Basketball is not a sport, it's a way of life.
#4 in the LBB team rankings
What a wild ride the last 365 days have been for New York. This is a franchise that has completely remade itself, and in doing so, has bet bigger than any other team in the league going into the season. On paper, the moves make a lot of sense, but we know games aren’t won based on profiles, they're won based on fit. New York has a chance to be as good as anyone in the league over the next few years, and with Jalen Brunson, they have the type of gritty superstar that any team would kill for. Still, it’s a lot of new pieces that all have to figure out their place and fit, so it’ll be interesting to see how the whole image comes together this season.
#4 New York Knicks
Record: 50-32 (tied-6th), 2nd in East; 95.56 Pace (30th); 117.3 Offensive Rating (7th); 112.4 Defensive Rating (9th); 4.9 Net Rating (5th)
Total Salary Cap Allocations: $185,351,521 (12th)
Cap Space: $-44,763,521 (19th)
Current Roster: Precious Achiuwa, OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Jalen Brunson, Pacome Dadiet, Josh Hart, Tyler Kolek, Miles McBride, Chuma Okeke, Cameron Payne, Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet, Jericho Sims, Karl-Anthony Towns, T.J. Warren
Single Word Description: Reconfigured
Biggest Positive: Organizational Buy-In
Look, it’s incredibly difficult to get a large group of grown men to agree on anything. If any of you out there has had the displeasure of organizing a bachelor party, you know what I mean. Hell, if you’ve attended a bachelor party, you know what I mean. You’ve got the cheap friends that will meet up once dinner is over, the chaste friends who will be leaving before the after-dinner festivities, and the broke friends who will attend it all, then quibble over every cent they owe for the night’s indulgences. That’s to say nothing of the friends who will likely disappear for various intervals throughout the course of the proceedings.
An NBA front office is governed by fairly similar dynamics. I mean, less steak and legs and more fast breaks and, well, still legs, but it remains a collection of grown men far too divergent in their concept of a good time, brought together around the focus of what should be a common goal. In this strained analogy, the goal for the bachelor party is a final bacchanalian sendoff into wedded civility. In the basketball sense, it’s getting the organization centered around the goal of a run at a title.
While a wealth of franchises struggle with incongruities that mire the required shared vision to become a title contender, the Knicks seem to be a teacher’s dream—eyes all straight ahead. Remember, this is the same franchise that spent over two decades perpetually burdened by the overzealous input of its onerous owner, James Dolan. But over the last few years, as he’s slunk back into the darker areas of the Garden’s bright lights, the Knicks have felt like the most cogent version of themselves since the Pat Riley "Blood in the Garden" teams of the ’90s. This is a unit with an identity of toughness, executed by their clear-cut leader and superstar, lived and breathed by their head coach, and tailored to by their President of Operations, Leon Rose, and his staff. This offseason was a perfect example of this very notion, as the organization went all out to build a roster that makes sense for the franchise’s current identity. Now, we can quibble over whether we agree with those decisions fitting that mold, but few teams have the gumption to make the type of moves New York has over the last year, and that is in large part because it seems as though everyone is buying in to what is being built.
Biggest Negative: Depth
Last season, one of New York’s greatest strengths was its depth. That depth was part of how they could afford to trade two of their top six rotation players for OG Anunoby, and how they managed to nab the second seed in the Eastern Conference even though they only got 46 games out of Julius Randle. Hell, that depth is even how they continued to compete at a high level into the second round of the playoffs, despite jettisoning part after part of their roster like they were the Apollo 13 on re-entry. Of course, last season eventually ended with the Knicks crashing to earth after succumbing to enough injuries to make even Deadpool tap out, but it was still amazing how much production New York was able to get from their players while going as deep as their ninth and tenth man by season’s end.
Now, after an offseason that saw the departure of Isaiah Hartenstein and an ostensible consolidation trade for KAT, along with contending with the ever-present health concerns of Mitchell Robinson, the Knicks' depth has gone from a strong statement to a big question. This is particularly true when you add in the injury concerns with Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby. After being a veritable Iron Man and playing all 82 games in the first three seasons of his career—and averaging 81 games through his first four years in the league—Towns has only played more than 65 games once in his last five seasons (77 in ’19) and has averaged just 50 games a season over that span. Not to be outdone, Anunoby has played more than 70 games just once in his entire career, playing 74 in his rookie season, and has only averaged 52 games a season over his last five years. Perhaps he was just taking advantage of the superior healthcare up North, but the nagging issues that plagued him last season seem to be a constant for the 27-year-old.
