I Don't Know How To Feel About The Knicks Being 1 Of The 3 Teams That Jimmy Butler Will Approve A Trade To (Along With The Clippers And Nets)

Well this is quite a doozy. Old Me would have been tickled pink to see for a Top 15 NBA player (*Big Cat’s player rankings) to have the Knicks as one of the 3 teams he would accept a trade to. You know how excited someone my size has to be to turn pink? That’s a shitload of pigments for someone as large and pale as me. But seeing a legit star NBA player in a Photoshopped Knicks jersey always gets the blood moving to the right parts of my gigantic body, no matter how many times we have been left at the altar during free agency season.

But the reality of all this is that it all isn’t that simple. This news comes just as the Knicks said they are done mortgaging the future of the franchise by shipping out draft picks. Trading future assets for a guy that is about to get PAID and has had a problem on the last two teams he has been on is red flag city. Yeah I know that people in Chicago have been fed up with GarPax for years and that Jimmy Butler hates it when young players act like, well, young players. But I don’t want to have to give up a young player with the potential of Frank Ntilikina as well as picks just for the right to pay Jimmy Butler a max deal.

Now if you tell me that landing Butler somehow ensures the Knicks get Kyrie Irving, that may change my mind. If you put those two guys with a (hopefully) healthy Kristaps Porzingis, Kevin Knox, Mitchell Robinson, and hopefully the 2019 lottery pick we don’t have to trade, you have a big nucleus you can cook with. I don’t think there’s any way you can even entertain any trades that involve Knox after the Summer League he had. Not even if this Photoshop can sway me on that.

Bottom line, I’m at ease with the Knicks staying the course on their rebuild by choosing young, cheap assets over older, expensive, sometimes abrasive assets. Let the Clippers or Nets play the game of putting all their eggs in the basket of an aging vet. I’ve seen the way that movie ends way too many times as a Knicks fan and all I can do if it happens again is try to #StayMe7o. The Nets getting their own draft picks back just as Jimmy Butler puts them on his wish list is almost too perfect for it not to happen. And I will never root against a team owned by Steve Ballmer becoming more relevant.

Also RIP In Peace to the dream of the Timberbulls forming at full strength in Minnesota under Thibs. At least I’ll always have this picture to remind me what could have been.