Now that the NBA Finals are done and the glee at LeBron James's fall from grace is starting to fade, we can turn our attention to the NBA Draft.
It will be held in Newark next Thursday and it will mark the final act of Donnie Walsh's tenure as the team's personnel mastermind. Were he a lesser man, you could imagine him picking some walk-on from Purdue as a way to stick it to James Dolan, but after the way he conducted himself during his exit interviews we're fairly certain he'll take it more seriously than that.
That's about all we know right now, however. Because the Knicks have so many needs and because the 17th position is subject to the whims of so many other people, we can't do much more than generate a general idea of what the Knicks are going to do when it is their turn to submit their selection.
Amar'e Stoudemire knows what he wants the team to do. He was on WFAN Wednesday morning and said that he thinks "defense is what you need to win a championship."
He also said that his back is still bothering him from the playoff injury, which is a pretty good reason to think the Knicks should be looking for some bodies to help him bang on the inside. A perusal of the mock drafts littering the web right now shows mixed belief that the Knicks are going to be heading in that direction.
David Aldridge of NBA.com sees them taking forward Markieff Morris of Kansas while his colleague Scott Howard-Cooper and NBAdraft.net both project Florida State's Chris Singleton, a strong wing defender, winding up at the Garden. Their opinions are met with firm resistance by the good folks at DraftExpress (Alec Burks, a great John Houseman name out of Colorado), Hoopsworld (Georgia Tech's Iman Shumpert) and SI.com (Klay Thompson of Washington State) who see the Knicks looking for help in the backcourt.
Chad Ford of ESPN.com also sees the Knicks grabbing a guard, Providence's Marshon Brooks in a change from his longstanding choice of the talented but disappointing Kansas freshman Josh Selby. Brooks is certainly battle-tested after life in the Big East and his 52 points against Notre Dame speak to his ability, but Ford's got some more interesting info in his report.
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Like just about everyone else on the planet, Ford sees the Cavs taking Duke guard Kyrie Irving with the first overall pick and writes that the team is expected to peddle point guard Ramon Sessions as a result. The Knicks were interested in Sessions as a free agent before he signed with Cleveland and would be a natural landing spot if a deal can be put together at some point this offseason.
Because of the impending lockout and resulting changes to rules, such a deal probably can't happen before the draft and that's too bad. Adding Sessions would enable the Knicks to concentrate on their frontcourt needs without worrying about the very real need to add another point guard to back up Chauncey Billups and free Toney Douglas to do things other than distribute the ball in his ham-handed manner.
But, like we said, that's not something that's likely to happen in the next eight days. There's also been talk of the Knicks buying another pick at some point in the process so all the potential ins and outs leaves us pretty much back where we started.
That would be knowing little more than the fact that the Knicks need help in multiple spots with the official start of what could be a long offseason upon us.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
