This might be a massive overpay for the knics, but this just makes so much sense for the knicks.

Lonzo is still a fantastic defender and very good playmaker. His 3 pointer suffered a bit this past year coming back from injury, and hes far from a consistent healthy dude(which makes this trade more realistic), but he really fits this team perfectly. I'm doing a lot of looking at the current and past finals teams. These teams are full of versatile do it all guys. The guys that can dribble, pass, shoot and defend. Lonzo satisifes all these, and ayo does as well to an extent. Ayo is coming off a bit of an injury riddled season as well, but Idk if he fits the bulls roster with coby and giddy. He really slots more as a 2, especially with how poor defensively giddy and white could be I think they need to find a bigger body for that 3 spot. Josh isn't really that for them, but josh is less of an answer and more about getting assets and realizing that ayo likely isn't the answer(its also about money and not having to pay ayo).

Forget the bulls for now, Knicks can start any of Mitch, lonzo, ayo, or deuce. The knicks are close. I mean, they are a nesmith 6/6 fourth quarter stretch from 3 and an extremely lucky haliburton shot from being in at least game 7 of the ECF at home, and maybe the finals. And thats with what many knicks fans considered a broken and disjointed team. I think adding these 2 guys, even if you lose some "grit", you gain it back plus more in fit and ability.

lastly, the knicks seem likely to bring in a new coach is quite different from thibs. If its Jenkins, he is a guy who goes deep into his rotation, and another thing you will notice from a lot of these top finals teams is internal player development. Pacers and thunder especially, but even boston with pritchard and hauser, nuggets with like all their guys(murray, MPJ, jokic, braun, watson), and suns(even tho they didnt win) with ayton, booker, mikal, and cam. All these teams thrive because of their internal talent that was often gotten from late lottery or late first/second rounders.

The Knicks success is going to depend on the development of young talent, in particular I think that if Hukporti and Dadiet can make leaps this year, we can have 10+ legit rotation players to either play every night or fill in for when injuries happen. Hukporti had already taken over the backup center spot from Precious before going down with a knee injury. Pacome is extremely young, but in the short flashes hes shown hes got a very smooth offensive game, but more excitingly looked very good on the defensive end. With this trade, the knicks rotation looks like this:

Starters: Brunson, Mikal, Og, Kat, Mitch Bench: Lonzo, McBride, Ayo, Nance

This is already a very very good 9 man rotation, and if you add a 3 and d wing and a good defensive and smart center as your 10th and 11th man, you achieve the goal of being a very deep team full of guys that can (mostly) dribble, pass, shoot, and defend around your two stars.