NEW YORK _ The Knicks put their draft picks, RJ Barrett and Ignas Brazdeikis, on a stage Friday, the day after the NBA Draft and the expectations were not light.
Almost as soon as they settled into their chairs, the first question to Barrett was, "Are your shoulders big enough to carry this franchise?" At 19 years old and less than 24 hours a member of the Knicks, it might have been a big ask, but it also might not be inaccurate.
"That's funny," Barrett said. "Carry? I wouldn't say carry. I'd say this is going to be a great group of guys that are going to be together. We're all excited for coach (David) Fizdale. This is the biggest stage. So yeah, I'm excited to be here, I'm excited to play, but I haven't even played a game yet so how are you going to ask me that question?"
While Barrett was the target for the Knicks once they fell to third in the NBA draft lottery, he is hardly the only piece on the team's radar this summer with $70 million of cap space available. But those expectations of stars coming to take the pressure off of the young pieces on the roster and relieve the long suffering of the fan base might not be coming to fruition.
The team has a very small list of players worth those max salary slots fans have dreamed of through the 17-65 season. With Kevin Durant suffering a ruptured Achilles that will sideline him for the entire upcoming season, Kawhi Leonard basking in the afterglow of the Raptors' championship and Kyrie Irving appearing ready to take up residence in Brooklyn, it is Barrett right now.
"I think we're asking them to continue to be patient," Knicks president Steve Mills said. "We laid out a plan when (general manager) Scott (Perry) came on board and then (coach) David (Fizdale) joined us, that we were going to build this team the right way. We're going to draft well and we're gonna be diligent about how we make this team and not take any shortcuts and follow a path."
The promise of free agents coming into the organization seemed to be the next step, but those top free agent circumstances and the trade of Anthony Davis has put the team back onto the step by step approach that they asked fans to endure last season.
"We believe these two guys are part of that process, the young guys that we added over the last two years, the draft picks that we acquired and adding good young quality basketball players that compete is important," Mills said. "Take a guy like (Brazdeikis). Scott and I saw him play in Chicago and we said we were really impressed with his competitiveness, his toughness, the way he could shoot the ball. We actually said this guy is going in the first round, we're not going to have a chance to get him. And as we were watching the draft play out our analytics guys, he rates out really high as a rotational NBA player. When there was an opportunity to go get him we decided that was something that was important for us to do, because we didn't expect that opportunity."
