The New York Knicks have had a successful 22-23 season despite deciding not to trade for Donovan Mitchell in the offseason. With Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle as their core, they will have trade optionality this offseason.
“Here’s what I think about the Knicks,” said Brian Windhorst on his podcast. “They have two handfuls of trade material, in my opinion. They can make, in my opinion, two big trades if they had to coming into this summer.
“They have the expiring contract of Evan Fournier, which can act as ballast in a trade. They have a bunch of younger players that people are interested in. And they have something like nine tradable first round picks.
“In my view, they can trade for two star-level players if they needed to. It doesn’t mean they’d have to do those deals in the summer of ’23. Those deals can be made within the 23-24 season, they can be in ’24. But they can hold, in my opinion, they can hold Jalen Brunson, they can hold Julius Randle, and they can make two giant trades.
“Whether they can hold Brunson, Randle and [RJ] Barrett and make two giants trades, that would depend on the players. But there is even a window that they can hold all three of those and make two giant trade.
“It’s going to require, I think, a player to say ‘Send me to New York.’ And potentially another star player to say ‘Oh, I’ll go to New York too.’
“Or for New York to pull a big trade and a star player going ‘Ah, man. They got this and they still have this. I want to do that.’
“I kind of compare it to where the Cavs were in 2014. The Cavs had stuff and they had space. They used the space on LeBron and they used the stuff for Kevin Love.”
Windhorst then talked about the favorable contract of Brunson, which declines in value over the four years.
“The Knicks are positioned,” said Windhorst. “Leon Rose has put them in position. Getting into position is not the hard part. Executing is the hard part. But he’s put them in position.”