Knicks are without first-round pick after Mavericks draw 10th in lottery
Tanks for nothing, Dallas.
The Knicks are without a draft pick this year after the Mavericks drew 10th Tuesday in the draft lottery. The result played to the odds, with the Knicks owning only a 20% chance of snatching away the top-10 protected pick from Dallas.
It represents the final payment of the Kristaps Porzingis trade in 2019, and now transfers to the Knicks in 2024 as a top-10 protected pick. If it doesn’t convey next year, it becomes two second-round picks for the Knicks.
The Mavericks went all out to keep their pick from the Knicks. In order to finish in the league’s bottom-10 and maintain favorable odds, Dallas tanked the final few games of the regular season while sitting its best players.
The strategy was not only obvious, it was acknowledged by Mavs owner Mark Cuban and coach Jason Kidd. The fallout was a $750,000 fine levied by the NBA, which turned into a worthy investment for a lottery pick.
The Knicks dealt their own first rounder this year — which is 23rd overall — to the Blazers for Josh Hart. It’s the first time the Knicks will enter the draft without a first-round pick since 2016, when their pick went to Denver in a swap and became Jamal Murray.
The Mavericks and Knicks have been passively warring all season. The main issue was the Jalen Brunson free agency negotiations, which ended with the Knicks signing the point guard but penalized for tampering. Their punishment was a mere second-round pick.
Cuban blamed Brunson’s father, Rick, for sabotaging the negotiations with the Mavericks.
“Where it went south was when Rick took over [the negotiations], when the parent took over,” Cuban told reporters last month.
The Knicks hired Rick as an assistant coach before free agency. Leon Rose, the Knicks president, represented Jalen and Rick as an agent before moving to the front office.
The draft lottery is typically a disappointing time for the Knicks. They haven’t moved up from their lottery position since 1985, when David Stern famously picked their envelope in the Patrick Ewing sweepstakes.
In 2008, they moved down a spot and just missed Kevin Love. In 2009, they kept their spot and just missed Steph Curry.
The big winners of this year’s draft lottery was the Spurs, who drew first overall and the right to draft Victor Wembamyama. As a 7-2 playmaker, Wembamyama, 19, a Frenchman, has been hailed as a generational talent and a prospect to rival LeBron James or Kevin Durant.
Still, there are others who’ve received such hype — Zion Williamson, Greg Oden — that later were sabotaged by injuries.
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