The New York Knicks swung one of the more traditional midseason deals this trade deadline, acquiring a (potentially) expiring veteran player who will help them now for a young player and a draft pick. It’s a tale as old as the deadline itself. And it’s also one of my favorite moves any team made this week.
Advertisement
The Knicks acquired Josh Hart from the Portland Trail Blazers for Cam Reddish, Ryan Arcidiacono, Svi Mykhailiuk (later moved to Charlotte) and a 2023 first round pick. The draft pick is the Knicks’ selection this year (as opposed to Dallas’), and it’s top-14 protected. If it doesn’t convey this season, it becomes four second-round picks.
I love this deal for the Knicks … and have some fairly substantial questions about the direction Portland is taking. Let’s dive in:
Why Josh Hart is a perfect match for the Knicks
The Knicks traded a player who couldn’t seem to work his way into coach Tom Thibodeau’s good graces for a player who embodies everything Thibodeau loves from his players. Don’t believe me? Ask the man himself. Following a game earlier this season, he was effusive in his praise of Hart, stopping to really accentuate what makes him such an effective player.
“That’s what he does. He’s probably the best rebounding guard in the league,” Thibodeau said after Hart grabbed 19 rebounds against New York. “When the ball goes up, if you stand and stare, it’s going to be a problem. If you turn and check, there’s gotta be a physicality to it. He’s got a great nose for the ball. He anticipates well. He’s strong. We knew he would be a challenge.”
Indeed, Hart is the kind of grit-and-grime player who will immediately endear himself to the defensive-minded Knicks coach. He plays hard all the time. He pushes the pace. He crashes around the court and makes things happen. His floor game is elite. But more importantly, he is one of the best rebounders for his size in the league. Per DunksAndThrees.com, among players who have seen a majority of their minutes at small forward this season, Hart ranks only behind Jarred Vanderbilt and Jayson Tatum in terms of defensive rebounding rate and ranks sixth behind Vanderbilt, Scottie Barnes, Torrey Craig, Justise Winslow and Jimmy Butler in offensive rebounding rate.
Advertisement
All of the other guys listed tend to play some fairly sizable minutes at the four. Hart is a pure perimeter player, crashing in relentlessly at 6-foot-5 and getting his hands on the ball. As Thibodeau noted, his anticipation and understanding of how the ball comes off the rim is superb. Moreover, he’s an expert at not allowing players to get a body on him.
The Knicks have a real need for that. Despite ranking second in offensive rebounding rate due to the machine that is Mitchell Robinson, the team ranks 21st in defensive rebounding rate. The Knicks are fine when Julius Randle and Robinson are out there but could use another active, energetic rebounder off the bench for when they aren’t. Hart should be able to provide that spark off the bench.
He should also help by taking the load off some of the Knicks’ perimeter players who are consistently managing tough defensive assignments. Quentin Grimes has been asked to carry the load against elite perimeter players all year. Immanuel Quickley has picked up the slack against high-level initiators at the point of attack. But with Jalen Brunson’s limitations and RJ Barrett’s startling regression on that end, having another player to take tough matchups will be immensely helpful.
Hart will give them more depth and lineup versatility as well as another body to eat up minutes on good players. Playing next to Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons, Hart took on a lion’s share of the tough jobs on top scoring threats like Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards Luka Dončić and Jamal Murray. I’ve always thought he’s done a pretty OK job on Dončić in relative terms. Hart is best dealing with players he can body up as opposed to quicker guys. He works to scratch and claw his way back into plays. Here’s a good example of that ability to try to body up against Dončić, as well as his effort to try to stay attached and contest at all times. It doesn’t always look pretty, and he doesn’t have the most fluid footwork. He might get beat off the jump. But he knows his angles well and is smart at forcing guys baseline or into the help.
Hart can handle one-on-one matchups, he rotates well, he crashes the glass, and he forces turnovers at a reasonable level. He brings sandpaper and gravel to every lineup he’s a part of. But don’t sleep on his offense. He’s a relentless driver who pressures the defense when he gets an advantage. Being a terrific rebounder, he often looks to aggressively push the issue and create early offense. For a Knicks offense that is quite good but can be a bit slow, this will be beneficial. The team is 28th in terms of pace of play and in the bottom third in the NBA in terms of points out of transition opportunities, per Synergy. Hart will likely change that, as a higher percentage of his offense comes out in transition than any other other rotation player in the league.
