An overlooked New York Knicks perspective on Kristaps Porzingis trade

The Kristaps Porzingis trade was the biggest, glitziest deal of last season’s trade deadline. Did the New York Knicks make the best of the trade?

When the New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks completed the massive seven-player trade that sent Kristaps Porzingis to Dallas, it wound up being the biggest, glitziest deal of last season’s trade deadline, particularly with Anthony Davis not being moved before the deadline.

Opinions ran the gamut on how both teams did on the trade, as is normal for blockbuster deals. One angle seldom covered, or maybe never mentioned, was what the fantastic framing the Knicks did for the aesthetics on a trade in which they actually accomplished nothing. To recap, the Knicks traded away:

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1. Porzingis, a 23-year-old former All-Star who was coming up on restricted free agency;
2. Tim Hardaway Jr., who has one more year left on a huge contract;
3. Courtney Lee, who has one more year left on a middle-tier contract;
4. Trey Burke, who was entering unrestricted free agency and has since departed.

The Knicks received:

1. Dennis Smith Jr., under team control for two more years before hitting restricted free agency;
2. DeAndre Jordan’s expiring contract;
3. Wesley Matthews, an expiring contract whom the Knicks bought out before the season ended;
4. Two future first-round picks.

Now that a new season is well under way and the Knicks have handed the Mavericks a pair of losses in a week, the time is ripe to review the trade in retrospect.

Did the New York Knicks get any value from the trade?

Let’s start with what the New York Knicks actually received: the prize of the deal would ostensibly be Dennis Smith Jr., a second-year point guard whom the Knicks … passed over two years ago in order to draft Frank Ntilikina. So New York acquired a player in his second season that they could have drafted.

Acquiring him placed New York in essentially an either/or scenario: Either DSJ is the driver of the  Knicks’ future and Ntilikina is out of the picture or the Knicks rely on Ntilikina and limit Smith’s minutes.

It’s not as if we are hypothetically saying, “The Knicks could have drafted Player X instead of Player Y” without accounting for the value they would lose if they did not have Player Y on their roster. Smith is replacing Ntilikina, or else Ntilikina is the starter and Smith is a backup; there is no overlap.

Neither player is big enough to function as a wing and neither is an accomplished jump shooter, making it very difficult for the two to share the floor.

If the Knicks did, in fact, intend for Dennis Smith Jr. to be their point guard of the future when they made the trade, it is logical to question the rationale of the decision. Frank Ntilikina was the best defensive point guard in the league last year, according to my Matchup-Based Defense model.

Smith has been a sub-par defender and was a train wreck on offense last year. With his turnover-prone ball handling and errant shooting, Smith registered a mere 743 Points Created at 37 percent Raw Offensive Efficiency.

When we adjust for his role as a secondary offense generator, Smith was 23 percent as efficient as the average performance for players with his role – easily the worst Position-Adjusted Efficiency of any rotation player in the league.

New York also acquired two future first-round picks from a franchise with a 19-year-old superstar, a 23-year-old second banana and enough cap space for a max free agent. The returns on those two picks may not be great.

“But wait,” you say knowingly, “that’s not really what the Knicks were doing.”

The Knicks were really trying to unload future money owed to Hardaway and Lee in order to pursue big fish in the summer. Trading Porzingis also saved future money since they would not have been able to sign two max free agents and sign Porzingis to a maximum rookie scale extension.

This move was really a sly way to get a disgruntled young star who was about to get expensive out the door (while framing it as a trade demand by the player) in order to free up cap room in hopes of building a super-team.

The New York Knicks cleared cap space; smart, right?

OK, so why did the New York Knicks need to clear the books in order to pursue big-name free agents last summer? The Knicks have not been competitive since 2013, so presumably they would have cap space available.

Let’s investigate the money they were able to get off the books: $35.5 million for last season and this season due to Tim Hardaway Jr., plus a player option for 2020-21 at almost $19 million, and just over $25 million due to Courtney Lee for last season and the upcoming season.

