A four-time All-Star and last season’s assist leader at the ripe age of 27 netted just matching salary in a pair of role players on the open market this NBA trade season.
It’s something worth considering as the Knicks remain a central figure — for the umpteenth season in a row — as the Feb. 5 NBA Trade Deadline approaches.
The Atlanta Hawks initially sought to extract maximum value when they chose to move on from Trae Young, the franchise’s all-time leading assists leader, a nightly 30-and-10 threat perennially keeping Atlanta in the Play-In Tournament mix with his offensive talents.
In the end, Hawks general manager Onsi Saleh settled on a deal with the Washington Wizards for 34-year-old C.J. McCollum and sharpshooting wing Corey Kispert. So the Wizards took a flier on a potential franchise-altering talent, and doing so, in essence, cost them just two role players.
Young is one of a number of players who find themselves in this predicament, star-level talents whose production, in one way, shape or form, falls short of the cost of doing business. The Wizards’ new point guard has a $48 million player option he can turn down to sign a longer-term, lucrative deal in his new home. Meanwhile, McCollum is on a $30.6 million expiring deal, and Kispert is in Year 1 of a team-friendly four-year, $54 million deal.
Deals under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement tend to be more about dollars and cents than common sense.
Memphis’ Ja Morant and New Orleans’ Zion Williamson represent two more All-Star level players who can be had at a steep discount, largely because of their own undoing with off-court drama impacting on-court performance. Sacramento is a major player on the trade market with former All-Stars Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan. LaVine has a player option worth $49 million he’s sure to opt into next season, and DeRozan has one season worth $25.7 million left on his contract after this year.
The Pelicans also have decisions to make on Jordan Poole and Dejounte Murray, a pair of guards who haven’t lived up to their $30 million salaries. And Kyle Kuzma hasn’t come remotely close to putting up numbers worthy of the $90 million deal he signed in 2023 prior to his trade to the Milwaukee Bucks as a piece that was supposed to help uplift Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Antetokounmpo is one of few players available who can truly fetch maximum value this trade season. The Knicks would need to rope in a third or fourth team in order to meet Milwaukee’s asking price, and they’d potentially have to gut their roster to salvage draft picks while sending key contributors to the Bucks to land the Greek Freak.
The Knicks, too, are watching one of their best assets depreciate in real-time, as Karl-Anthony Towns, New York’s highest-paid player, is mired in the worst shooting stretch of his career, and is quite possibly the most uncomfortable he’s been on a basketball court since his youth playing days. Towns’ stock could immediately spike in a new situation where he’s the focal point of an offense — much like Young’s stock could drastically increase for the team that acquired him for pennies on the dollar, though the Knicks, as the owners of the Wizards’ top-8 protected first-round pick this summer, are hopeful for a quick and substantial impact by Washington’s new floor general.
