Knicks President Steve Mills Insists This Summer Went According To Plan

The New York Knicks were expected to be big players in free agency this summer, as rumors swirled all season that they would be near the top of the list for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving’s services. Instead, that duo joined forces in Brooklyn and the Knicks’ biggest signing was Julius Randle, along with a handful of veterans (many of whom play power forward as well) on short-term deals.

In terms of a pivot in strategy, New York could have done worse. They could have done what they did in 2016 and give out big, long-term deals to aging stars that almost immediately looked terrible, They didn’t, and stuck with two-year deals with team options or non-guarantees for next year for many of those guys. There were worse ways for this summer to go, but president Steve Mills is insistent on selling a different message.

At media day on Monday, Mills told the assembled masses that the Knicks had interest from max-level free agents, but had a plan in place that they wanted to follow and stuck to that, bringing in their six targets on the first day of free agency.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe the Knicks traded away Kristaps Porzingis at the deadline to create two max slots, but all along they wanted to bring in Randle, Bobby Portis, Marcus Morris, and Taj Gibson. You’ll be hard pressed to find many folks that’ll believe that, but I guess it’s possibly true.

What seems more likely is Mills and company saw the writing on the wall and pivoted their strategy as needed. The rumors that Durant and Irving were going to Brooklyn had reached almost assured fact status by mid-June, and once the 30th rolled around, we knew Kemba Walker was headed to Boston as well. It is very possible the Knicks could have met with other fringe max players, such as Tobias Harris, and decided they weren’t at the level where that kind of contract would yield the results they wanted. I very much believe that could have been and likely was the case. The apparent need to sell this as the plan from the jump, however, seems highly disingenuous and very much in the same vein as leaking that they never were going to offer Durant the max anyways after his Achilles injury.

The Knicks are obsessed with seeming in control, but in this case, insisting you were in control of this plan the entire time makes you look foolish. If you just said, “The fluidity of the free agent market this summer caused us to adjust our plans accordingly and we felt this was the best path forward in the short and long term for the success of the franchise,” people wouldn’t be as frustrated and you’d actually seem like an organization that made somewhat savvy choices. He even came close to this sentiment by saying free agency is fluid and you have to be prepared, but then doubled down by insisting those guys they signed were the ones most important to them all along.

It’s so close, but to say the plan all along was to sign four power forwards for a combined $57 million this season makes you seem, well, not exactly competent, no matter how much “balance” he insists they have in terms of player ages.

The Knicks summer probably wasn’t as bad as people initially thought: they have flexibility going forward and some potential trade chips to send to contenders this deadline if their season goes as most anticipate. The offseason wasn’t good enough to tout this as your grand plan, however, and that they can’t see that doesn’t offer a ton in the way of hope they’ll get it right anytime soon.