Advertisement
That’s a reason he’s made 67 percent of his shots at the rim over the last two seasons, a well-above-average mark for a wing. Beyond that, he’s aggressive as a passer and playmaker, averaging almost four assists per game versus only 1.5 turnovers. His decision-making will waver at times if he gets stuck in the midrange, which is why his turnover rate is a bit high for someone with this level of usage. But in general, the Knicks need another guy off the bench who can share the ball. New York is last in terms of percentage of field goals that end up assisted. The ball can get a bit stagnant from time to time, especially with guys like Barrett and Randle. Hart is entirely unselfish and will look to quickly reverse the ball out on the perimeter to an open man, as well as eat up space as a driver when it’s presented to him. Plus, he had some fun moments with Shaedon Sharpe, hooking him up with lobs seemingly once a week.
The only issue Hart needs to get over is his reluctance to shoot 3s. He passes them up all the time and cut his 3-point volume in half this season, taking only two per game after averaging over four attempts over the course of his career. He’s never been the most consistent shooter, but he was a 34 percent guy over the last four years. That’s just good enough to make it work, but he needs to be willing to shoot. It’s possible he made an overcorrection into doing all the dirty work stuff and didn’t want to take too many possessions away from guys like Lillard, Simons and Jerami Grant. But Hart will need to start at least looking at the rim on possessions like the one below, when he passed up two potentially wide open 3-point opportunities to drive and try a contested floater.
I love Hart as the seventh man for the Knicks along with the dynamic Quickley, and Hart should give the Knicks real lineup flexibility. Could we see some fun small-ball units with Quickley, Brunson, Quentin Grimes, Hart and Randle? What about wing-heavy units like Brunson-Grimes-Hart-Barrett-Randle? Or very defensively conscious perimeter trios with Quickley, Grimes and Hart? Before this move, they didn’t have enough guys who could reasonably defend and rebound up the lineup to get creative. Hart gives them that luxury, and it’ll be very important in order to mix and match lineup-wise. Hart’s effectiveness in the playoffs will depend on him proving that he’s willing to take the open shots given to him.
Beyond that, the fundamentals of this deal make a ton of sense for the Knicks. Hart has a strange contract and makes about $13 million this year and next year. But next year is essentially a mutual option. He has a player option that he has to make a decision on first; if he exercises it, the deal becomes non-guaranteed for the Knicks. It gives the team some real flexibility in determining what they want to do with him, but it’s fairly easy to see him deciding to stay in New York. He’s a CAA client, which gives him ties to this front office. And he’s friends with Brunson, with whom he played at Villanova. There are a lot of reasons to buy into this not necessarily being a one-year arrangement.
When considering all of that, the Knicks didn’t give up a lot. Reddish was out of the rotation and clearly was not going to be retained. The team gave up a first-round pick to Atlanta when it acquired him last season, but that pick has quickly turned as a value proposition for the Hawks. The first-round protection has a very good chance of extinguishing without actually transferring. It’s a Hornets pick that is top-16 protected this season, then top-14 protected in 2024 and 2025 before it turns into two seconds. The Hornets are one of the four worst teams in the NBA and nowhere near the playoffs. Given how deep the East is, I’d be surprised if they became a playoff team that quickly.
The first-round pick the Knicks gave up in this deal for Hart is lottery protected but more likely than not will be around the No. 20 mark in a draft class that evaluators have real questions about starting right around that range. Plus, the Knicks also have a pick already in that range, the Mavericks’ first-rounder. New York did really well to potentially mitigate any potential trade flexibility in the future by making sure the first-round pick obligation will be extinguished in this upcoming draft if disaster struck and the team missed the playoffs. You never know what’s going to happen, and this is a team continually in the mix for star trades.
GO DEEPER
NBA trade deadline tiers: From Suns' sizable swing to Pistons' puzzling pursuit
What is Portland’s goal?
The overall direction for the Blazers befuddles me.
The team has Lillard, a star ready to win now. They also have Grant, an All-Star candidate in the midst of a career season before he hits free agency this summer. The team can pay him more than anyone else to retain him, but the cap is likely rising a bit, and a lot of teams will have space to throw real cash at him. Hart and Simons have been effective in roles around them.
