Knicks to give Jimmer Fredette 10-day contract, another NBA chance
The New York Knicks didn’t swing any deals before Thursday’s trade deadline to fill their open roster spot, but on Friday, they decided to round out their roster by reaching down to the ranks of the D-League’s Westchester Knicks and coming back with a familiar face: former national college player of the year and lottery pick Jimmer Fredette.
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When Fredette’s professional journey started, a 10-day call-up wouldn’t have seemed like something to celebrate. But a lot has changed since the Milwaukee Bucks selected him with the 10th overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft before flipping him to the Sacramento Kings.
After rising to superstar status with his long-range-bombing exploits at BYU, the Kings were eager to capitalize on the box-office appeal of “Jimmermania,” but the 6-foot-2 Fredette struggled to make an impact at the next level. He found it more difficult to generate shots against the length and quickness of NBA defenders while often floundering in his attempts to slow opponents on the other end of the floor.
Before long, fellow 2011 draftee Isaiah Thomas — the very last pick of the draft, the so-called “Mr. Irrelevant” — was earning more minutes than Fredette, whose playing time steadily declined over the next two seasons until Sacramento waived him late in the 2013-14 season. The Chicago Bulls picked him up off the waiver wire, in hopes that his long-range shooting might help open up their second-unit offense, but he never really caught on with Tom Thibodeau’s club, logging just 56 minutes over eight appearances before Chicago let him walk at season’s end.
The New Orleans Pelicans took a flyer on Fredette in the summer of 2014, giving him a one-year veteran’s minimum deal to see if he could help give burgeoning monster Anthony Davis more room on the interior. Once again, though, his defensive ineffectiveness — married this time with an inability to get buckets, as he shot just 38 percent from the field and 18.8 percent from 3-point land in 50 games — relegated him to the far reaches of Monty Williams’ rotation, and left him on the free-agent heap come the summer. A 2015-16 training camp deal with the San Antonio Spurs didn’t result in a regular-season job; an early-season return to the injury-wracked Pelicans produced nothing of note before another release, which sent him to the D-League.
The Knicks had reportedly been considering calling up Fredette for several weeks, and decided to pull the trigger after watching him light it up during the D-League All-Star Game at All-Star Weekend in Toronto. Fredette, who turns 27 next week, earned an All-Star berth by averaging 22.6 points, 4.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds and 1.7 steals in 36 minutes per game in Westchester, shooting 48.7 percent from the floor and 42.7 percent from 3-point land. He showed out in the All-Star showcase, taking home MVP honors after pouring in 35 points to lead the East to a 128-124 win:
After his MVP performance, Fredette spoke with Chris Mannix of The Vertical about how his D-League stay has helped him rediscover confidence in the offensive game that had seemed to disappear in recent years. Their conversation starts at around the 18:15 mark of the clip below:
“I think that’s the biggest thing, is that you want to be able to just go out and show what you can do,” Fredette said. “You know, it’s been four years since I really played a lot of basketball in games. I’ve had consistent minutes here this year, obviously, where I’ve been able to play a lot, and in the last four years, they’ve kind of been spotty — I play some here, I play some there — and I just haven’t been able to show what I feel I can provide for a team. I feel like this year I’ve been able to kind of show that, playing in the D-League and have people being able to see what I can do again. Hopefully it’s a positive thing. We’ll see what happens in the future.”
After the Spurs dismissed him last October, an NBA assistant coach who had worked with Fredette told Michael Lee of The Vertical that Jimmer’s problem was that he remained intent, five years into his pro career, on bending an NBA team to his will, like the good old days at Brigham Young:
“Jimmer thinks everybody is stupid,” said an NBA assistant who worked with Fredette. “He thinks everybody needs to come and just turn over their offense and let him shoot it anytime he wants. That’s not how the league works.” […]
“He won’t adjust his game for it,” he said. “He’ll tell you, ‘This is what I did at BYU.’ Well, BYU, that’s a long time ago.”
As Westchester Knicks president and former Knicks star Allan Houston told Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Marc J. Spears, though, that wasn’t the case when Fredette joined the D-League club this season:
“He came in right away with a lot of humility,” Houston told Yahoo Sports. “Early on, he was trying to figure out the system a little. He has acclimated to his teammates and he knew he would have an impact right away. He put a lot on himself early.
“But as time went on, what I’ve been impressed with is how he’s kind of settled in and not had to do so much. He’s been efficient. He’s been productive. His strength is playing without the ball in his hands as much. He’s competing defensively.”
After re-establishing his long-distance shooting touch in Westchester, Fredette knows that this time around he’ll have to earn minutes by proving he really has committed himself to working on that end of the floor, as he told Mannix:
“I definitely have tried to show people I can guard, and that I can go out there and play within the defensive scheme, and be a smart defensive player, and go out there and just fight, and give effort every single night. I think that’s what teams are necessarily looking for. I don’t necessarily have to be out there and be the best defender in the league, but if they know that I can go out there and fight and be competitive on that end of the floor and force the player toward the help and play within a defensive scheme, I think that that’s what teams are looking for.”
It’s certainly what Knicks president of basketball operations Phil Jackson and interim coach Kurt Rambis are looking for, as they try to stem a tide that has seen New York lose 10 of 11 and that cost Derek Fisher his job. It’s extremely unlikely that Fredette will prove to be the on-ball stopper that will turn around a Knicks defense that has ranked 23rd among 30 NBA teams in points allowed per possession since Jan. 1, and it’s very much up for debate whether Rambis would be making a wise decision by giving Fredette minutes over rookie Jerian Grant.
But then, we’re talking about rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship; the Knicks enter Friday’s play five games out of a playoff spot with 27 games remaining and, Rambis’ rallying cries aside, an infinitesimal chance of actually making the postseason. Why not have a little bit of fun on the road to nowhere with a late-season injection of irrational excitement about the star who fell to earth, and who might be staring down his last chance to make it all come together?
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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