Like every other year, the New York Knicks have gone from seeing other teams make deals to deciding to make one just for the sake of saying that they did something. There’s no other way to explain why they would trade Marcus Camby, Quentin Richardson, Steve Novak and three draft picks for a player that the Toronto Raptors have been trying to dump for years.
Almost everything about the Andrea Bargnani was just wrong. The plus side was getting rid of two bodies that weren’t being used, but the actual problem came when they packaged Novak and draft picks for a player that has missed 98 of the last 148 games.
Now to be fair, we have no idea what the 2016 first-round pick could produce, but we also had no idea that their 2005 trade for Eddy Curry could have been LaMarcus Aldridge or Joakim Noah.
And why add in a specialist like Novak?
He was a fan favorite whose three-point game helped give the Knicks room to operate whenever they actually decided to take their game to the paint.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to make Novak sound like the second coming of Reggie Miller, but it really made no sense to move him for someone who doesn’t address anything that the Knicks needed.
Bargnani is a seven-footer who possesses no inside presence, no rebounding ability and no defense. He’s just another injury-prone jump shooter on a team full of injuries and jump shooters. And after seven years in the league, he probably comes as close as it gets—for a number one pick—to being a pseudo-bust, with his 15-point and nearly five rebound average.
That’s far from being “the next Dirk Nowitzki.”
And it just gets worse when you find out that the Knicks are looking at Monta Ellis — another scorer that doesn’t like to share the rock. It could be the Stephon Marbury-Steve Francis disaster all over again.
It never fails. You can always count on the Knicks to mortgage away their future to flaunt overpriced help. Just blame it on the New York school of any move is better than no move.
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Richard Nurse is a columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @blackirishpr.
