Bojan Bogdanovic’s max-effort style will fit right in with Knicks
The first half of the newcomers, you know him, and it’s likely you remember him fondly. Alec Burks will always be a part of the 2020-21 Knicks who fell out of the sky and delivered their greatest season in almost a decade, a 41-31 stunner in which Julius Randle blossomed among a random scattering of players such as Elfrid Payton and Reggie Bullock.
And Burks. Burks was a favorite of the Knicks faithful that year as they were slowly allowed back into Madison Square Garden, and he was a particular favorite of Tom Thibodeau.
“He’s the kind of player, you can ask him to do a lot of things and he does them all quietly and efficiently,” Thibodeau said of Burks late in that 2021 season. “He’s the kind of player that his teammates, they always love when he’s on the floor with them because he’s a pro, he knows exactly where he’s supposed to be, where he’s supposed to go.”
Still, in the Knicks’ best-case scenario this season, Burks’ impact would have a certain ceiling. With everyone healthy, he’s probably the 10th man of a 10-man rotation, called on to spell Jalen Brunson without the offense going completely to pieces, maybe given some more minutes if Brunson is in foul trouble or if Burks seems to be feeling it that night.
Bojan Bogdanovic is 34 and he’s been around the NBA block a time or three. He was technically a member of three NBA teams his first day in the league (traded on draft night 2011 from the Heat to the Timberwolves to the Nets) and the Knicks will be the sixth team he suits up for when he makes his anticipated debut Saturday night against the Pacers — the team for which he blossomed from 2017-19.
The fact that he’s been exiled to Detroit the last two years has been something of a basketball misdemeanor because he has been a key element of fine teams in both Indianapolis and Salt Lake City, praised by teammates, valued by coaches.
“I love playing with him,” Donovan Mitchell, Bogdanovic’s teammate with the Jazz, said in 2020. “When he gets it cooking, you think he might never miss again the rest of his career.”
Quin Snyder, his coach with the Jazz, went even further the following year.
“The thing you heard about him early in his career in the league was that he could shoot,” Snyder said. “But as you’re around him, you realize he can score. His ability to drive and make plays, not just for himself at the rim, but his willingness to be unselfish and create for his teammates when that’s appropriate, there’s a versatility to him.”
More surprisingly, when he was a member of the 48-win Pacers in 2018, when LeBron James was torching everyone trying to guard him in a rough seven-game series with the Cavaliers, it was Bogdanovic that Indiana coach Nate McMillan turned to to try to slow James down. And while he didn’t exactly lock James down, by every measure he was the most effective James defensive deterrent, and spent more possessions guarding him than anyone.
After the series, which ended in a gritty 105-101 Game 7 win for Cleveland that wasn’t settled until the final minute, someone told McMillan after the game that there probably weren’t a lot of people who thought Bogdanovic could guard like that.
McMillan smiled at that.
“Well,” he said, “Bogey didn’t know that, either.”
Of course, the Knicks didn’t acquire Bogdanovic for his defensive prowess. He is a Knick because he can shoot the ball, has always been able to shoot the ball. Since his trade from Washington to Indiana in 2017, he’s a 40.5 percent shooter from 3, and this year playing mostly in witness protection in Detroit he’s been at 41.5 percent.
But that story about guarding James? It also projects to Bogdanovic fitting in nicely with the way the Knicks do business, and the all-for-the-team culture they’ve tried to establish. Thibodeau doesn’t ask players to do what they can’t do, but he does insist they give maximum effort when asked, at both ends of the floor. Bogdanovic does that.
The fact that he might be able to provide Brunson with a more appetizing pass-off option when he’s double-team blitzed, which is how the Lakers beat them last Saturday (with the rest of the league surely taking notes) … well, that’s the main thing. Especially now, with the Knicks looking at playing short for the better part of the next month.
“He’ll always give you whatever he’s got,” McMillan said in 2018.
That’s all the Knicks can ask for.
