What kind of results will the New York Knicks get from their spending in free agency?
After two years of spending conservatively on deals for free agents with only one guaranteed year (aside from Julius Randle), the Knicks moved more aggressively to keep together and fortify the team that snapped a seven-season playoff drought at Madison Square Garden as the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.
How much has New York improved with the addition of Evan Fournier? And will the Knicks regret signing players to multi-year deals instead of waiting for bigger stars to hit the market?
Bringing (most of the) band back
Because of New York's strategy of short-term deals, five of the seven Knicks who played more than 80 minutes in their first-round loss to the Atlanta Hawks hit free agency this summer (Randle and RJ Barrett were the two players under contract -- and even Randle's contract didn't fully guarantee until Saturday).
New York quickly agreed to re-sign three of those players Monday. Nerlens Noel, who started at center late in the season with Mitchell Robinson sidelined, agreed to a three-year deal worth $32 million. Backup guard Alec Burks got $30 million over three years, equivalent to the non-taxpayer midlevel exception other teams could have offered. And Derrick Rose got the largest deal of all, $43 million over three years.
It remains to be seen how much of that salary is guaranteed. It's possible the Knicks have tacked team options or non-guarantees on the final season as in past offseasons, meaning those players are only under contract for two years. Still, they're substantial raises for players New York got at bargain rates last season (Rose after a trade with the Detroit Pistons). Burks, Noel and Robinson made a combined $18.7 million in 2020-21.
Although Reggie Bullock agreed to a three-year, $30.5 million deal with the Dallas Mavericks, we may yet see the Knicks bring back the fourth free agent who played extensively in the 2021 playoffs: Veteran center Taj Gibson, who, like Rose, is a Tom Thibodeau lifer at this point.
Adding Fournier
To replace Bullock, New York went shopping in the higher end of free agency, agreeing to a reported four-year, $78 million deal with Boston Celtics wing Evan Fournier. My ESPN colleague Adrian Wojnarowski reported that does include a team option on the fourth season, protecting the Knicks to some extent. But Fournier is the kind of middle-tier free agent that seems least valuable to a team in a free-agent destination.
Fournier will certainly supply some needed shot creation to the New York starting five. He's a much better ballhandler and more versatile scorer than Bullock, who functions best in a 3-and-D role. Bullock's shortcomings came to the fore in the first-round loss, when the Hawks were able to hide Trae Young on him defensively with little issue.
The concern is if the Knicks re-sign Randle as an unrestricted free agent next summer, they could find themselves without cap space for years to come as Barrett and Robinson potentially get raises off their rookie contracts.
Presumably, New York management would counter that free agency hasn't yielded stars in the past and seems less likely to in the future as more and more players extend rather than testing the market at all. The Knicks' real path to a star, they'd point out, is through the trade market. New York is now flush with the kind of moderate eight-figure contracts often necessary as currency in trades for high-priced stars.
The question then becomes whether the contracts the Knicks agreed to Monday will be seen as positive or even neutral-value in trades or as the kind of overpays that force teams to add extra draft picks to complete a trade -- for example, the New Orleans Pelicans taking back Eric Bledsoe in the Jrue Holiday trade before needing to give up draft compensation to move Bledsoe to the Memphis Grizzlies less than a year later.
Projecting the 2021-22 Knicks
On paper, New York has put together a stronger team for 2021-22 with the addition of Fournier, a full year of Rose and the development of young players Barrett, Robinson and Immanuel Quickley. Yet it's still quite possible if not likely the Knicks end up having a worse season.
In baseball, Bill James observed what he termed the "plexiglass principle" -- the tendency for overachieving teams like New York to take a step backward the following season. This effect isn't quite as strong in the NBA, but it's an inevitable result of regression to the mean. Things that went right for the overachiever won't likely be so good in year two.
In the Knicks' case, both health and opponent 3-point shooting are regression candidates. New York lost the sixth-fewest wins above replacement player (WARP) by my metric to player injuries, illnesses and the health and safety protocols last season. Much of that total was from Robinson, who was ably replaced by Noel and Gibson. The other four primary Knicks starters missed a total of 18 games, including one combined between Barrett and Randle -- who finished 1-2 in the NBA in minutes played.
Opponents made a league-low 34% of their 3-point attempts against New York last season. While the Knicks showed the ability to continue defending at a high rate even as that regressed to the mean over the course of last season (it was 32% in December and January) and we should expect New York to allow below-average 3-point shooting, a few extra 3s could hurt the Knicks' defense.
Add it up and New York looks likely to have a better team in 2021-22 thanks to Monday's moves. That still might not translate into a better record, or even the same one.