Ping pong gods are no fan of the New York Knicks.
Phil Jackson and company had so much riding on Tuesday’s night’s lottery. They entered with the second-best chance (19.9 percent) at winning the No. 1 overall pick, and they desperately needed a top-three finish to nab one of the immediate fortunes-turning prospects, be it Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell, Duke’s Jahlil Okafor or Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns. Any one of those youngsters fills an immediate need and, inevitably, could anchor the franchise for years to come.
So yes, the Knicks needed a top-three pick badly.
They ended up with No. 4.
Let the trade chatter begin.
Immediately following the Knicks’ disappointing lottery finish, Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski dropped this:
At No. 4, expect that the Knicks draft pick will be very available in trade talks.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) May 20, 2015
Chad Ford of ESPN.com then had this to offer:
The Knicks will talk trade with everyone & are also big Justise Winslow fans. Not sure they’re sold on Mudiay …
— Chad Ford (@chadfordinsider) May 20, 2015
Finally, Knicks general manager Steve Mills, the team’s lottery representative who looked absolutely crestfallen when the results were announced, had this to say, per NJ.com’s Nick Powell:
“We feel really good about this pick,” Mills said. “We felt that in this draft we could have gotten a good player with any pick on through five. We went into this very optimistic and we will remain that way.” …
We have a lot of things that are on the table at this point,” Mills said. “We still have [trade] exceptions that we can use between now and the draft, so we’re talking to teams about a lot of different things, so we’re open to looking at different opportunities to continue to improve our team.” …
“We may end up looking at a second pick, but more than likely, even if we take that pick, it’s not for a player we expect to be on our team, we have a lot of young players on our roster right now, and our goal is to expand the team and add some more veteran, more experienced players.”
This keeps in theme with Jackson’s season-long oratory: The Knicks are in the market for talent. Period.
That could lead them to trade the No. 4 pick, though this actually seems more unlikely now that they’ve dropped in the order. Top-three picks might be able to net superstars or star-level players on their own, or close to their own. The Knicks would need a serious pot-sweetener if they’re to acquire anything substantial with the No. 4 slot. And they don’t have that wheels-greasing pot-sweetener. Their roster is barren of talent already, hence the importance of falling in the top three.
Moving down seems like a more realistic option at this point, especially if any of the other top-10 pick-holders are high on Emmanuel Mudiay. Whatever the Knicks actually decide, though, will probably still include them trying to strike it big in the draft—a task far harder now that the ping pong gods have spoken.
