It is probably a little greedy for Knicks fans to ask Obi Toppin to show up in a couple of weeks and be an instant megastar, the way Kareem was back in the day, or Magic, or Shaq. That isn’t realistic, so it’s silly to even speculate. For all his accomplishments at Dayton, Toppin remains a growth stock. His future is far more intriguing than his present.
You know what’s a reasonable goal for Toppin, and for the people who will latch their hopes onto his engine with the furious fervor of true believers?
For some other fan base — in Utah or Denver, in Miami or Minneapolis — to look up some day soon, look at Obi Toppin, and see the same things, say the same things, that Knicks fans have said in recent years when they’ve discovered Jamal Murray on a late-night TNT game, when they’ve marveled at Donovan Mitchell on an ESPN game, when they’ve ogled Tyler Herro on an NBA TV telecast.
“Damn,” you want those out-of-town fans to mutter to themselves. “I knew he was good.”
“But this good?”
You want that envy. You want that jealousy, because you know it well, you’ve let it fill you on the many nights when you see young stars elsewhere, doing wonderful things, filling other basketball cities with the kind of hope New York City now craves. Surely Toppin can be that.
Surely there can come a day when a fan in Cleveland or Charlotte or Detroit or Atlanta watches him play, looks up his page on basketball-reference.com, and asks: “We could’ve gotten him first?”
“Yeah, we were surprised,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said Tuesday, recalling draft night as one player after another fell off the board and Toppin was still there for them at No. 8. “We liked the position we were in and we thought it might be a possibility. We thought there was one other team that could be in the way.”
But there wasn’t. Toppin was there. And now he is here. And as this 2020 season dawns, he will be one of the things Knicks fans will hold close, alongside the continued development of RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson, alongside the hopeful wish that one or several of their enigmatic youngsters — Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr. — or their equally puzzling newcomer veterans — Austin Rivers, Nerlens Noel — can yield a surprise.
But Toppin is the focus right now, because Toppin is the one so many of them saw torch college basketball last year, enjoying a storybook run right up until the pandemic robbed Dayton’s Flyers a chance to write an otherworldly final chapter. Toppin is the one who reported for work as quickly as he could get here, who has already impressed with his work ethic in individual sessions.
“I’ve really been connecting with him,” said Barrett, whose workout times coincided with Toppin’s. “Great dude, he’s a hard worker for sure. Very talented, very athletic, very versatile. Exciting to have him on our team. I feel like we’ll play well together.”
Said Thibodeau: “We liked the fact that we felt he would be ready to play right away. I think the big thing for him was the shooting piece of it, the way he can stretch the floor, we think that will be a big plus for us. Of course, the defensive part is something we have to work on. And we have to do that as a team. But I think his ability to play multiple positions, his ability to put the ball on the floor and make plays, I think that’s a big asset in today’s NBA.”
That is the hope, anyway. That is the dream. Knicks fans have watched too many out-of-town games across too many years with envy, wondering why the sleeper always winds up somewhere else, why the surprise always lands a thousand miles away. Why not Obi Toppin? Why not the Knicks? Why not now?