Advertisement
But the Blazers have immense problems defensively. After an electric start, they’ve cratered to 26th in the league. Since mid-January, the team has given up 123 points per 100 possessions. It runs into the same problems that the Lillard-CJ McCollum backcourt had in terms of containing dribble penetration with Lillard next to Simons. The bigger issue, though, is Jusuf Nurkić.
He has really struggled this season, the first of a four-year, $70 million contract. He’s dealt with a somewhat persistent calf injury in addition to getting sick earlier this season. But it’s a bad sign that the team has gone with undersized big Drew Eubanks to close games sometimes. Nurkić hasn’t moved well enough in space on defense, which is a significant issue in the West with the number of explosive guards he faces. His pick-and-roll defense has been pretty bad, and a lot of times, it feels like an effort issue. The best 7-foot pick-and-roll defenders are typically active with their feet, trying to stay mobile. Nurkić just stands around flat-footed far too often and concedes ground into the midrange without any recourse. If there is any sort of action beyond a simple screen, his lack of activity means that he can’t change direction with urgency. It could be the calf injury keeping him stuck in the mud, but this kind of stuff happens nightly — when he doesn’t even bother to move his feet or make an effort to contest.
One way to mitigate this issue could be to try to play more defensive lineups along the perimeter. So what did the Blazers do? They traded Hart and Gary Payton II, the team’s two best perimeter defenders.
They acquired two-time All-Defense member Matisse Thybulle, but Thybulle also hits free agency this offseason and is not so good himself as to outweigh the loss of the team’s two positive perimeter defenders. Defense is a team game, and the Blazers are playing small across the backcourt with an immobile center. Now they’ve traded away any lineup flexibility to try different things. It’s a bizarre choice, even before considering how limited Thybulle is on offense — issues that held him out of the lineup in Philadelphia.
The Athletic’s Jason Quick reported that Payton “indicated he didn’t want to be in Portland.” By itself, the Blazers did well to get five second-rounders for a guy whom they signed in the offseason but didn’t want to be there. But it’s also a concerning development given that Payton was the team’s prized free-agency signing from the champion Warriors, the team they dealt him back to on Thursday.
In return for all of this, Portland acquired a few players in addition to Thybulle who are much less exciting. Reddish has long been seen as a talented player league-wide, a top-10 pick who frankly just looks like he should be an NBA starter. However, he still hasn’t shown enough to be considered a get for an NBA team. His shot looks like it should fall at a high level, and he’s made about 85 percent of his free throws. But it hasn’t been consistent, as he’s made only 32 percent from 3. He’s shown flashes on defense when he’s locked in, but he disengages a bit too readily. His handle and creativity at 6-foot-8 with a 7-foot wingspan give him valuable skills that any NBA team would be desperate to acquire, but the glue and grit to his game hasn’t always been good enough. He’s going to keep getting chances because there is clearly talent there. He’s only 23, and all of these things could click at some point. But I don’t think he’s ready to help Portland right now. The Blazers also acquired Kevin Knox. He is, at best, an end-of-the-rotation shooter with some size. Arciadiacono is a third point guard.
The Blazers seem to have two separate, distinct timelines that don’t seem to be serving anything all that favorably. On one hand, you have the Lillard timeline, where his competitiveness and ability will always stop Portland from bottoming out when he’s healthy. That timeline also includes Grant, who will have a decision to make this summer about his future. His departure would be devastating and would set the franchise back. Simons fits in this bucket, and so does Nurkić. Hart and Payton also would have been here.
Advertisement
On the other hand, you have the youth timeline of players on rookie-scale deals, now featuring Reddish, Thybulle, Sharpe, Nassir Little, Trendon Watford, Keon Johnson, Jabari Walker and John Butler. With Portland’s deadline acquisitions — including the first-rounder acquired here and the second-rounders in other deals — it seemed like the team decided to prioritize the future timeline at the expense of the current on. But the only reason to do that is if you would prefer to rebuild, something that doesn’t make a ton of sense while you have Lillard and Grant.
The Blazers seem to be trying to split the difference between two separate pathways in a league that tends not to reward half measures. If you’re going halfway to the left and halfway to the right, odds are you’re not making enough progress to keep up with everyone else.
That’s where Portland finds itself right now, and it’s tough to tell where this ends.
GO DEEPER
Blazers get a gut punch on trade-deadline day, but greater concern is what lies ahead
(Photo of Josh Hart: Soobum Im / USA Today)
