Alex Wolfe's Ideal 2020-21 Knicks Starting Five: Fred VanVleet edition
With a new(ish) regime in place, a lottery pick, ample cap room and what is sure to be a weird time with the coronavirus-halted 2019-20 season and the ramifications that will bleed into next season, the 2020 offseason has all the trappings of one where the Knicks could look the "shake it up" and put themselves right back into playoff contention sooner or later.
It took all of five seconds for Chris Paul's name to come up as a trade target for the Knicks once Leon Rose was announced as team president, seeing as he was a former client of Rose's at Creative Artists Agency. Spoiler alert: I wasn't a fan of that move at the beginning of March, and I'm still not a fan of it today. Paul is owed about $85.6 million over the next two seasons — his age-35 and -36 seasons.
He was effective last year playing alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City, which bodes well for how he might play with the Knicks' young core, but even if he meshes with the Knicks' young core and manages to turn the needle upward (and perhaps even approach the playoffs), his enormous salary means that the Knicks wouldn't be able to turn that league-wide reputation boost into better players in free agency.
Also, Oklahoma City wouldn't put themselves in a position to add a difference-making free agent by acquiring Paul this offseason, meaning they have no reason to salary dump him to the Knicks for basically nothing. That means the Knicks would likely have to part with at least a young player and a pick for the right of paying Paul almost $90 million for two years. Hard pass.
Our own Jonathan Macri has speculated that maybe the Knicks would take a run at Kevin Love as well. Count me out on that move, too, if it means taking on three years and $91.5 million for an aging, oft-injured and, quite frankly, immature player from the 2020-21 season through the summer of 2023.
Making an almost surely ill-fated move like that would just reek of the sort of transactions that the Isiah Thomas Knicks of the early 2000s made over and over and over, dedicating large amounts of money to players that were either poor fits or on the downsides of their careers (or in many cases, both!) and capping themselves out, all for the privilege of winning 30 games.
To me, there's a better way. In the words of quarantine crowd-pleaser The Mandalorian, "This is the way."
Point guard: Fred VanVleet
Here's two players. Without showing their ages and names, can you guess who they are?
Basketball-Reference
Give up? Let's pull back the curtain:
Basketball-Reference
Paul and VanVleet had almost identical seasons this year playing in similar roles. VanVleet often played with a second point guard in Kyle Lowry, and Paul often played with Gilgeous-Alexander or Dennis Schröder. VanVleet's overall efficiency was a little worse than Paul's, but he would almost immediately still be the best 3-point shooter on the Knicks from the get-go.
So let's just do a quick comparative list between Paul and VanVleet:
Chris Paul:
-Will be 35 at the start of the 2020-21 season
-Is signed for two years, and will take up approximately 40% of the salary cap in his age-36 season
-Will likely cost some assets to acquire (the Clippers' 2020 pick, Kevin Knox, etc.)
-Had a great year, but can presumably only get worse from here and is well past his peak
-Has made the Western Conference Finals once in 14 seasons
Fred VanVleet:
-Will be 26 to start the 2020-21 campaign
-Can probably be signed to a two- or three-year deal that takes up something like 15-20% of the cap
-Won't cost anything but a small portion of James Dolan's bountiful fortune
-Has shown improvement each of his first four seasons, including a huge leap this past season
-Was part of an NBA title team in his third season
I was initially out on spending much of any long-term money in the 2020 offseason. The general vibe of both the draft and free agency this offseason is that there's not a lot of franchise difference-makers available in either (which is probably why the speculation is that the Knicks will look to trade to add talent). But I'm sold on VanVleet. He's almost 10 years younger than Paul, he's young in terms of NBA service years (four) and he's shown improvement every single year of his career. Sign him to a similar deal to Julius Randle last year — three years, $60-ish million, but in this case a third-year player option rather than team — and that should be enough to get him in orange and blue without completely tanking the possibility of chasing free agents in 2021.
On top of it, I think he'd be a great fit as someone that can play with or without the ball next to the second guy in my ideal starting five...
Shooting guard (AKA second point guard): Frank Ntilikina
I'd say at this point, my love for Ntilikina is pretty well-known. I advocated right at the start of the pandemic for the Knicks to make sure to lock him up to a rookie extension this offseason and not let him hit restricted free agency, because I think the last few games of the 2019-20 season showed that we could have a breakout on the horizon for Ntilikina.
As Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic noted in a recent piece, Ntilikina's shot selection this year showed a lot of growth, with the third-year guard being more comfortable going to the rim and making his way to the corner for three more on the way to a career-high slash line across the board of .393/.321/.864.
Pairing Ntilikina with VanVleet gives the Knicks two guys that are more than comfortable handling the ball on their own or moving without it, and both guards have a defensive reputation that precedes them.
It bears noting that I ran one Tankathon sim to figure out the Knicks' lottery position as well, where they (of course) dropped two spots to No. 8 overall. I actually fully agree with Tankathon's assessment here and would have Killian Hayes spelling Ntilikina and VanVleet off the bench, if he somehow makes it to the eighth spot. If Hayes is off the board at eight (I think that's likely), give me Tyrese Haliburton from Iowa State, another versatile combo guard that shoots the three well.
Tankathon.com
Small forward: RJ Barrett
In sticking with the theme of guys that can handle the ball but don't need to handle the ball, Barrett slides in at small forward for his sophomore season. All for the better too, in my opinion, because I've been of the opinion that Barrett's long-term position should be small forward.
Moving to the 3 will allow RJ more of an advantage against bigger, slower defenders on offense, while he's also shown the ability to comfortably throw his body into almost any size of defender going into the paint. Defensively, Barrett showed more than enough oomph in his rookie season to hold up against small forwards, but if he gets switched to the opposing point or shooting guards he can guard them as well.
Mostly, this just shows that the Knicks still have faith in Barrett and their youth movement, and that the young players will be allowed to pass or fail together. VanVleet is a much different 26 years old than, say, Julius Randle or Elfrid Payton, neither of whom has shown much growth in their game recently and have been in the league for more time. Speaking of Randle...
Power forward: Jerami Grant
I'm using this space to debut my latest crazy idea for the Knicks in free agency this offseason: give Jerami Grant the Bobby Portis treatment, a two-year, $30 million deal with a team option for 2021-22.
Grant is another 26-year-old that has shown significant improvement over his last two seasons, similar to VanVleet. Look at the progression of his shooting numbers for his career:
Basketball-Reference
Over the last two seasons, Grant is averaging 39.6% on his threes on 3.6 attempts per game. That's fantastic production to go along with his prolific defensive ability that has been a staple of his throughout his career. Grant's shot chart and shooting numbers by location also give a look into a guy that has turned into the prototypical small-ball NBA power forward:
Basketball-Reference
NBA.com/stats
Grant shoots very few mid-range shots, instead opting to take shots at the rim (where he shoots 66.2% according to NBA Stats, more than respectable) or from deep, as illustrated by both images.
In that respect, Grant is sort of the anti-Julius Randle. He has a moderate 16% usage for his entire career, compared to Randle's robust 27.7% over the last two seasons. He's the type of player that won't clog the lane, can spread the floor for elite penetrators like Barrett and will let Mitchell Robinson do what he does best in the paint — dunk, rebound and dominate. The only hurdle to signing Grant is that he has a $9.35 million player option for next season, but he should decline that with the potential for a big payday in a thin free agent class, especially if the Knicks let it be know through back channels that they'd like to give him about a 67% raise for his trouble. His earning potential probably also figures to be higher this offseason than next, considering the uncertain future salary cap landscape after the coronavirus crisis.
As for what to do with Randle... Hopefully just trade him. The return doesn't particularly matter. What's most important is that by replacing Randle with Grant, the Knicks allow their wing players to have the ball in their hands more and free up the paint for their young star big man. Speaking of...
Center: Mitchell Robinson
This basically goes without saying. Yes, Robinson was most comfortable in 2019-20 coming off the bench. Yes, in my ideal offseason, Taj Gibson is still on the roster and could potentially start here.
But Robinson needs to learn to be the Knicks' starting 5 man sooner than later, and with three capable pick-and-roll ball handlers on the floor and Grant out of his way in the paint, Robinson should be able to feast. The Knicks would also (gasp!) have four capable defenders on the floor around Mitch, meaning he won't constantly be cleaning up his teammates' mistakes on the defensive end and getting into foul trouble.
And there you have my ideal starting five for the Knicks in 2020-21. Just for fun, here's a salary cap table as well, assuming the cap manages to stay basically the same for the 2020-21 season as it was this season (and without even attempting to figure out the 2021 cap and beyond). Look out for another article about how I'd fill out my bench (some of which has already been explained in my ideal draft and keep or cut pieces)!
