The New York Knicks went wild with team options and no guarantees last summer, so they have the flexibility to free up even more money than it might take to grab Fred VanVleet with a four-year, $ 80 million deal.
It is worth it. He can start the attack, remove it from a standstill (43.9 percent in three catches and shoot) and, as the league leader in game detours, constantly stop the opponent’s offense.
Fred VanVleet is established enough to satisfy the Knicks’ perpetual hunger for current relevance, yet he is young enough (26) to count as an addition to a reconstruction team. The Knicks have not shown much in terms of consistent plans in recent years, but VanVleet would have given them a chance to see how the team performed and then retroactively claim to know what they were doing.