ankurk wrote:If the 76ers are seriously considering korver for fultz why is our front office not offering Lee or Thomas for him?
He's gotta be more valuable to us for a long term future play than Ron F'n Baker or Luke Kornet. Those guys have done their part to earn their roles but lets be 100% honest - they ave <1% chance of being on a championship caliber roster. Bring this kid in - let him ride the bench and get right. Get his confidence up and give him minutes when he's ready.

If you trade Lee for Fultz, it's pretty much a wash salary wise, which means if we sign a max FA, we are out of money and can't re-sign any of our own players who end up performing well. Furthermore, we have no idea what medical issues he has AND his handling of the media has been horrific (and has clearly gotten to him)- how do you think he'd manage with the NY media?

As long as we don't give Philly any picks, let them take Frank, Lee or Dotson. Or maybe if we have to give up Dotson, they give us a pick.
Not sure why anyone would want Frank with the way he's playing at the moment.

NO

TO

FULTZ

technomaster wrote:Fultz for Ntilikina straight up. Do you do it? :) Philly doesn't need a true PG.

On the other hand, if Fultz actually pans out, he's projected as something akin to a young, healthy Deron Williams...? Or maybe... Mudiay?

I mean, it's important to consider what the scouts said in college vs actual NBA performance may not be quite the same. In fantasy bball, I traded a package that included Camby for a Dajuan Wagner, a guy that was supposed to be Allen Iverson on steroids. Wagner (aided by a serious bout of colitis) never panned out in the NBA.

Busts happen, in spite of everyone's best efforts. (When I look at Zion Williamson, I'm worried I'm looking at Anthony Bennett, not LJ)

If Philly offers it then the Knicks should do it, but I can't see the Sixers wanting to swap Fultz for another sophomore PG with confidence issues.

For many, the NBA Draft is like Christmas morning. We go to bed the night before the big day, dreaming of the shiny new prospects who soon might be ours.

But often times, instead of getting Madden 64 like we asked for, our mom ends up buying NFL Quarterback Club 98 because "the man at the store said it's basically the same!"

To this point, the 2017 Draft has yielded many more duds than it has studs, and Frank Ntilikina and Markelle Fultz -- both of whom had been born before those games were released - seem more and more like they're destined to be traded in for $5.85 in GameStop credit.

A quarter of the way through their sophomore seasons, both Ntilikina and Fultz have been net negatives for their respective teams due to poor shooting and inexperience. But the jury remains out on both players -- the youngest two, respectively, selected in the first round of last year's draft.

With a bit of polish, both could turn their careers around. So who has the brighter future moving forward?

Frank Ntilikina
Team: New York Knicks
Position: Point Guard
Hometown: Strasbourg, France
Nickname(s): Frank Nicotine, Frankie Smokes, The French Prince
Age: 20
Height: 6-foot-6
Weight: 200
Wingspan: 7'1"
Experience: 2 years
Draft Info: 8th pick, 1st round (2017)
Before The NBA: SIG Strasbourg
2018-19 Stats: 24.0 MPG, 6.4 PPG, 3.1 APG, 2.2 RPG (35.2 FG%, 26.9 3P%, 93.8 FT%)
2018-19 Advanced Stats: 6.7 PER (player efficiency rating), -3.9 BPM (box plus-minus), -0.2 VORP (value over replacement player)
Career Games Played/Started: 99/23
Salary: $4,155,720

Ntilikina came into the league in 2017 with vastly different expectations than Fultz -- the first-overall pick that same year. A tangle of legs and arms who did a lot of things well but nothing great, he was drafted in part because of his ability to fit Phil Jackson's triangle offense. But with the Knicks and Jackson inexplicably deciding to part ways just a week after the draft, the Rwandan-French point guard has, to this point in his career, not been enough of a playmaker to be the team's primary ballhandler and not reliable enough in catch-and-shoot situations to be effective off-ball.

Since being demoted to the second string a couple weeks ago, Ntilikina has played most of his minutes alongside reserve point guard Trey Burke, further highlighting his weakness as a shooter. As a pro, he's converted just 30.4 percent of his three-pointers, and amazingly all but 10 of his 224 threes have come with the closest defender more than four feet away; the other 10 were misses.

