Let’s first establish the bars for the Knicks. We’ll avoid win totals (although 47.5 seems to be Vegas’s favorite over/under) and break it down by postseason success, or lack thereof.
Failure: No playoffs.
Disappointment: First-round exit.
Good: Second-round exit.
Great: Conference finals!
The Knicks aren’t at the point of even considering the Finals, let alone a championship, which speaks to the fan base’s tolerance of incremental success after two decades of trash.
But the expectations are greater. No doubt about it.
“It’s always going to be unfinished business,” Julius Randle said in the offseason. “So we made it to the second round, we have aspirations for obviously bigger and better things. We want to win a championship at the end of the day.”
So what needs to happen for the Knicks to achieve a successful season? We break down five important “ifs” — some of which need to hit — assuming there isn’t a midseason blockbuster trade that alters the calculus:
This is a successful season if … the rest of the East continues to disappoint.
Let’s forget, for a moment, about the Bucks and Celtics. They’re too good for this conversation. They get to board the plane in Group 1 right after the pilots.
This is about Group 2, the tier that sometimes — but only sometimes — gets the extra leg room. That group includes the Knicks.
It wasn’t apparent last season, but the East is deep. Supposedly. The talent is there. A few teams fell off a cliff last season, and it’s hard to imagine that some don’t recover. The Raptors? They lost Fred VanVleet, but still have Pascal Siakam. The Hawks? Trae Young and Dejounte Murray are a formidable backcourt. The Bulls? They’re in a win-now window with Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic. None of those teams made the playoffs last season. It’s hard to see that happening again. Plus, the Cavs, Pacers, Pistons and Magic are young and expected to improve.
Success often is determined by the opposition.
If … the front office allows Thibodeau to coach through problems.
Being around the Knicks, it was apparent over the last two seasons. Palpable. A sense of panic and distress at the first sign of adversity.
Some of it was about Randle’s behavior. But there were moments when Thibodeau’s job was in jeopardy. He managed to rise above last season and elevate the team into the second round. But it’s not an environment that fosters success and security. There will be ups and downs. Thibodeau has demonstrated he’s capable of adjusting and pushing through. So let that happen.
“One thing Thibodeau is great at is he will make sure that you’re getting the most of what you have,” Bob Myers, the former Warriors GM and current ESPN analyst, said Monday. “Some might say, well, of course, that’s obvious. I think he’s one of the best in the league at getting the most out of his players and the most out of each regular-season game. He coaches every game like it’s a playoff game, and I think that works well in that market, that kind of effort.”
If … the “good” Julius Randle shows up.
We’ve experienced the two sides. We’ve seen the disasters — in 2019-20 and 2021-22 — and the All-NBA selections in 2020-21 and 2022-23. The Knicks obviously need the Julius Jekyll version. It’s non-negotiable when determining whether this will be a successful season. Obviously a key to that is avoiding injuries. The other thing is Randle’s 3-point shot. If he’s hitting it, Randle is effective and in a good mood. If he’s missing, get ready for Julius Hyde.
If … the youngsters continue to develop.
It was pretty remarkable. Take out Obi Toppin — who was traded in the summer anyway — and every single Knick in the rotation was better last season than they had been the previous season.
Some, such as Immanuel Quickley and Jalen Brunson, made remarkable progress. Others, such as Mitchell Robinson and RJ Barrett, were incrementally better. It’s tough to expect that again from the full roster.
But it’s not impossible. Every player in the rotation is 28 or younger. These are prime years. We’re expecting the biggest jump from Quentin Grimes.
If … the Knicks continue to benefit from exceptional health.
We hate to state the obvious, but the Knicks have been fortunate. Perhaps a bit too fortunate. Their best players — Randle, Barrett and Brunson — were mostly available last season. Two members of their second unit — Quickley and Isaiah Hartenstein — played at least 81 games each. Other than Toppin, there were zero players who underwent surgery last season (not coincidentally, Toppin was the only rotation player who regressed).
Maybe it caught up with the Knicks in the playoffs, when Brunson, Randle, Quickley and Josh Hart were all banged up. But for the most part, they were more durable and more willing to play than the competition. One long-term injury to an important player changes everything.
What’s the preseason so long ‘four’?
The Knicks’ preseason finished Wednesday and, frankly, I’m surprised by how little they regarded it. There were four games and the starters only played real minutes in one of them.
And in that one game, the Knicks played at half-speed on defense and gave up 131 points to the Wizards.
So my final impression on the preseason is a question: What are we doing here? Or, what’s the point?
Asked to sum up the preseason, Jalen Brunson cut to the chase.
“It’s over,” he responded.
In the first preseason game, the Knicks’ opponent, the Celtics, sat all their starters. In the third preseason game, the Knicks didn’t even bring their starters to Boston. They stayed home. Again, what’s the point?
A smart basketball man pitched this idea to me on Wednesday night at MSG, and I agree: Cut the preseason schedule to two games per team and start the regular season a week earlier.
At the low cost of cutting away increasingly wasted time and travel in the preseason, that would help ease the problem of back-to-backs during a condensed regular season.
A no-brainer for the NBA.
Except … there’s money involved. I’m sure the NBA doesn’t want to give up revenue and ticket sales from two extra games per team. And if you think these exhibitions don’t draw crowds, check out MSG. It was packed for all three home games
Want to catch a game? You can find tickets for all upcoming Knicks games here.
Making NBA math more manageable
As us media members and you fans are increasingly infatuated with playing armchair GMs, the details of player salaries and cap exceptions have become just as imperative to consuming sports as the numbers on the back of the card used to be.
Nothing is too nerdy anymore (I hate that everything is presented as a math equation in sports nowadays, but that’s another story).
With that in mind — and with a successful venture in hockey as the blueprint — a team of four Canadians (including three brothers) recently launched a website for tracking NBA salaries: SalarySwish.
It follows their popular website for the NHL, CapFriendly, which grew into the No. 1 site for hockey fans interested in the team salaries and the league CBA.
“During the 2019 NBA playoffs, we decided that basketball would be fun to do,” said Jamie Davis, the programmer for SalarySwish. “And the reason for that was the Raptors fever that swept over all of Canada.
“We were all watching as a team every game, watching the championship run. And during that process, we said, ‘Why don’t we read more into the CBA?’”
That task was delegated to Ryan Davis, 37, who, as a day job, fixes helicopters as an aircraft maintenance engineer. Another important aspect of building out SalarySwish was cultivating private NBA intel for accurate salary and trade information.
Accuracy and credibility are paramount in their business.
“Through the hockey side, we’ve built a network over the years of various sources, and we’ve leveraged that network to begin a network on the basketball side as well,” said Jamie, 33, who left his gig as a university research engineer in 2018 to focus on the websites. “And through those connections we’ve built over time and the trust that we’ve built on the hockey side, we’ve been able to leverage that to similarly build a network on the basketball side. And that’s where we’ve been able to get that information.”
SalarySwish has plenty of competition in the NBA, most notably Spotrac, which expertly handles multiple sports. Jamie Davis said SalarySwish is separated by its interactive and browsing features, including for upcoming free agents, contract comparables, the different signing methods and a calculation of a player’s cost per point scored.
There’s a market for this stuff.
“Hockey is the bee’s knees in Canada, of course,” Jamie Davis said. “But it’s not even close to as popular in the States and basketball is much, much more popular. We’re seeing it already in our traffic stats for the website.”
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