If we consider last season’s salaries as essentially irrelevant to the deal (since they would not affect the Knicks’ cap space for last offseason), New York basically unloaded $30.9 million in 2019-20 salary, plus very likely saved $18.9 million in 2020-21.

That all seems good, until you peer close enough to realize that Hardaway was a Knicks first-round pick in 2013 whom the Knicks gave up on after two seasons and traded to the Atlanta Hawks in a three-way trade for Jerian Grant.

Two years after that, in 2017, Hardaway entered restricted free agency. At this point, the Knicks signed Hardaway to a massive offer sheet which Atlanta did not match … because they could not afford to pay $18 million a year to a player with a career high of 14.5 points per game.

Of course, New York could have signed Hardaway to a long-term deal for much, much less money if they had simply retained his rights and waited to match any other team’s potential competing offers instead of trading him for yet another point guard who is no longer part of the Knicks’ future backcourt plans.

It is also important to point out that Courtney Lee hasn’t been untradeable until about the last eight months. In the lead up to both the 2016 and 2017 trade deadlines, there was significant interest in Lee around the league and most insiders indicated the Knicks could have moved him to a contender if they wanted.

Instead, the Knicks held on to a player in his 30s in the vain belief that they would be able to compete next year; no, next year; … no, definitely next year.

So, the Knicks were able to clear money off their cap sheet that they didn’t need to have on their books to begin with. They were furthermore able to replace their original “point guard of the future” with a point guard taken with the immediate following pick.

The reason they were able to accomplish this (and get two likely non-lottery first-rounders to boot) was because they were also trading a young star they did not want to sign to a long-term extension. Since Porzingis was the No. 4 pick and the Knicks are likely to get fairly low first-round picks in return, it seems only moderately likely the Knicks will recoup their spent draft capital.

Porzingis would have come off the books anyway if the Knicks had simply renounced their rights to him (alternatively, if they had taken the unusual step of making a qualifying offer to Porzingis, they would have retained him for the 2019-20 season at a low price, while possibly still being able to clear enough cap space for two max contracts).

Was it even worth it to keep Kristaps Porzingis, yhough?

Coming off a long injury recovery process and entering restricted free agency, it is fair to wonder if the New York Knicks truly should have invested in Kristaps Porzingis. How much value did they give away in the trade? The answer depends in no small measure on Porzingis’ still uncertain return to his previous performance level.

His shot has not fallen so far this season, though time will tell if this is his new normal or simply a case of shaking off rust.

Before his injury in 2017-18, Porzingis performed at a near-All-Star level, posting .100 Wins per Game (28th in the league) and .149 Wins per 48 minutes (31st in the league). He performed well on both the offensive and defensive ends, emerging as a true stretch big.

The 2016-17 season saw a healthier (though less developed) version of Porzingis register 6.0 Wins at a rate of .090 Wins per Game and .132 Wins per 48 Minutes. In his rookie season (2015-16) Porzingis did not shoot as well as in later seasons. His higher rebounding and passing contributions, however, allowed him to contribute 7.7 Wins.

Based on previous observations, then, we can see that a healthy Porzingis is worth six to seven wins over the course of a full season. Unless the Knicks were quite certain he would not recover from his injury, they made a massive error in shipping out a young player with that type of performance record.

The New York Knicks accomplished nothing in the trade

Look, the New York Knicks did well to clear the deck ahead of a loaded free-agent class. Even though they struck out on both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant (though subsequent reports indicate that they did not make a competitive offer to Durant), it is impossible to know with certainty what changes the offseason will bring.

Clearing cap space for non-competitive team is a good play. In a vacuum, New York did well to get rid of dead money using an asset that was not part of their long-term plan. But zooming in or zooming out paints the deal in an entirely different light.

It is only in isolation, looking purely at the few months between the trade deadline and July 1, 2019, that the deal seems clear. Looking further into the future than the 2019 offseason or deeper into the past than the beginning of the 2018-19 season leaves one with the sense that the Knicks actually accomplished nothing.