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The blockbuster trade on Jan. 31, 2019 that dispatched Kristaps Porzingis to the Dallas Mavericks from New York had much of the league reaching the same conclusion:
The Knicks must know something.
They quickly convinced countless rival teams that they wouldn’t have traded away Porzingis, their most promising draft pick since Patrick Ewing, unless they had assurances that the resultant salary-cap space would lead to the free-agent signings of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
One year later, similar sentiments are percolating. Durant and Irving, of course, chose to sign with the Nets rather than the Knicks, but Tuesday’s ouster of Steve Mills as team president has led many N.B.A. observers to conclude that the Knicks, despite two decades of mostly ineptitude, must know they can recruit Masai Ujiri away from the Toronto Raptors.
My public-service announcement reminder: There are no done deals with the James Dolan Knicks until they are actually done. So proceed cautiously.
Yet I can relay that there are a couple of promising signals if you are indeed rooting for Ujiri to land at Madison Square Garden — arguably more tangible evidence than we had that the Knicks were in the free-agent lead for Durant and Irving.
Two people in the league whom I trust deeply for their reads on this situation have been telling me since December, when the Knicks fired Coach David Fizdale after a 4-18 start, that Ujiri intends to maneuver his way to the Knicks after his moves helped the Raptors win a championship last season.
Both people, who were not authorized to share their insights publicly, went so far as to proclaim that Ujiri may even try to bring along Bobby Webster, Toronto’s well-regarded general manager.
One told me he is convinced that Ujiri’s relationship with the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, Larry Tannenbaum, is such that the Raptors would ultimately bless the move if Ujiri wants it badly enough.
There are, however, undeniable obstacles. No. 1, obviously, is Ujiri’s desire — whether he indeed covets the Knicks’ job as much as the whispers suggest.
There is also the not-so-small matter of Ujiri’s contract with the Raptors. He will not be a free agent until after the 2020-21 season. Toronto would naturally want compensation — and presumably more than one draft pick if Ujiri attempted to bring Webster, his natural replacement, to Gotham as well.
Reports are thus already circulating in the news media that Dolan may be moved to hire a player agent to run his front office, á la Bob Myers in Golden State or Rob Pelinka with the Los Angeles Lakers, if the path to Ujiri proves too daunting or slow-moving.
Some league insiders also have questioned whether Dolan is as all-in on Ujiri as advertised, because of the perception in various corners that the league office — specifically N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver — is pushing Ujiri as the ideal candidate to try to rescue the Knicks. (Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, said the perception is “100 percent false.”)
Memories of Ujiri famously fleecing the Knicks in the Carmelo Anthony trade when he was in Denver in 2011, and again in the Andrea Bargnani trade in 2013, are likewise described as potential Dolan turnoffs.
And if you don’t think Dolan is sufficiently sensitive to let such notions bother him, well, that probably means you haven’t been paying attention.
Porzingis has posted at least 35 points and 10 rebounds in two consecutive games since the one-year anniversary of the trade. Tim Hardaway Jr., whose unwieldy contract was shed as part of the Porzingis trade in the name of creating cap space for the Knicks, is also thriving with the Mavericks. But let’s be clear here.
Tuesday’s news had little to do with what’s going on in Dallas. If you’re looking for a last straw that convinced the Knicks to move Mills out of basketball operations just 48-ish hours before Thursday’s 3 p.m. Eastern time trade deadline, it’s far more likely that it was the unmistakably loud “sell the team” chants that greeted Dolan in last week’s home loss to Memphis. The Knicks, after all, have posted a losing record in each of Mills’s 13 seasons working in their basketball operations. The need for new leadership, preferably from a proven N.B.A. team-builder like Ujiri, isn’t exactly sudden.
