The irony is that it was another iconic Milwaukee Buck who started what, to date, has been an endless 45-year search for the greenest lawn in the back garden. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had recorded six long years in Wisconsin and had had it. He wanted to go home and had two homes in mind:
New York, where he had been born, where he had grown up on the Dyckman Street projects, where he first gained fame at the Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan.
And in Los Angeles, where he became the best college basketball player of all time at UCLA, with three national titles, three awards in the most prominent Final Four and a three-year record of 88-2.
Kareem preferred New York, and the Knicks tried to wrap the Bucks in dollars. “They tried to intimidate us with money,” Bucks ’Wayne Embry GM said, and the Bucks wouldn’t be harassed and chose to send their star west to catch players and players.
Thus began the Knicks ’endless search for the perfect piece, the five-star acquisition. Over the years, this has sometimes taken the form of an unfortunate and unrequited affection (George McGinniss, Kevin McHale, LeBron James, Kevin Durant) and has sometimes resulted in a consummation that was not as appealing afterwards. of the fact (Spencer Haywood, Bob McAdoo, Marvin Webster, Stephon Marbury, Carmelo Anthony). Once in 45 years an organic spark came in an organic way, and even that was 35 years ago, when Patrick Ewing came through the project. And so began an unsuccessful new task for the Knicks, sifting through a suitable wing man.
Looking for. Always looking. Forty-five years ago now. And still looking.
On Tuesday they learned that as for the Bucks ’contemporary response to Kareem, there won’t even be a window to establish impetus for the chase. Giannis Antetokounmpo chose to stay at Cream City, agreeing to a super-maximum five-year contract worth $ 228.2 million. So much for all the fun specs that would help us during a long winter here.
“The system is set up to help the team that drafted the player keep him,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said shortly after Antetokounmpo announced his deal on Twitter. “It simply came to our notice then. It’s hard to get someone to leave. “
Thibodeau was once team president, in Minneapolis, and once coached the best player in the league, his first Derrick Rose in Chicago. He knows full well that it takes stars to win big in the NBA.
“It’s critical,” he said. “This should be a priority for an organization to look for opportunities.”
Where does this leave the Knicks?
Finding the right path. The free agency suddenly looks less appealing, with Antetokounmpo off the table. Next summer promises some fascinating pieces (Victor Oladipo, Jrue Holiday), but only a real cornerstone of the franchise: Kawhi Leonard, if you choose, and didn’t seem too inclined to look the way the Knicks did last time.
The Knicks could try to identify a trade and have plenty of assets to throw into a deal, though it’s questionable how much the actual players on the roster can help attract any kind of high-level interest.
This leaves the development of the players, which at this point is what the Knicks should trust their hopes. There are three players on the list who, if things work out well, if the potential turns into production and promise to get results, could emerge: Mitchell Robinson, RJ Barrett and Obi Toppin.
None of this troika is any data. Robinson, despite his obvious disadvantage, still has trouble staying grounded and is still best described as “raw” when he enters Year 3. Barrett seems to have made some excellent steps forward, he looks stronger, has more confidence and won’t turn 21 until June. And Toppin is in the first meters of a 10,000-mile race; if he progresses as a professional at the pace he did as a schoolboy … well, it’s a worthy dream for Knicks fans.
“When you look at it, each team takes a lot of different paths to get stars,” Thibodeau said. “Sometimes it’s the development stage. You have to be very aggressive when looking for these opportunities. They don’t just happen by chance. Sometimes you have to make them come true. ”
The example often cited by Thibodeau is Jimmy Butler, who barely played as a Chicago debutant in 2012 and had a bad dispute the following year, but in year 4 he was already an All-Star and has now become one of the top 10 players in the league, a founding player. for an NBA finalist in Miami. Thibodeau saw this development up close in Chicago and saw the fruits of this work (however brief) in Minnesota.
Apply this learning curve to any of these three Knicks and they will have something; applying it to two (or three) of them? Then, perhaps, you have something organic, real and that can end up with the search for the perfect piece for 45 years. It may not be the easiest path. But it could still be the best.