The New York Knicks have made it clear that they’re not tanking.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver sent the Chicago Bulls a warning about tanking recently. New York Knicks’ head coach Jeff Horancek says the league doesn’t need to worry about them tanking.
“There’s a difference between tanking and trying to look at the future,’’ said Hornacek, via the NY Post. “And we made trades to bring these guys in. We brought Trey in from the G-League and Emmanuel from another team. That’s a totally separate thought process. We’re seeing if they can play for us.’’
You could argue that veteran point guard Jarrett Jack could help the Knicks win, but they weren’t playoff bound prior to Kristaps Porzingis’ injury. Not to mention, the most important thing right now is for them to evaluate Emmanuel Mudiay, Trey Burke and Frank Ntilikina.
“It’s the same,’’ Hornacek said of the lineup. “We’re trying to evaluate our three young point guards. Moving forward, we got to make decisions on those guys. We have to play them as many minutes as possible. Jarrett has done a great job for us this year. But we’re at the point of the season we need to take a look at those guys and give them bigger minutes. It’s hard to judge them on five minutes here and there.”
Hornacek says they’re still trying to win games.
“We still want to try to win games,’’ Hornacek said. “We want to see if our young guys can help us win games. It’s part of the evaluation process. It’s not like, ‘Oh heck, if we put them out there we’re going to lose games.’ We still want to try to win and see if these guys can step up and help us win.
“I’m not sure Adam told them what lineup to play. He probably is telling them they got to play. You can put them out there for 10 minutes. It’s meaningless for us. Because that’s not what we’re doing.”
If the NBA wants to keep teams from tanking, why not, give every team that’s in a lottery spot the same chance at landing a top-five pick? That would keep teams from trying to fight for being the worst in the league.
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