Dolan was clearly chagrined by such overt displeasure voiced by Knicks fans and, thanks to this bizarrely timed move, has indeed managed to get us talking about something else. I don’t buy the suggestion that the Knicks abruptly realized on Tuesday that they had to get Mills out before he made a trade that threatened the team’s long-term interests; what trade could he have possibly pushed through without Dolan’s approval?
This is a mammoth, Dolan-orchestrated distraction that the Knicks’ general manager, Scott Perry, didn’t need as the trade deadline approaches. Not when this move so easily could have been made sooner.
Most of all, you can’t help but wonder on days like Tuesday what Ujiri really thinks about the way the Dolan Knicks do business. Or about the December day when the Knicks asked Fizdale to run practice and speak to the media — then fired him.
I wrote in December, and have long maintained, that even the biggest names in the game will forever have interest in this job. Reason being: Basketball immortality awaits the savior who can finally overcome the Dolan factor and haul this franchise, soon to clinch its sixth successive 50-loss season, back up into the league’s elite. The league’s best decision makers — including Ujiri, San Antonio’s R.C. Buford and Dallas’ Donnie Nelson — all have the sort of self-belief that they can be the guy who makes the difference. They surely believe it even though Mills was essentially reassigned to a nebulous role on the Madison Square Garden Company board that will presumably allow him to keep Dolan’s ear.
Yet as Howard Beck, my good friend and a former New York Times scribe, is fond of reminding me, there isn’t a soul who has worked in a prominent position for Dolan, as a head coach or front executive, whose reputation has avoided significant damage. The biggest example continues to be Phil Jackson, who hears far more these days about his failed Knicks presidency than those record-setting 11 championships rings he won coaching the Bulls and the Lakers.
Kudos to Ujiri if he is prepared to risk his name under the belief that he will be granted the requisite autonomy to run things that Dolan has never previously granted. For all the money that the Knicks would pay, don’t forget that the Raptors are known as very willing spenders, too.
In Toronto, Ujiri would have the opportunity to keep working on a great salary, alongside one of the game’s best coaches in Nick Nurse, and make a credible free-agent run at Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo in the summer of 2021, should Antetokounmpo refuse an extension from the Bucks in July.
In New York? Ujiri must really know something if he believes he can make the Dolan Knicks cool again.
The Scoop @TheSteinLine
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Corner Three
You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.)
All stats are accurate entering Tuesday’s games.
Q: Will we get even a moderately big trade? — @LACSuperFanClub from Twitter
STEIN: It really depends on your definition of “big.”
If only a trade involving Kevin Love or Andre Drummond meets those conditions for you, then probably not.
Cleveland, entering Tuesday, had nothing percolating on the Love front, which isn’t much of a surprise with three years and $91.5 million left on his contract after this season. The Cavaliers will almost certainly have to wait until the summer to resume the search for a trade partner willing to absorb that sort of financial commitment when Love is 31 and regarded in some corners as injury-prone.
Things were similarly quiet on the Drummond front entering Tuesday’s business despite an initial flurry of interest in the Detroit big man last month from teams such as the Atlanta Hawks and the Knicks.
But Atlanta, Denver, Houston and Minnesota combined on a four-team trade involving 12 players early Wednesday morning, and there will be more action before Thursday’s 3 p.m. Eastern time buzzer. I see 15 as a safe over/under estimate — and true aficionados of the Transaction Game appreciate even the seemingly small ones.
Q: Why would the Grizzlies buy Andre Iguodala out? Whether he sits out the entire season or gets bought out, he’s owed $17 million. The Grizzlies don’t need to be helping a Western Conference team get a savvy veteran for cheap, either. — @Bjorn2Hula from Twitter
From the moment Memphis acquired Iguodala in a July trade with Golden State, I have chuckled along with Grizzlies fans at the ridiculous notion from Lakers and Clippers fans that Memphis should just set a three-time champion free so a title contender from Los Angeles could snap him up at the league minimum.
