imbuing returns of Jalen Brunson, and Josh Hart.
So much is going wrong that it’s getting difficult, and painful, to keep track of the entire list. The Knicks need point-of-attack defense. They need guys who can close out on three-point shooters after collapsing. They need Karl-Anthony Towns to find himself on offense, and in general. They need the dynamic between him and head coach Mike Brown to dramatically improve.
They need OG Anunoby to defend like he’s OG Anunoby again. They need Mikal Bridges to add the words “contact,” “rim,” and “free throw” back into his vocabulary. They need a backup playmaker who can handle dribbling against pressure. They need a reserve wing.
They need another big, unless Mitchell Robinson can suddenly play in back-to-backs, and routinely play 25-plus minutes per game. And even then, they may still need another big for the nights on which KAT plays like the 12th man.
Players who get back in transition—they need those, too. They need to commit fewer turnovers when the ball is out of Brunson’s hands. They need to spray out of their drives more often. They need to drive more often, period.
And as long as we’re at it, the Knicks could also use a machine that clones Deuce McBride, and increases his height by five inches or so.
A trade is the Knicks’ only course of action
Basically, this team needs a soul again. It doesn’t have one right now. Failing to make a trade would be an error of cataclysmic proportions.
Spare yourself the impulse to caveat this argument by denoting the Knicks’ lack of assets, and financial flexibility. That is on Rose and the front office to figure out.
They constructed a roster so damningly close to the second apron, without a single first-round pick to trade, that desperately needed to hit on nearly every one of its marginal signings (Guerschon Yabusele, Landry Shamet, Jordan Clarkson) just to feign functional depth. It’s not on us to care how the lack of maneuverability impacts their market activity, and transactional ceiling.
Please also spare yourself from writing off the issues as injury-related. The Knicks' top-seven players have seldom been available together this year. Big whoop. Every team deals with absences. Real championship contenders figure it out. Ask the Oklahoma City Thunder. Or the Denver Nuggets. Or the Boston Celtics.
Fans are smart enough to know the Knicks don’t have the clout to acquire a star. At this point, Giannis Antetokounmpo could threaten retirement if the Milwaukee Bucks didn’t send him to New York, and they still might pass on whatever the Knicks can offer.
For now, though, this isn’t necessarily about the return. It’s about making a change, any change, at all. The Knicks are more than halfway through their season, and closer to play-in territory than the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed. That is a failure.
Everyone deserves blame. Pointing fingers at only Towns or Brown is popular, but it’s not the answer. There might not even be an answer. The Knicks have reached the “change for change’s sake” portion of their descent into purgatory. That’s never a good sign.
Pretending as if they haven't fallen that far is even worse. And because we know they’re not about to can Brown mere months after hiring him, a trade is the only way. Rose and company should close their eyes, point at one of the many, many flaws, and seek to improve it. If nothing else, it sends a message to the fanbase, the same message that this roster has been screaming at the the front office for quite some time:
Something is fundamentally broken with this squad. Change is the only thing that might fix it—assuming it’s fixable at all.