Getty Knicks stars Jalen Brunson (left) and OG Anunoby would be part of a championship core with Anthony Davis.
The Knicks have established themselves as a very good team in the Eastern Conference, a team that, amazingly, has a crack at a 50-win season and the No. 2 seed behind Boston. But even with the progress this team has shown, they’re still not quite at peak contender status. They still need another player.
And while the Knicks are expected to use their trove of first-round picks, which begins to hit the books this June with Dallas’s first-rounder, to chase an available star player this offseason, the perfect fit might be a cornerstone that another flagship NBA franchise does not want to let part: Anthony Davis of the Lakers.
But if L.A., which is fighting for play-in tournament positioning in the West, flames out spectacularly this spring and if Lakers star LeBron James opts out of his contract and seeks to go elsewhere, well, then there is an outside chance the Lakers could look for wholesale changes and eventually put Davis–and the $220 million left on his contract–on the market, too.
If so, no one is in better position to pounce than the Knicks.
Knicks Best Positioned to Pursue Blockbuster Trade
That’s the sense from executives around the NBA. Davis is averaging 24.6 points and 12.7 rebounds, shooting 55.3% from the field. He is a top candidate for NBA Defensive Player of the Year and has just put in his healthiest season in seven years. Assuming he plays in Sunday’s season finale, Davis will have played 76 games this year, the most of his career.
It’s a good time to try to trade Davis, and a good time to bring him in. The Knicks would be a contender with him, and would give him one of the biggest stages in the NBA in doing so.
“When you look at it, if you’re serious about trading Davis at some point then you need to accomplish a few things,” one GM told Heavy Sports. “You have to get him somewhere he wants to be. He wants to be a Laker. So if you trade him, you have to do right by him, send him to a good team in a good market, you don’t want to burn any bridges with (Klutch Sports, Davis’s representatives). You need a team willing to take on his money. Because it’s a lot. And you need a team who can load you up with draft picks.
“There’s really one team that fits all of those, and that’s the Knicks. It would not be hard to make a deal work there. You can line up the salaries. You can package a ton of picks. You can throw in a young player. You can take on a salary the Lakers might not want.”
Draft Price High for Anthony Davis
Davis would be the ideal piece for the Knicks. Asked how they could get into legitimate contention, one East GM said, “A two-way big guy. Bam Adebayo. Anthony Davis. Somebody of that caliber. They’re not easy to find but that’s the missing piece, a championship piece.”
Forget Adebayo, of course, but what would it take to land Davis? The Knicks would have to brace for a massive package of picks to go to the Lakers, as many as four plus future swaps, for a total of six or seven. The Knicks would send out Julius Randle and Bojan Bogdanovic for the purposes of matching salary and giving the Lakers a chance to clear salary.
A young player would have to be in the mix, too, like Miles McBride. And the Lakers would probably want to foist an unwanted salary on New York, like the $23 million owed to Gabe Vincent.
It’s a lot. But the end result would be a team with Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby and Anthony Davis as the core. The team is pretty good now. That group would have a chance to be great.