Allonzo Trier: The most slept on “Zo” in the NBA
The New York Knicks had inexplicably benched the sophomore Allonzo Trier after a good first year. What does he have to do to get back on the court?
While watching the New York Knicks and the Cleveland Cavaliers play a few nights ago, something stuck out as very confusing to me.
It wasn’t “Why aren’t they winning games?” or “When is Julius Randal going to post up more than three times in a contest?” or even “Is R.J. Barrett going to get tired out from playing so many minutes a game?”
My question was, “What the heck is going on with Allonzo Trier??”
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Allonzo Trier kind of took the league by storm last year. He wasn’t putting up 20 points every game, he was doing his thing though. Averaging 10.9 points in just under 23 minutes per game is no small feat. Especially when that scoring is relatively efficient.
To put it into perspective, out of the 240.2 player minutes the Knicks (as a team) played, Allonzo Trier played in just 9.5 percent of them while accounting for 10.9 out of the 104.6 points they scored, 10.5 percent of their total scoring.
These numbers do not jump off of the page by any means, however, they show that Allonzo was more offensively productive than the average Knicks player getting minutes last year. I can’t think of a good reason to not be playing a second-year player who is keeping up with, if not outperforming the veterans in his position.
Last year, he did get a little bit of a chance but this season it seems the Knicks really do not want him to succeed.
Trier had not seen the court in the past six games until he got seven minutes of garbage time in the 4th quarter against the Raptors. In that game, he scored 10 points on 75 percent shooting. His plus-minus was a 0 in a game the Knicks lost by 28 and were outscored by eight in the opening five minutes of the quarter.
Allonzo actually helped the Knicks compete when he was on the court. He followed up that seven-minute showing with another DNP against the 76ers on Friday night.
When the Knicks are 4-15 through roughly the first quarter of the season, destined for the lottery yet again, it is foolish for them to not be letting this young man develop on the court. It is excusable to be splitting his minutes with Damyean Dotson, but why on earth is 32-year-old Wayne Ellington getting 15 minutes per night while Trier is left to rot? Especially when Ellington is giving the Knicks 5.2 points on 34 percent shooting from the floor.
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The New York Knicks have serious problems they need to address this year. This may not be at the top of the list, but Allonzo Trier has all-star potential and deserves to be on a team that will give him more than seven minutes per game.