Porter or Young gamble would be tough to pass
THE cord is officially cut Thursday night. For real, and for good, the lasting stain of Phil Jackson will be removed from the Knicks. It was a day shy of a year ago that Jackson conducted his final official duties with the Knicks, drafting Frank Ntilikina with the No. 8 pick, declining to trade Kristaps Porzingis.
“We have a lot ahead of us,” Jackson said that night, and of course when he uttered those words he had no idea that he only had a week ahead of him before he would be exiled.
That sentence remains intact, though, even if the front-office structure has been turned upside down in 51 weeks. Scott Perry and Steve Mills still have a fearfully long road ahead of them as they try to make the Knicks respectable. They’ve already done a lot of the heavy lifting in subtracting Carmelo Anthony, and endured a heavy burden by having Porzingis unwittingly taken out of the picture, probably for another year.
So the full Next Chapter begins Thursday night, when Perry and Mills will make their first draft pick, officially laying the cornerstone on whatever else is to come. By all accounts they will be delighted if Villanova’s Mikal Bridges is still around by the time they pick, and by all accounts Bridges would be delighted to come.
“New York feels like a second home,” he said Wednesday.
“I had a lot of my best games here,” he said, referring to Madison Square Garden.
“The coaching staff with [David Fizdale] coming from Miami,” he said, “knows what it takes to win.”
So he already knows all the right things to say, and it seems like he is ready for the Knicks to do what an awful lot of folks think will happen: take Bridges, almost certainly the clear-cut best player left, one slot before the 76ers who covet him (and for whom Bridges could well serve as a critical piece in their growing cold war with the Celtics). It would be a smart pick. And it would be a safe pick. And it may turn out, due to the dominoes that fall ahead of them, that Bridges will be a no-brainer pick. If so, that would be the most disappointing part of Thursday night, because for now there are two names that would seem to be the most intriguing of the draft that could reasonably tumble that far. And if they did, it would make the Knicks’ time on the clock as entertaining — and, potentially, as dramatic — as any in recent memory.
One is Trae Young, who was the most dynamic player in college basketball last year and who wouldn’t necessarily fill a void since one of the things the Knicks do have right now is a glut of point guards. And there is some belief the second half of Young’s lone season at Oklahoma was more indicative of the player he is than his almost-impossible-to-believe first half.
Still, he did lead the nation in scoring and assists, and because of that combo it’s hard not to think of Tiny Archibald, the DeWitt Clinton product the Knicks bypassed in the 1970 draft in favor of Mike Price.
But the real fun would come if there was another name still on the board when it’s the Knicks’ time to go: Michael Porter Jr. A year ago, if he’d been eligible, it seems almost certain Porter would have been a top-three pick. But rules are rules, so he went to Missouri, he hurt his back, and besides becoming the latest walking advertisement for letting high school kids back into the draft if they’re good enough, he became an instant enigma.
A lot of early mock drafts had him falling into the middle of the first round. Most now have him sitting anywhere from Memphis at No. 4 to Cleveland at No. 8, including The Post’s own best guess.
“I’ve been talking to some teams that have basically told me if I’m there [they’d take me],” Porter said Wednesday. “But I’m sure they’ve been telling a few prospects that.”
The sense is the Knicks would be wary of taking the leap if he’s still there at 9, and on one level that’s understandable. Still, he is the kind of player that, if healthy, you could really build a foundation around. And even if he needs to essentially redshirt next year, so what? The Knicks are going to struggle next year, so what that means is they would essentially have two high lottery picks reporting for duty in the fall of 2019 along with Porzingis.
And maybe then you have something to get excited about. The choice may not be theirs. But if it is … ? Now that could make Thursday night awfully interesting.