Knicks Scouted Kentucky More Than Any NBA Team This Season
The New York Knicks have a huge offseason ahead of them, both in free agency and the NBA Draft. Odds are that the Knicks will have a top-5 lottery pick in the draft which would earn them one of the top prospects.
Expected to be high on the Knicks’ draft board are players like Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell, Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, and Kentucky freshman Karl-Anthony Towns. According to Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, no one watched and scouted Kentucky’s historic 31-0 regular season mark this season more than the New York Knicks:
The Knicks have been very visible in the blue grass state. Perhaps no team watched Kentucky more in person this winter than the Knicks, who will likely select anywhere from one through five in June which would place them in a position to draft either Towns or his athletic 7-foot teammate, center Willie Cauley-Stein.
According to several sources close to the Kentucky program, the Knicks top scout Mark Warkentien has attended nearly a dozen Wildcats practices as the club prepares for the most important decision of the Jackson regime.…
“If you’re looking for a guy that can help you right away, I think Okafor will have a bigger impact as a rookie,” says one NBA executive whose team is expected to have a top 12 pick. “But if you’re an owner and you’re looking for a guy that can change your franchise over the next three years, I’d say Towns.”
Knowing Phil Jackson and his propensities, the top prospects for the Knicks are likely Towns or Okafor. Both possess strong and formidable attributes and both are believed to be fully capable of being successful as NBA bigs.
The Knicks still have to hope that it will be their decision to make between Towns or Okafor when the time comes, but given the reported time invested in Lexington, it seems fair to assume that Towns would be their preference.
