One of the largest trades made before the 2024 NBA trade deadline was the New York Knicks’ acquisition of Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanovic from the Detroit Pistons. Both are championship-caliber starting players and would join a Knicks team that was looking to solidify its place among the NBA’s elite teams.
Unfortunately, injuries have prevented this from coming to fruition to this point. The Pistons’ losses followed Burks and Bogdanovic to the Big Apple, with New York going 3-7 with them on the roster.
Both have been thrust into sizable roles given the number of key contributors sidelined. Burks takes on much of the ball responsibility when he enters the game and Bogdanovic has been relied upon as a scoring option.
Those roles will change once the Knicks are healthy, which they hope happens sooner rather than later. Getting comfortable with a new team mid-season is difficult, but there was some hope that Burks would adapt quickly given that he had spent two seasons prior playing with Tom Thibodeau in New York.
Unfortunately this was not the case. In most cases, every time Burks enters the game, the team’s performance collapses. Burks has finished with a positive/minus positive ratio in just three games thus far, as his on-court performance has been disappointing.
As shared by Tommy Beer on X , 169 players have averaged at least nine shots per game in the NBA since the trade deadline. Burks is one of those players, and his 42% true shooting percentage is dead last.