May: With Dec. 15 Trade Season Open, What Will Knicks Do?

Today is the day when the floodgates open and a whole bunch of NBA players can theoretically start changing addresses and re-assessing their prospects.

Basically, just about any player in the league can now be traded, as Dec. 15 is the date when players who signed over the summer can be shipped elsewhere.

There will be umpteen trade stories over the next two months, leading up to the actual deadline in February. A fraction of them will have any truth.

Already we’ve seen stories of Memphis shopping Zach Randolph and one which had the Knicks sending Carmelo Anthony to the Clippers. There will be others.

Wait until Rajon Rondo returns next month.
The Anthony story is a good jumping-off point because it brings us to the team in need of a dramatic makeover: the New York Knicks.

New York won at home Saturday night over Atlanta. It was the Knicks’ seventh win in 23 games. They can make a case that they have not had their complete team on the floor for an honest assessment, but, as Bill Parcells likes to say, you are what your record says you are.

The Knicks are distracted. They are dysfunctional. They’re brutal.

They need to do something.

Even at 7-16, they’re nowhere near out of the playoff hunt in the disgraceful Eastern Conference. They still have Anthony, warts and all, a player who on many nights is the best in the gym. They will soon welcome back the valuable Tyson Chandler, one of two players on the roster (Kenyon Martin is the other) who give them any degree of toughness.

(They actually have a third tough player, but Metta World Peace is pretty much all heat and no light these days. He’s fallen out of the rotation.)

On paper, they may look like the 54-win team of a year ago, but they’re not. They lost a slew of veteran leaders, from Jason Kidd to Marcus Camby to Kurt Thomas to Rasheed Wallace. Yes, Rasheed. He was terrific in the locker room. World Peace doesn’t come close to making up for that loss.

They traded for Andrea Bargnani, who is being asked to be a muscle-wielding, screen-setting, body-moving 7-footer. He’s a 7-footer.

That’s where it ends. He should be holding a “Get Well Soon” party for Chandler.

Anthony has already said he plans to opt out of his contract at the end of the season, but most Knicks watchers feel it’s so he can re-sign and get the maximum money from his owner James Dolan.

It was Dolan who greenlighted the Anthony trade to New York, and the non-communicative Knicks owner isn’t about to send his prize somewhere else.

J.R. Smith can be traded today as well, and you’d have to think the Knicks would happily pay all expenses to get him out of town. What is his story?

He was the second leading scorer on last year’s team, won the Sixth Man of the Year award, and spent this weekend trying to be John Stockton on Friday (attempting one shot in 26 minutes) and then getting benched on Saturday after missing seven of eight shots.

His average has dropped from 18.1 to 10.1.

After Saturday’s game, Smith tweeted, “lol, 1-8 an still get the W but y’all still mad lol I don’t get y’all. Ok bad shooting game I get it but if we when (sic) who cares?’’ The hashtag: get off my back.

He’s still only 28. He’s signed for multiple years. He can, in the modern hoops phraseology, “score the ball.” (Not sure what else you score, but whatever.) He could help someone.

The Kings seem to be amenable to making deals these days, having already acquired Derrick Williams and Rudy Gay. (Bring Jimmer Fredette back to his native New York! Can’t you see it already?)

There’s already talk of a deal with the Raptors for Kyle Lowry. He’d be an upgrade over Raymond Felton, who most likely would be included in the deal. Felton had a decent season last year but has regressed to his Portland persona; overweight, out of shape, ineffective.

He’s now out of the lineup for a couple weeks with hamstring issues. The Raptors might do better elsewhere.

There tends to be fire when there’s some smoke and there is a lot of smoke around the Knicks.

Coach Mike Woodson is on the hot seat. Spike Lee must be hot, period. How can this team be 7-16? In the Eastern Conference, only one team, Milwaukee, has fewer wins. Only two teams, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, have more losses.

The Knicks have played nearly 30 percent of their season.

The doves in the Knicks war room will preach patience, waiting for Chandler’s return. The hawks will be looking to start the reconfiguration process ASAP, pointing out that last year was last year.

Felton, Smith, World Peace and maybe even Iman Shumpert could go. First round picks are in short supply; one was sent to Toronto in the Bargnani deal. The next first-round pick the Knicks can deal is in 2018. They’ve dumped second-rounders in each of the next three seasons.

The only blessing is the gawd-awful conference of which the Knicks are a member. They could make the playoffs. They could even win the pathetic Atlantic Division.

But they’re light years behind Miami and Indiana with the crew they now have. And that won’t cut it at the World’s Most Famous Arena.

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Peter May is the only writer who covered the final NBA games played by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. He has covered the league for three decades for The Hartford Courant and The Boston Globe and has written three books on the Boston Celtics. His work also appears in The New York Times. You can follow him on Twitter.