Trying to trade Iguodala, no matter how long it took, always made tons of sense for the Grizzlies. Memphis has been adamant that it will trade Iguodala before Thursday’s deadline or keep him for the rest of the season — and you can understand, for leverage reasons, why they have broadcast that position for months.
But if no trade actually materializes before the deadline, Memphis does have to step back and remind itself that it may need to do business someday with Iguodala’s agent (Brandon Rosenthal of Landmark Sports). The agent factor is typically a big one in the buyout game. If the Grizzlies need Rosenthal’s help down the road, which isn’t hard to imagine given how small the league actually is, refusing to buy out Iguodala would surely not be forgotten.
This whole thing, though, is a tricky case that just keeps getting trickier. Iguodala is catching tons of flak now for his anti-Memphis stance, largely because the 25-25 Grizzlies have so rampantly exceeded expectations. The reality, mind you, is that he has done nothing out of the ordinary. Most veterans in his position, coming off five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals, would have tried to get themselves to a contender from Minute 1 just like Iguodala has.
Of course, seeing the Grizzlies’ Ja Morant, the star rookie, and Dillon Brooks, a third-year player, reveal their dismay with Iguodala via Twitter on Monday night adds an unforeseen layer to it all. The reaction from two of Memphis’ top young building blocks suggests that helping Iguodala, in any way, may not go over well in the locker room.
In the end, though, if an untraded Iguodala proved willing to sacrifice some money to become a free agent, Memphis would have little incentive to refuse him a buyout agreement before March 1, which would keep Iguodala playoff-eligible for his next team.
Q: Any word on who the Heat are trading this week? — Tamisia Harris
There have been longstanding rumbles of Miami interest in the New Orleans Pelicans’ Jrue Holiday. Yet the latest whispers from The Big Easy suggest that the Pelicans want to be buyers before the deadline and add to their current group now that Zion Williamson is on the floor — just in case there is still time for New Orleans to make a run at the West’s last playoff spot.
If that stance holds firm, Holiday trade speculation will have to wait until June, around the draft.
It is also widely assumed that the Heat are working — challenging as it is — to find a new home for the disgruntled Dion Waiters and maybe James Johnson (whom Miami may use to try to acquire Iguodala).
The most common belief about the Heat around the league is that any deadline moves will not infringe on their projected salary-cap space for the summer of 2021, when Miami hopes to have a chance to try to woo Giannis Antetokounmpo away from Milwaukee in free agency.
Numbers Game
All stats are accurate entering Tuesday’s games.
48.8
Portland’s Damian Lillard has averaged a remarkable 48.8 points over his last six games, while shooting 54.8 percent from the floor, 57 percent on 3-pointers and 92.3 percent from the free-throw line. The Trail Blazers won five of the six games, including a road victory over the Lakers to go with home wins over Indiana, Houston and Utah, to move within two games of Memphis for the West’s final playoff spot.
3
Lillard has scored at least 50 points in three of the six games, topped by a 61-point showing on Jan. 20 against Golden State to get the hot streak started. The lowest scoring game of the six, in which Lillard settled for 36 points against the Rockets, featured his first career triple-double (with 11 assists and 10 rebounds).
5-12
The Knicks are just 5-12 since a 6-6 start under their interim coach Mike Miller. Saturday’s win over at Indiana was just Miller’s second against a team with a winning record.
40
James Harden’s 40 points in a victory over New Orleans were a welcome sight on Sunday for the Houston Rockets. Harden shot just 35.5 percent from the field and 27 on 3-pointers (on 11.4 attempts per game) in his 12 games played in January. Averaging a mere 28.6 points per game for the month took Harden’s season average down to 35.7 points per game — well shy of the 40 points per game territory he flirted with early in the season.
150
Washington has allowed at least 150 points in regulation in four games this season and is on pace to become the first team to allow more than 120 points per game for an entire season since the Denver Nuggets in 1990-91. Denver allowed 150 or more points in nine regulation games that season.
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Source: Basketball - nytimes.com
