New York Knicks Should End Charade, Pull Plug on Andrea Bargnani for Good

After more than a year of pretending there's been something to glean or salvage from the relationship between Andrea Bargnani and the New York Knicks, it's time for one of the NBA's biggest charades to finally end.

No matter what.

Bargnani and the Knicks have always been a poorly planned mismatch borne out of the latter's impulsive practices and passion for splashy transactions. The Knicks never should have traded for the 7-footer, let alone give up a first-round draft pick in the process. And after inexplicably dealing for him, they never should have let the marriage evade divorce for this long.

Alas, Bargnani is still on the roster, and the Knicks are left searching for a merciful end to an experiment that's long past meeting its predictable doom. Per ESPN.com's Marc Stein and Ian Begley:

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The New York Knicks are actively trying to trade veterans Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani as part of their ongoing roster clear-out, according to league sources. ...

Sources say Bargnani is a candidate to be waived next month if New York can't find a deal for the former No. 1 overall pick and his $11.5 million expiring contract.

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Trading Bargnani would make the most sense. But it's also the least likely scenario. Waiving him is the more plausible course of action.

"First things first: No one is trading for Andrea Bargnani," writes ProBasketballTalk's Brett Pollakoff. "He’s barely played this season and last due to injury, and while his contract is expiring, the Knicks wouldn’t take back similar salary unless they were able to acquire someone they viewed as part of their long-term plans."

Teams aren't likely to trade for players who have logged just 22 minutes midway through the season. Bargnani's past penchant for missing time also eradicates any value he might have. The 29-year-old has missed at least 35 games in each of the last four seasons, including this one.

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Since joining the Knicks, in fact, Bargnani has played just 1,279 total minutes—the exact same number Wesley Matthews has registered for the Portland Trail Blazers through 38 appearances this season alone. Bargnani has also logged more than 600 fewer minutes since 2012-13 (2,282) than the injury-prone Amar'e Stoudemire (2,887).

Scarce availability all but nixes the idea of Bargnani being traded for his on-court value.

Uneven career performances take care of the rest.

With the exception of this season and its two-game, 22-minute sample, only three of Bargnani's teams have posted better point differentials per 100 possessions with him on the floor, per Basketball-Reference.com: The 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2011-12 Toronto Raptors. Only one of those squads (2006-07) finished with an above-.500 record.

Part of Bargnani's skill set has even been mythologized. He's often viewed as a floor-spacing big man, yet it's been five years since he's buried at least 35 percent of his three-pointers, and he's shooting just under 43 percent between three and 16 feet for his career.

Any illusions to his potential offensive impact were destroyed last season. The Knicks ranked 19th in offensive efficiency through their first 42 games, per NBA.com, before Bargnani injured his elbow. They closed 2013-14 without him, recording the league's fourth-best offensive rating through their final 40 contests, ahead of legitimate contenders like the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder and Miami Heat.

Bargnani, then, is only a trade asset insofar as teams value the salary-cap relief he offers. Yet he only promises financial flexibility if the acquiring organization is dumping longer, unwanted contracts in return.

Think along the lines of the injured Deron Williams, whom the Brooklyn Nets are trying to move, according to Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski. If the Knicks come calling with a package built around Bargnani's expiring deal, the Nets might be willing to part with the two years and $43.4 million remaining on his contract after this season.

And that's fodder the dollars-counting Knicks won't covet.

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Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith have already been shipped out to preserve salary-cap space for the upcoming free-agency class. Jose Calderon, whom Phil Jackson traded for only months ago, now also finds himself on the chopping block.

"Our desire is to improve our ability to compete," Jackson said in a team press release, per the Knicks' official site, following the Smith and Shumpert salary dumps. "In addition, these transactions improve our flexibility to the current roster and the salary cap for future seasons."

Cap space has long been the Knicks' primary building block, even with the value of their 2015 first-rounder increasing with every loss. Flipping Bargnani jeopardizes their spending power this summer and beyond, a risk the Knicks can only take if incoming players fit into their long-term agenda—which, again, they probably won't.

To put it even more succinctly:

That leaves the Knicks with one of two options: Pay Bargnani to take up real estate on the bench, or pay him to go away.

Keeping him is the easiest solution. The Knicks are under no obligation to play Bargnani and can prevent him from signing with another team and making an (unlikely) impact on their dime.

But retaining him also furthers an unnecessary distraction.

Jackson already hinted in December that players were growing antsy, almost resentful, about Bargnani's continued absence, per Begley. Such griping should subside now with the Knicks in flagrant tear-down mode, but the problems with his mere presence go beyond even his teammates.

Bargnani has become something of a novel scapegoat among the fanbase. He's ridiculed for his lack of off-ball and help defense and remains a lingering side effect of the previous regime—the one that treated first-round draft picks like disposable income.

In the most recent display of fan frustration, Bargnani's baby picture was booed upon being shown on the scoreboard during the Knicks' 110-82 loss to the Charlotte Hornets, per the New York Post's Marc Berman. Leaving him on the roster invites more of those reactions, which is unfair to Bargnani himself, who is merely a symptom of previous, ill-conceived times.

Cutting the cord also safeguards head coach Derek Fisher against the temptation to play him. Bargnani is currently nursing a sore calf, but if and when he's healthy, he commands playing time that's better given to someone else—say, Cole Aldrich—who can actually work their way into New York's future plans.

Plus, this isn't a Josh Smith-type situation. Waiving Bargnani is more like exercising the amnesty clause at this stage. He won't count against New York's books in the upcoming years. They simply pay him, and then carry on as planned.

Losing players for nothing in return is, admittedly, never ideal, but the Knicks—they of little leverage—are at that point.

John Minchillo/Associated Press/Associated Press

“I wake up in the night thinking about how I can help this team out,” Jackson said, via The New York Times' Zach Schonbrun. “Thinking about what’s different, what we could do to be different.”

Any number of things could be different for the league-worst Knicks. But with fortunes-turning differences out of the question until at least this summer, they can only control what's within the realm of possibility.

Ending the Bargnani era is within that limited domain. And while his departure won't solve everything—or even anything—it does give the Knicks an opportunity to move on from a self-inflicted mistake they never should have made in the first place.

*Statistics courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com unless otherwise cited.

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