Ntilikina's length has made him pretty useful on the defensive end, where he actually has a net-positive impact for the Knicks in terms of opponent offensive rating, field goal percentage, and turnover rate. But he's yet to figure out how to use that length to finish over defenders at the rim, where he seldom finds himself with the ball in his hands and where he even more rarely converts. It's no wonder international draft guru Fran Fraschilla said that Ntilikina was still a year away from being two years away when the Knicks drafted him.

Fultz

Unlike Ntilikina, Fultz wasn't expected to be a long-term project when the Sixers traded the division-rival Celtics two first-round picks to move up and take him first-overall. With his freakish combination of size, explosiveness, and talent, the First-team All-Pac-12 point guard was expected to immediately join Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons in the starting lineup, and embarrass defenders with his Globetrotter handles and hesi pull-up jimbos (only REAL hoopers will understand this).

Instead, Fultz has looked even more lost than Ntilikina, missing 72 of a possible 104 games since turning pro due to a nagging right shoulder injury, and/or just forgetting how to shoot a basketball -- depending on who you believe.

Ntilikina vs. Fultz debate00:01:21
Should the New York Knicks stick with Frank Ntilikina or trade for Markelle Fultz? Jon Hein and Maggie Gray debate on SNY's Loud Mouths

It's hard to even compare Fultz to other 2017 draftees, simply because he's felt less like an NBA player and more like the plot of a not-even-that-interesting episode of Arliss. Through 32 career games, he's shot 41.4 percent from the field, 26.7 percent from beyond the arc, and just 53.4 percent from the free-throw line. And that 41.4 percent number exists despite Fultz getting to the rim in the 89th percentile, and finishing in the 69th percentile relative to fellow NBA point guards.

But more important than his inefficiency as a shooter is the fact that he physically shoots the ball like one of those machine learning simulations designed to figure out the most efficient way to perform a task.

VERDICT
As hard as it is to bet on Fultz right now, it's probably still the right move. Despite so far being one of the biggest draft disappointments in recent NBA history, he has actually been decently effective as a finisher at the rim (shooting 60.0 percent in the restricted area) and as a playmaker (3.7 assists to 1.3 turnovers) this season. And like Ntilikina, his ability to force turnovers and make plays in transition combined with his physical tools make him an interesting two-way prospect.

The problem at the moment is that Fultz's game is so one-dimensional that defenses can collapse on him in the paint when he drives and completely ignore him on the perimeter when the ball isn't in his hands. If he could regain even half of the shooting stroke that made him an elite prospect less than two years ago, he would immediately become a valuable contributor on a Sixers team that believes it has a chance to get out of the East this year now that it's acquired All-Star forward Jimmy Butler.

Ntilikina, on the other hand, still lacks offensive polish and will need to improve as both a ballhandler and playmaker, while also improving his jumper, to become a reliable piece moving forward.

Tags: Frank Ntilikina

i would never trade fultz for frank, i wouldn't trade frank unless im getting someone who does what he doesn't in a big way. Why would you trade a struggling guard for another struggling guard

knicks1248 wrote:
i would never trade fultz for frank, i wouldn't trade frank unless im getting someone who does what he doesn't in a big way. Why would you trade a struggling guard for another struggling guard

You'd make the trade because:
a) you've given up thinking you could mold that ball of clay yourself
b) you like your chances of molding that other team's ball of clay more
c) after a year with the player, the Knicks staff has determined that the upside isn't quite as high as what it had envisioned pre-draft.

Fact: neither player can shoot. But... Fultz can get to the rim at a near-elite level. Frank is still extremely mechanical in his approach to take it to the rack.

Frank, at this point, is like the defensive version of Jamal Crawford early in his career. When you hear 6'5+" PG, you think "SIGN ME UP!". But when you realize he can't play PG, he's not quite as valuable. But then you also say, holy crap, now we have a wing player that can't shoot. We're also saying that Dotson is better. Well, as a wing, Dotson might be a better player... but geez, what happened to Frank's court sense and passing? These should still be pluses when he's SG or SF.

Of course, when Fultz was scouted as, say, James Harden-clone, but without the shot, you end up with someone like Jamaal Tinsley - fancy dribble, gets to the rack, has a few good games when the shot is falling, but overall, not an impact player. The thing is if you think Fultz is salvageable and that his "injury" is correctable, he could become everything you envisioned.