New York Knicks: Four quick reasons why NYK should pass on KD
By Ed Stein
Kevin Durant is one of the two or three best players in the NBA. He is also an unrestricted free agent and the New York Knicks have tons of available cap space. That doesn’t mean that the team should go all out to sign him.
The NBA’s free agent frenzy starts at midnight. This year there are some very high profile unrestricted free agents. At the top of the heap is Kevin Durant. Enter the New York Knicks who have plenty of room under the salary cap to add KD. Just because they have the ability to sign him doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea.
After spending the last two seasons as part of Golden State’s juggernaut, Durant opted out of his $31M contract for next season in search of a bigger payday.
The Knicks have been public about their wishes to jumpstart their franchise by making a big splash in free agency to go along with this year’s third overall draft pick, RJ Barrett. There are plenty of reasons why KD could be one of their special additions, but there are several reasons why they shouldn’t sign him at all. Among them are his recent Achilles injury, his age, the cost, and his difficulties with the media.
Injury
The biggest red flag as to signing Durant is the torn Achilles muscle he suffered at the end of 2019. It’s a devastating injury that will sideline the star forward for the entirety of 2019-20. So that’s one year of the contract he’ll sign that will be wasted. As a matter of fact, due to the injury, they may not be able to get the rest of it insured.
There is also no guarantee that once Durant heals and rehabilitates that he will be anywhere near the player he was before getting injured. CBS Sports did a study in 2015 on NBA players who returned from Achilles injuries over the 13 previous seasons. The results were clear that those players were never as productive as they were pre-injury.
Age and Salary
Even without the injury, Durant’s age, 30, once again makes signing him an issue. Do the New York Knicks really want to pay four-years and $164M required to get the max deal done? KD will make $41 his final season of 2022-23 when he’s 34 years old. That’s a lot of money for a player on the final three holes (the back nine started already) of his career.
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By then the Knicks will hopefully be Eastern Conference title contenders and a good chunk of their salary would be going to a rapidly declining player. It’s a move they would come to regret.
Handle NYC
Durant has said he’d like to play in New York City, but I don’t think he’s thought through. This place is a media grind for even the most thick-skinned of athletes. The sheer amount of media outlets in the Metropolitan Area guarantees that KD will always have a microphone or note pad in his face.
Remember last February when Durant blew up at a reporter from The Athletic after he ran a story about KD heading to the New York Knicks? That came after a self-imposed media boycott. It wasn’t the first time KD went off on the media and it sure won’t be the last. There is absolutely no way that flies with the New York version. He’ll be an instant villain on TV and the back pages of various local newspapers, not to mention what will happen on 24/7 sports talk radio.
For as thin-skinned as Kevin Durant is, he’ll be miserable after his first season actually playing for the Knicks.
Next. Islanders going all in on Panarin and Bobrovsky. dark
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