Getty Leon Rose and William Wesley sit courtside during a game between the New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls.
The New York Knicks don’t appear to be in the mix for Kyrie Irving or any other star-level player at the moment, but the team could still benefit from some kind of move in the margins ahead of the NBA trade deadline.
As of their 134-128 loss to the LA Clippers on Saturday, the Knicks are just two games above the .500 mark and firmly in the play-in range of the Eastern Conference standings. That’s definitely not where fans want them to be given the addition of Jalen Brunson and the strong start he helped orchestrate.
Moreover, the club is middling at best defensively with a D-rating of 113.7 (the league’s No. 17 mark), poor at moving the ball — its 273.8 passes thrown nightly rank 22nd league-wide, while its assist percentage of 54.8 is dead last — and underwhelming from a shooting standpoint with an effective field-goal percentage of 52.6 (25th-best).
Clearly, the Knicks could use a boost in multiple areas. To that end, The Athletic’s Fred Katz pitched a number of potential trade targets recently. One of the more notable names to appear on the Knicks insider’s list was that of Orlando Magic guard and veteran 3-and-D specialist Gary Harris.
Fred Katz: Gary Harris Could Help the Knicks on the Court Now & as a Trade Piece Later
On January 30, Katz put out his list of players who could be targeted by team president Leon Rose and his brain trust using some of the team’s myriad disposable contracts and/or draft assets. In doing so, he identified the Orlando Magic as one of a handful of “sure sellers” that could be approached.
With that in mind, Katz namechecked veteran wing Terrence Ross as a potential target. However, he went on to note that Harris — who’s somehow still in his late 20s — checks several more boxes as a target for New York.
“Gary Harris might be the one to monitor here. He is the better defender, is a low-maintenance guard shooting 40 percent from deep over the past two seasons, has a nifty non-guarantee for 2023-24 that could help if the Knicks need to compile salary for a bigger trade down the line,” Katz wrote.
The NYC hoops guru further opined that Harris’ presence on the roster may actually put one of the Knicks’ best young players in a better position to excel, writing that Harris “could hijack the Miles McBride minutes, pushing Immanuel Quickley to full-time point guard duties with the second unit.”
Harris is averaging 9.2 points, 2.0 rebounds and almost one steal in 24.0 minutes per contest in Orlando this season. He’s also one of the league’s best long-range marksmen right now, bagging triples at a 46.5% clip.
B/R Labels Knicks as Top Landing Spot for OG Anunoby
For a February 4 roundtable feature, the folks over at Bleacher Report listed the top potential destinations (as they see them, anyway) for some of the NBA’s most-discussed trade candidates.
Where Toronto Raptors wing OG Anunoby was concerned, it was the New York Knicks who earned that distinction. Wrote B/R’s Greg Swartz:
New York owns four first-round picks from other teams over the next three years in addition to all of their own firsts moving forward. There’s enough young talent on this roster to pique the interest of Toronto as well.
After missing out on Donovan Mitchell last offseason, the Knicks could now trade multiple first-round picks to add Anunoby to a starting five that features Jalen Brunson, R.J. Barrett, Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson.
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