The injury history of the Knicks' players would be worrisome on its own, but the fact that Thibs’ demanding style of play tends to stretch players physically does not bode well. Particularly when the bench, as it currently stands, looks heavily reliant on Miles McBride—who I really like, but I think is best situated as a seventh or eighth man—and Cameron Payne, whose personality is perfectly suited to New York, but whose playing style is perfectly suited for “use only in case of emergencies.” Even with reasonable injury luck, which is never what you get out of a Tom Thibodeau-led team, New York’s bench options are not imposing. Obviously, with such a top-heavy roster, Coach Thibodeau will look to split minutes and allow KAT, Anunoby and Bridges opportunities to be the offensive hub with the second unit at times, but this remains a roster with only six or seven players that would log heavy rotation minutes on most teams in the league.
What’s Next: More Dealing, Somehow
This Knicks team isn’t a finished product. Despite having made four substantial deals over the course of less than a year, it seems very likely that New York still has a couple more deals up its sleeve. They have been rumored to be interested in Marcus Smart, and we know they are looking to shore up their depth by dangling Mitchell Robinson to anyone who is interested. I expect New York to continue their recent trend of hyperactivity and likely make a couple more moves to buttress the roster’s depth as the season progresses.
What They Shouldn’t Do: Exactly What We Know They Are Going To
I met Tom Thibodeau once, four summers ago. I was walking with my father, who worked with Tom for several years in Chicago, when we happened upon him circling the concourse at Las Vegas Summer League. There was a perfunctory introduction and a cordial but quick interaction before we all went our separate ways. Coach was pleasant—at the time, he wasn’t working with a team, so his shoulders weren’t strained under their typical two inches of loft, and he seemed at whatever version of ease he is capable of attaining. (I imagine ease comes to Thibs like touching your toes comes to an NFL left tackle—immensely strained and never fully achieved.) But there was an intensity. A sense of being—surely informed by my having watched him stalk sidelines for the better part of a decade—that I think is a permanent fixture in anything he does.
I say all this only to preemptively undercut my own wishes here: The Knicks should not treat the regular season like it matters as much as they will.
Thibs coaches every game like it’s a must-win, conducts every practice like it’s the most important, and expects his players to do much the same. To be a Thibs guy, there is a level of competitive intensity that must be ingrained in a player. New York has been smart about identifying many of those players, but that experience still has a way of exhausting energies—both physical and emotional—over the course of eight months.
This New York team is as well set up for a deep playoff run as any Thibs has coached, but he has to manage a fragile balancing act with a roster that is shallow and with players that are quite injury-prone. His history here isn’t great, as Thibodeau both extracts and demands the most out of his players. Throttling back during the regular season for the sake of maintaining focus on the ultimate prize feels like a new act that he may or may not workshop this season. But for the Knicks to be the team that they need to be—in terms of health and conserving energy for a deep playoff run—Thibs will have to find a way to lighten the burden over the course of a long 82-game season.
Is There Hope?: Yeah, Although…
This Knicks team feels like the NBA equivalent of a Bio-Dome. No, I don’t mean the movie with Pauly Shore and the craziest of the Baldwins (which is really saying something). I mean the actual scientific experiment that is so reliant upon perfect conditions for success. If New York finds prudence during the regular season and keeps their core intact for a playoff run, this group—particularly as rosters get shallower and the game gets slower and more defensively dependent—is as good a title contender as the league has. But if the stereotypical injury concerns take hold, this whole thing could be a house of cards quickly toppling in on itself.
That doesn’t mean New York has to win a title this season. The beneficence of Jalen Brunson allows this team to have a solid runway of roughly three seasons if they play their cards right. However, New York is in a title drought that has now lasted more than five decades, in a city not known for its patience, and covered by a media market that could turn a zit into a mountain. How this season looks—whether all the high-risk moves were in the service of a better product—will matter immensely for the team going forward.
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