Being a Knicks fan is rough. In the arena of NBA fandom, rooting for Madison Square Garden’s inhabitants makes you a target of disdain. Nowadays though, it has also made you a target of pity. The way the organization has been run in the past two-plus decades makes everything seem like impending disaster. So every so often when things go right, a la Kristaps Porzingis (a move I hated on Draft night in the interest of full disclosure), we don’t know what to do with ourselves. That is why the 2017 NBA Draft Lottery was so brutal. Visions of a top three pick danced through our heads. A transformative talent could be en route. Then deputy commissioner Mark Tatum dropped the hammer. The Knicks plummeted to the eighth overall pick and a fan base collectively grew fearful.
It isn’t that the eighth pick is necessarily a death sentence in the 2017 Draft. This is one of the deeper classes in recent memory. According to what scouts you choose to believe, this year’s crop has potentially 8-10 All-Star caliber players. But this is the Knicks, and when there is value to be had in the mid-lottery, it is almost assuredly going to be passed on.
Let’s start at the most painful example: Fredric Weis over Ron Artest in 1999. Although the future Metta World Peace was always a handful, taking the stiff Frenchman over the Queens product still baffles to this day. Weis became the world’s most infamous leapfrog player at the 2000 Olympics, while Artest became one of the league’s most feared defenders. His presence would have been massive in the late 90’s, early 2000’s feuds with the Heat and Pacers. Weis never played a minute in the NBA. That eventually snowballed into a panic trade of their lottery pick in 2002, Nene, and a spiral of bad contract acquisitions that took years to get out from under. In retrospect though, 2003 may have been worse than 1999.
The name Mike Sweetney is one you don’t bring up in front of a Knicks fan. In a class that could very well produce a handful of Hall of Famers, with nine All-Stars to its credit already, the Knicks got a man who recently revealed to have attempted suicide during his rookie campaign. Thankfully he was unsuccessful, but nevertheless, he was out of the league in less than four years.
Channing Frye could have been a good hand from the 2005 Lottery. But that year the Knicks found a gem in David Lee later in the round, making Frye expendable in another one of those lovely salary dump trades. Frye would eventually find his niche with the Suns while that deal led to back to back debacles in 2008 and 2009.
The Knicks had a chance at a top 5 pick in 2008. Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Love were all in play. Needless to say, the Bulls leapfrogged eight teams in the lottery to snag #1 and pushed the Knicks to sixth overall. There Danilo Gallinari sat. Frederic Weis’ image played over and over in my head at that moment. I fought a telephone pole and the telephone pole won decisively. The Rooster has had a decent NBA career when he’s healthy. But those moments have been few and far between.
2009 saw future MVP Stephen Curry go right before the Knicks pick. All-Star DeMar DeRozan went directly after it. Sandwiched in between them? Arizona’s Jordan Hill of course. Hill didn’t even last until the end of his rookie season with the Knicks because, you guessed it, he was part of a salary dump trade that netted New York a twilight-of-his-career Tracy McGrady.
You can see now why this pick a week from today gives Knicks nation such trepidation. Mock drafts have become a daily read, daily doses of madness. This is a team with glaring weaknesses making strides towards trading their leading scorer. There shouldn’t be a way to make a bad pick. But alas this is the Knicks, and they can certainly find a way to make the impossible a reality in the worst of ways. Enough reminiscing and doomsday prophecies, here’s the best case scenarios at pick eight.
MALIK MONK, SG (KENTUCKY)
This is the dream scenario for the club. Monk is a top five talent, but needs of the teams ahead of New York could see the Kentucky product slip to as far as them. I say as far as them because if Adam Silver reads seven names, and none of those is Malik Monk, the Knicks contingent should have that card in the commissioner’s hand before he even heads backstage from reading the seventh pick. He may be undersized defensively at just 6’3″, but he proved on a stacked Kentucky team his scoring prowess. He can kill you from three as well as in the mid-range game. Monk would ease the burden on Courtney Lee greatly. Lee is the team’s third oldest player and played the second most minutes in 2016-17.
DENNIS SMITH JR., PG (NORTH CAROLINA STATE)
I know the Knicks are thin at forward, but a pick in the mid-lottery has to look towards the future. Dennis Smith is a little bit Kyle Lowry, a little bit Derrick Rose. The Knicks still have the latter under contract, meaning Smith won’t be pressed into service immediately. Smith’s torn ACL in college worries me. However, it didn’t look like it hampered him this past season, as he routinely put larger opponents into his poster collection. He would also get proper tutelage from Jeff Hornacek to further improve an already rapidly improving outside game.
FRANK NTILIKINA, PG (STRASBOURG)
As you can put together, the experts have the Knicks going guard at 8. The quantity over quality approach they took last season predictably went awry. You can call me xenophobic, but the foreign prospect is the one that gives me the most pause. I know Kristaps Porzingis worked out above my wildest expectations. But he is, as Bill Simmons refers to him, a unicorn. He’s a player, similar to Dirk Nowitzki, that was either going to be the face of the franchise or a complete bust. Darko Milicic, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, and Yi Jianlian say hi from the other end of that spectrum. Over the course of NBA history though, there have been fewer NBA flameouts at the guard position. Ntilikina’s numbers don’t jump off the page at you, but he’s only 18. I’d take Dennis Schroder 2.0, even if he represents France and may not want to come over right away(I’M GETTING WEIS FLASHBACKS HOSE ME DOWN!)
WILD CARDS
People who do scouting for a living have the Knicks going guard at pick eight. But as the case has been hundreds of times before, and hundreds more to come, NBA GMs want to be the smartest guy in the room. That’s why I’m not writing off the possibility of a trade down or a straight up wild card pick altogether. Joakim Noah is decaying before our very eyes. Creighton’s Justin Patton or Gonzaga’s Zach Collins don’t particularly wow me, but they are big bodies adept at the rim. Even the kneeless wonder Harry Giles could somehow sneak into the conversation if the last mock draft Phil Jackson looked at was a 2015 projection forward.
Regardless of the outcome, the lead up to the eighth overall pick next Thursday is going to be fever inducing for Knicks fans. We’re all scared, and we have every right to be. May the Porzingod be with us all.