Welcome to the sixth installment
of 30 Teams, 30 Years, 30 Drafts featuring the New York Knicks. This series takes you through each of the teams’ draft picks from 1978-2008 and evaluates how they fared. The Knicks are one of the leagues most storied franchises and they have had some of the most up and down drafts of any team we have reviewed so far. They have one of the lower scores so far, but have also drafted a few Hall of Famers like Patrick Ewing. Selecting guys like Renaldo Balkman in the first round tend to bring down your score though.
Total Score: 2.471
View the previous teams and their scores here:
Boston Celtics – 3.885
Philadelphia 76ers – 2.561
Toronto Raptors – 2.659
Orlando Magic – 2.861
Charlotte Bobcats – 2.225
Let us know in the comments below who you think their best and worst draft picks were.
To see how the score was calculated, check out the intro post here.
[table id=104 /]
1- Not so fun fact: Sly plead guilty and was sentenced to up to five years in prison for kidnapping and rape. Really? Only five years for kidnapping? And rape? Really?
2- Fun fact: After drafting a future rapist the Knicks followed that up drafting a future assistant principal, talk about to ends of the spectrum. Carter is now the assistant principal at Mineola HS on Long Island, a mere 20 minutes from where I live. No word on if Carter also coaches the school basketball team while employing an incredibly strict mindset.
3- Yes, that Mike Woodson.
4- Fun Fact: Quite possibly the most obscure player to ever have a rule named after him. The Trent Tucker Rule is the rule that states a player cannot get off a shot with less than .3 seconds left on the clock. It was inspired by a game in 1990 in which Tucker somehow caught an inbounds pass and hit a game winning three pointer with .1 seconds remaining.
5- Drafted over Clyde Drexler
6- Brother of HOF Dominique Wilkens
7- One of 13 year old me’s favorite jokes was that in 1996 New York’s best quarterback played for the Knicks. Which considering the Jets were starting Neil O’Donnell and the Giants were starting Dave Brown, may have very well been the truth.
8- Walter played the character Mance in “He Got Game”. Now do what I did and go break out your copy of “He Got Game” to figure out who Mance was. We’ll wait….
9- Frederic Weis ends up with an impressive final score of -7, with the extra -2 coming from being drafted ahead of Ron Artest. More on this in the next footnote.
10- Side Knicks fan commentary (I can’t help but let the Knicks fan in me burst out sometimes): Of all the bad picks the Knicks made, the Lavor Postell pick is my favorite. The previous year the Knicks drew the ire of the NY fanbase when they drafted Fred Weis over local favorite Ron Artest. Rightfully so, as you can see, Weis never played an NBA game. He may have been scared off by Vince Carter, just a little. Ron Artest, despite his craziness has gone on to have an incredibly good NBA career and is still chugging along contributing to a playoff team. The next year the Knicks try to make it up to the fans by drafting Artest’s St. John’s teammate with the 39th pick. Only problem with this idea, Lavor Postell had no business being drafted by an NBA team. Trust me, at the time I was a highschool kid in love with St. John’s basketball, I watched him play a lot. Normally throwing away a second round pick doesn’t make all that much of a difference as you can see by the grades so far. However if the Knicks really needed a SG, there was another one waiting who was drafted just four picks later. His name was Michael Redd. So instead of ending up with Artest and Redd (two future allstars) the Knicks end up with Weis and Postell (61 combined NBA games). I will now go cry and find someone to hold me.
11- Side Knicks Commentary Number 2: From 1998 to 2003 the Knicks had 11 picks that managed to add up to a draft score of negative four. Wow. Now I am not one to normally defend Isiah Thomas, but this didn’t happen on his watch. Isiah didn’t light the fire, he just through gasoline on it. A boatload of gasoline. Then sat watching and laughing as the Garden burned, or so it seemed. Although the next few years will show you that despite his awful signings and even more awful trades, the man could draft. He did a lot with the crappy picks he had. Although, most of the crappy draft picks were a result of his awful trades.
12- Drafted over Andrew Bynum
13- Drafted over Rondo
14- Wilson has one season with 16ppg. Going to guess he will get one more.
15- Danilo has seasons of 15.9 and 15.6. I’m going to guess with his shot he gets to 16ppg twice.
