For selfish reasons of course we'd like to see the knicks pick higher. We also like to rail on them winning a few games down the stretch as "Stupid".
Nobody saw the sudden end. Knicks seemed to be on track to go very young and let Knox, frank and Dennis along with RJ get big minutes. Mitch was already.

Last 10 games knicks were 4-6.
So were Atlanta and cleveland.
Be thankful we did not over take the Bulls!
Out west the Warriors and the Wolves were 3-7. Losing to ATL had we done that would not have put us behind them. It would have tied us with Detroit. A slight up tick in odds perhaps.
Issue was the pistons were 1-9 their last 10 games. Naturally I would hate to see a reapeat of 2009 were the draft had Steph Curry one spot ahead of us and we missed.
All drafts have their own unique dynamics, this will be not much different.
Regrettable we lost one position due to Pistons tank over those last 10 games.
Over a longer season is it really fair to just look at our win vs. Atlanta and then actually lay blame for not tanking it?

Trading down. Few times has it really worked out.
really bad instance:

Portalnd Acquired: 6th pick (Martell Webster) and 27th pick (Linas Kleiza), 2006 first round pick (Joel Freeland)

Sent out: 3rd pick (Deron Williams)

In contrast to the 2006 trades, this was one of the worst draft day deals in Blazers' history. Portland lost a shot at Williams or Chris Paul so that they could trade down and take Seattleite Martell Webster. Kleiza would be traded for Jarrett Jack later that day, so Portland did gain three rotation players in this deal, but the value of those players paled in comparison to drafting Williams or Paul instead.

Bit of history, this was the "JailBlazers" era and Chris Paul had an "edge". They had sold Webster to fansbase a a great community guy. CP3 PUnched a guy in the nuts during march madness tournament game. His rep then might have been questioned. Deron had an amazing March run with Illinois, got drafted on a good Utah team and had a great career start! Obviously Paul has been a great community guy in the league and Blazers messed up twice. Even taking Deron would have been considered a good pick. WIllams sudden fall on the nets is still a mystery.

There are times when trading down have worked but many it does not. Teams trading up usually do better as we all know!! (Curry/Walsh reference)