The Knicks traded their own lottery pick, which could be No. 1 overall. However, if the season ended today, they still would have the 24th and 29th selections in the NBA Draft.
Larry Brown has hinted he could foresee the Knicks packaging Denver's and San Antonio's first-rounders with an expiring contract (Maurice Taylor) to move up.
With the lottery weak, teams might want to fall back to get an extra pick. One mid-lottery selection the Knicks have interest in is LSU's 6-9 athletic shot-blocking forward Tyrus Thomas, who faced Duke last night in the Sweet 16.
In fact, Brown has told confidants he thinks Thomas should be considered for the No. 1 pick, though most scouts see the freshman as mid-to-late-lottery choice. Brown is on record saying he'd rather have Eddy Curry than either of the top players mentioned for No. 1, Adam Morrison or J.J. Redick.
Quick aside: Even before Redick destroyed his own lottery aspirations by being absolutely dominated the other night by the less talented but slightly larger and more athletic LSU guards, it's pretty stupid for Berman to go saying he might be the #1 pick. Sophomore girls at Duke can be forgiven such sentiments. Certainly no NBA scout shares them.
That aside, this is clearly a story planted by Brown in the media for possibly any number of reasons: to try to influence the Knicks front office, establish himself as a potential GM and therefore survivor of the blame-game with Isiah, to distract attention from the mess on the court, or just because he has always pulled stuff like this.
Let's take a leap of faith here and for the moment speculate the New York front office is actually considering this. Why does this set my heart all a'flutter? Well, Mo Taylor's $9.1M expiring contract matches up pretty nicely with Raef LaFrentz's $10.6M deal. Now that Babcock is out of Toronto there are only so many GMs that might be desperate and stupid enough to trade for Raef.
Berman's third paragraph is exactly backwards. In a shallow draft the Knicks are going to discover that their end-of-first round picks are the least valuable commodity out there. Unlike the second round picks a few selections later, the contracts of firsts are guaranteed meaning that you're stuck paying several years of salary to a player that (in this draft) you may decide in six months you never want to see again. In the 2003 draft several teams sold picks in the 20s for the equivalent of a few thousand dollars they were so eager to get rid of them.
If the improbable happened and the Celtics ended up with the Lakers pick, they might go into the draft with a 7-9 selection (their own) and a 14-15 selection (Lakers). If they were able to use one of these picks on a players like Brandon Roy, move the other with Raef for Mo's expiring deal, and roll the dice with whatever late-round gamble Danny wants to take on this year... well I'd be pretty blissfully happy with the draft.
I've written before about my concerns that Raef and Wally's humungous contracts, combined with any new deal for Pierce, may lead us to sign-and-trade a bunch of our young talent rather than pay the luxury tax. The prospect of getting out of Raef's deal a year before having to resign Perkins is worth a whole lot indeed. And if we're trading with New York there's always the prospect of getting a bargain. Just ask Orlando, Phoenix, or San Antonio.
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