New York Knicks Shouldn’t Trade For Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul & Build The Right Way

In a case of interesting irony, the way banished former New York Knicks president Steve Mills signed players in the summer of 2019 after striking out on Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving puts them in an advantageous position going into this offseason.

Not only will the Knicks be one of the four teams with the most cap space in the league along with Atlanta, Detroit and Charlotte, they now have plenty of partially guaranteed contracts which work extremely well in trades, which will be the main way teams will acquire players this season as the salary cap decreases or remains flat and the free agency class is as weak as it’s been in a long time. Only $4 million of Julius Randle’s 2021-2022 contract is guaranteed and only $1 million of each of Taj Gibson, Wayne Ellington, Elfrid Payton and Reggie Bullock’s deals for 2020-2021 will be guaranteed if they’re waived by a certain date. That date given all the uncertainty of next season, is still being determined.

New York, of course, will be tempted for a win now move under new team president Leon Rose and new head coach Tom Thibodeau. If you’re a Knick fan, you’ve seen the rumors. The team could trade for Oklahoma City’s Chris Paul or Houston’s Russell Westbrook and quickly get back in the playoffs, get back to respectability or whatever. But acquiring those players and their massive contracts will only get the team back to square one (if James Harden is available after the departure of longtime general manager Daryl Morey, that’s a little bit of a different story). Using the cap space on a player like Toronto unrestricted free agent Fred VanVleet who’s younger and more in line with the team’s core in terms of age would be a better use of Rose’s cap space.

But with all this room and these non-guaranteed deals, now’s the chance to do what Mills should’ve done last year. Take teams’ bad contracts and get young players and assets like picks to build around R.J. Barrett, Mitchell Robinson and perhaps the 8th pick in next month’s draft. That’s the formula Brooklyn took to acquire assets and build a young core appealing enough to sign Durant and Irving in the first place. Interestingly enough, trading for Victor Oladipo, who only has one year left on his contract, works if New York can get an additional pick or young player from Indiana to get some financial relief.

Of course the Knicks are accustomed to taking shortcuts, falling short of the playoffs, firing high-priced coaches and GMs and starting over again. Rose and Thibodeau have the opportunity to break that cycle and build a team the way most modern front offices do. Over the last 15-20 years, the allure of a past-his-prime star like Westbrook or Paul have been too difficult to overcome, the team has underachieved and it’s had to go back to square one. We’ll see over the next couple of months whether the Knicks once again fall into that trap.