Kevin Knox ready for a fresh start with the Detroit Pistons

Kevin Knox celebrated his 23rd birthday on Thursday, yet he enters this NBA season as a veteran. For perspective, he is nearly two full years younger than Kellen Grady but is about to enter his fifth year in the NBA. Knox just inked a two-year, $6 million contract with the Detroit Pistons, which will be his third team in two seasons.

The New York Knicks drafted Kevin Knox at No. 9 overall in the 2018 draft just ahead of would-be stars Mikal Bridges, Shai Gilgous-Alexander, and Miles Bridges. If you exclude Shaedon Sharpe, that makes Knox Kentucky’s only top-10 pick in the last five drafts, as everyone since has fallen further than expected.

The Knicks traded Knox to the Atlanta Hawks in January after relegating him to the end of the bench for much of the last couple of seasons. In Atlanta, it was more of the same, and he entered the offseason as an unrestricted free agent, unsure of his future in the league.

Luckily for him, the Detroit Pistons have been acquiring new assets this offseason like a ’90s kid hyped up on Fun Dip in Toys-R-Us with their mother’s credit card. When they failed to secure a max-contract free agent, they spent their cash on a hoard of middle-of-the-road guys, including another former Kentucky lottery pick in Nerlens Noel.

It will make for a crowded field of competition to see playing time, but the Motor City will provide a fresh start for Kevin Knox, who is a basketball artist in need of a blank canvas.

DEEETROIT BASKETBALL!!!!! #MotorCity ❤️💙

— Kev (@KevKnox) July 1, 2022

Kevin Knox suffered from seasonal regression disorder

For most players in the NBA, the graph of their scoring average from the beginning of their career to retirement looks like a classic bell curve. The size of the bell and steepness of the initial burst might vary from player to player, but in general, most guys see improvement until their prime where the lucky ones will plateau for a few years, and then a slow downturn until they hang up their sneakers for good.

Kevin Knox’s scoring graph looks like a meme stock starting about the time you bought into it: really high and then an immediate, sharp decline.

The former Kentucky prized recruit, whose college highlight was single-handedly saving a hoard of Morgantown coaches from firey destruction when he led the Wildcats to a comeback win over West Virginia in the 2018 SEC-Big 12 Challenge, started off his NBA career strong. He started 57 games for the Knickerbockers and averaged 12.8 points per contest on a respectable 34.5% on 3-pointers, his shot of preference.

In hindsight, this may have been a case where he was a mediocre player on a putrid team, as the Knicks finished just 17-65 on the year.

Once the new head coach, Tom Thibodeau, came on board, Knox did not enjoy the playing time given to him during his rookie campaign. With that, Knox’s scoring has regressed every single year. It dropped by half during his second year to 6.4 points per game and then was nearly cut in half again down to 3.9 points per game. Last season, split between the Knicks and the Hawks, Knox averaged just 3.1 points per game.

Early onset seasonal regression is rare in the NBA, but Kevin Knox caught a severe case of it.

He was only 19 but his mind was younger

Kevin Knox played his first NBA game at the age of 19, but he was just 18 years old when the Knicks drafted him. And if you ask Kentucky head coach John Calipari, he was even younger between the ears.

Cal said this of Knox near the end of Knox’s second season:

“[Kevin Knox] was so young [when he was drafted]. Some guys are even younger than their chronological age, which is young. And guess what? He’s one of those. He was the youngest player in that draft. And he was learning about himself. And I come back to: you’ve got to conquer yourself before you can conquer anybody else.”

John Calipari via SNY

An anonymous Eastern Conference NBA scout echoed this sentiment during Knox’s first year, saying, “He’s 19 going on 17.”

Now he’s 23 going on his fifth NBA season, and with a new team showing him support, it is time for both his mind and game to mature.

Areas where Kevin Knox needs to improve

Tom Thibodeau was not without advice for his struggling lottery pick. The always blunt head coach had this to say:

“His strengths are his strengths. The shotmaking. The areas of his game he has to improve — it’s all the other things. To know you can play well if you don’t shoot well. No one shoots well in every game. There’s other aspects of the game you have to perform well in to help the team win when you’re not shooting well. That’s the challenge — to be an all-around player.”

Thom Thibodeau via New York Post

The stats back up this assessment. At 6’9″, the ability to shoot 3s is a tremendous asset, but that can’t be all a player of that size can do. Out of Knox’s 143 field goal attempts during the 2020-21 season, 62% of them were from deep. This was up from roughly 50% in 2019-20, and last season it climbed to 65%.

Moreover, Knox seemed content in this catch-and-shoot mentality with a limited affinity for play-making, or even simply passing the ball. The same scout who criticized Knox for immaturity backed that statement up by claiming Knox shot on nearly 80% of his touches. Again, his assist numbers back that criticism up.

Similar to seasonal regression in points, his assists suffered a similar pattern, starting at just 1.1 per game during his rookie season and declining each year to just 0.3 per game last year.

It doesn’t get much better in the rebounding department, where Knox (again at 6’9″) has averaged just 2.9 rebounds per game throughout his career.

All of this led New York’s hostile fans and critical media to label him “soft,” something he’ll have to break if he wants to see the court in Detroit. The good news is that he has it in him.

Detroit, Michigan: Land of opportunity

The Detroit Pistons have put together a coalition of intriguing young players who could either catapult the team to a playoff berth or leave them rolling around in the doldrums of the Eastern Conference standings.

They drafted high-ceiling guys, Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren, to go alongside Cade Cunningham, their esteemed selection from last year’s draft. They also added former #2 overall pick Marvin Bagley III, formidable veteran shooter Alex Burks, and the aforementioned Nerlens Noel.

The Pistons also have former Kentucky player (and Knox’s college teammate), Hamidou Diallo, who played well for the team last season off the bench and continues to make a niche for himself in the NBA despite the critics claiming he was too raw coming out of college.

While the roster is deep, it isn’t one that is so stacked Kevin Knox can write off playing meaningful minutes. If he can pair his spread-the-court corner-3 shooting with some aggressive play and the occasional assist, there is a path for him to wriggle into the rotation.

Additionally, he is big and athletic enough to guard 1 through 4 on defense, so the tools are there for a long NBA career if he can properly harness his potential.

To do so, though, he will need to channel the beast Kentucky fans saw against West Virginia when he put up 34 points and sent the Mountaineers back down their country road with their coonskin cap between their legs. Detroit might not quite resemble Morgantown in pretty much any possible way, but it will provide a new bed for him to wake up in, and with it, a fresh start.