Draymond Green breaks down why the Knicks' Mikal Bridges trade and roster failed against the Pacers. He argues the team lacked depth when key players faced foul trouble, and that reaching the Finals without winning it means nothing. Green says the Knicks need a star-level player to become real contenders.
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He said, I think last year when you were talking to a Knicks fan podcast host, you argued that the Knicks more or less overachieved in going to the second round. Later you maintained that the Mikael Bridges trade would not get them to the finals. Presumably you saw them eventually fall into the Celtics, but they actually ended up eliminating the Celtics and falling to the Pacers again. Given how everything ended up shaking out, do you still feel vindicated in your initial prediction. And with the extra information from this season's stats and results, where do you project the Knicks going forward? Well, number one, I don't feel vindicated about a prediction because it's just a prediction. It's just an opinion. So no, I don't. My basketball knowledge, I know a lot of people out there talk about the game these days. And they do it in quite a way that's not indicative of true knowledge of the game. Or they say hot things or bold takes because they need like people to look because what they're saying isn't like, doesn't have much fabric to it. Yeah. To its core, just not much fabric to some of these basketball predictions and analysis. So I said all of that to say, I think people like live and die on like, oh man, like my prediction. It's a prediction for a reason. But then you actually have to go play the game. So those things actually don't really matter. In saying that, I think for myself and just looking at, I said that that move doesn't get you to the NBA Finals and it didn't. Even in beating the Boston Celtics, who everyone thought would be the team that's coming out of the East, you still didn't get to the NBA Finals. So, but there's reasons for that, right? Like you trade for Mikal Bridges, you give up a lot, then you don't quite have the depth. Now there are some that say Tibbs may not use the depth, but whether use it or not, they didn't quite have the depth that you need to compete at that level, get to the NBA Finals, win an NBA championship. I think one of the things that ultimately hurt them when you look at the series that they did lose against the Pacers, One of the things that ultimately hurt them was that they didn't have the depth when, when Cat would get in foul trouble or Jalen Brunson would get in foul trouble. Like they went on runs at some of those points for sure. But ultimately you do need your best players on the floor. If your best players aren't best on the floor together, then that's an issue and it's gonna be hard to get to the NBA Finals anyway. So, Didn't quite happen with them falling to the Celtics for multiple reasons. Not gonna even get into those multiple reasons. But nonetheless, no, they did not make it to the NBA Finals. And if you want me to be quite honest with you, I personally think making it to the NBA Finals is one of the worst seasons you can have. And the reason being because if you don't win the NBA Finals, You're kind of like going to the NBA Finals and winning an NBA championship. Those two things are so far apart. Like you can get to the NBA Finals and not be close to winning an NBA championship. And I know that may sound hard for people to believe, but those that have won championships would definitely understand what I'm saying. And those that have been there and didn't quite win would definitely understand what I'm saying. It's the, those two things are so drastically far apart. Like making it to a conference finals, like you're so far away from winning a championship and it's, it looks like it's close because you're one series away. The NBA Finals look like you close because you lost in the actual NBA Finals. But the difference in between winning and losing, and losing the NBA Finals for a lot of teams. Every now and then you have that 2016 Warriors versus Cavs, Game 7, down to the wire. It takes Kyrie Irving to hit a crazy shot. Take Bron to get a crazy block. Every now and then you have that and like you're right there. But like sometimes you see teams like, losing an NBA Finals 4-2, like they— the record itself doesn't tell the answer, but they could have won 2 games in NBA Finals and really not been close to winning an NBA championship. That's how hard it is to win 4 games in an NBA champion— in an NBA Finals. Even if the Knicks made it through the NBA Finals and didn't win it, That's not some accomplishment to me. Like you get nothing for making the NBA Finals except a couple $10,000 more dollars than the conference final loser, than what you would've got for making the conference finals. And you get another 3 weeks shorter summer. —of the conference final loser. And if you're, uh, and if you're not, if you, you know, compare it to a team that played in or didn't make the playoffs, you're an entire 9 weeks off your summer. And for a team that made the second round or, you know, made it to the first round, you're probably 7 weeks. The numbers are what they are. They're not exact. Point being, you walk with nothing. Like the team go on and celebrate and have this incredible summer. And like, you're kind of left stuck there trying to figure out like, were we really close? Do we need to run it back with this team? What's the tweak we need to make? Because we were right there. Or we weren't really right there. Only some GMs are smart enough to figure out like, yeah, we were there, but we really weren't there. Like the close. But you're kind of left in this position of like, ah, maybe we're one tweak away. But what you should understand about this thing is one tweak could actually like, it's like Jenga sometimes. Like one tweak of a roster could make the whole thing fall. So it's not just always like, it's not like a simple fix. Yeah. But you may think it is. And while you think it is and you were, made it to the NBA Finals and lost, there are other teams that like felt like they needed to make a big change or 2 or 3 and like are coming for you. And you're kind of left in the same spot thinking you close and you may not be that close. Or that one tweet could like really put you far further away than you were. So it's not like, Oh, you just do it again. Or you had some like huge level of success. Like, yeah, making it to the finals is great, but if you don't win it, it's almost worse. Like you might as well have lost in the first round. So that's kind of how I feel about that. And as far as the Knicks going forward, yeah, I think going forward, In order to win, it ain't there yet. I just don't foresee it. I think in order to win, the Knicks need to bring in a great player. I can't talk specific names because I'm not gonna give my money away for that, but if the Knicks want, if, If the Knicks wanna win and compete for a championship, I think they need a great player. And I'll just leave it at that. So what does that look like going forward? You decide. But if you're talking about championships, I'm just gonna tell you as a champion, and I know exactly what it look like, they need a great player to come on that roster. They need to add a great player to that roster. How do you do that? That ain't for me to get into, but they need to add a great player if you think they're going to compete for an actual NBA championship.
