Knicks in '26: The Long Road to Victory Part II
In part one of this look back at the far too many years between Knicks championships, we saw them go from title contenders in the 90's to the laughingstock of the NBA very quickly. We left off in 2009 when the presence of Donnie Walsh in the front office and Mike D'Antoni on the sideline gave Knicks fans a glimpse of hope after a very dark period. Let's break down year by year how those hopes were systematically dismantled, triggering another extended tailspin for the franchise before a savior finally made his way to Midtown Manhattan.
2009-2010
As expected, the Knicks are still a bad team but David Lee is the first Knick named to an All-Star team since Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell in 2001. In other good news, Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari emerge as solid, young building blocks at the forward position that complement each other well. The rest of the roster churns quite a bit for the sole purpose of maximizing cap space. It works, the Knicks enter free agency with more money to spend than they've ever had before and their eyes on the ultimate prize. We also got to see Tracy McGrady play for the Knicks for a couple of months.
2010-2011
I honestly thought it was going to happen. The Knicks had money to burn and Lebron James wore a Yankees hat in public and that's all I needed to believe that he would come to New York and start a dynasty. Turns out I'm a complete moron. Instead, he spurns the Knicks' aggressive pursuit and creates a very hateable superteam in Miami. The Knicks pivot to Amar'e Stoudemire, a legitimate star who can anchor a team in the post. They surround him with a few more solid role players. As far as back-up plans go, it could have been a lot worse. They're not a perfect team, but they're young, fun, and play better than they have in a decade, certainly a playoff team. Then James Dolan decided to stick his fat face into the equation and demanded a mid-season trade for Carmelo Anthony. They give up most of the young core they've been developing and four draft picks. This trade excites most of the fanbase. It doesn't excite me. The Knicks get swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Celtics. Compromised by his incompetent owner, Donnie Walsh resigned after the season.
2011-2012
Following a lockout, the Knicks wisely sign center Tyson Chandler for a shortened season that will start on Christmas Day. Trouble is, they don't have a real starting point guard on the roster. This is a problem until Mike D'Antoni - with nothing to lose - decides to give serious minutes to a relative unknown named Jeremy Lin during a February game against the Nets. The shifty guard scores 25 points off the bench and Linsanity ensues. Lin took the NBA by storm for the next few weeks and gave Knicks fans the only period of unmitigated joy that happened between 1999 and this past spring. We should have known it was too good to be true. He suffered a season-ending knee injury in March. Thanks to Lin's winter heroics the Knicks make the playoffs where they're handled easily in the first round by Lebron James and the Heat.
.jpg)
2012-2013
Just as Linsanity was dying down, Mike D'Antoni resigned as head coach. He must have known something was up. After wasting literally hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on has-beens and never-will-bes to either not play or play terribly when they do, the Knicks decided to not re-sign Jeremy Lin over a few million dollars. Instead, they armed new coach Mike Woodson with a patchwork guard rotation that included Raymond Felton, J.R. Smith, youngster Iman Shumpert, and very old guys Pablo Prigioni and Jason Kidd. Injuries to Stoudemire and his aging frontcourt mates saw that quintet get heavy minutes. This shifted Carmelo Anthony into a power forward role, where he thrived as the best scorer in the league. Miraculously, it all worked. They won 54 games - their highest win total in 16 seasons - and beat the Celtics in the playoffs for their first series win since the turn of the century. In the second round, the Knicks get bodied by the Pacers in six games. What should have been a joyful season, doesn't really feel like one.
2013-2014
It becomes clear that the problem with the previous year's success is that it was all accidental. Woodson was forced to play a small lineup because he had no other choice. The result was a bunch of crafty ballhandlers minimizing turnovers and keeping the ball out of Carmelo's hands until he was in prime scoring position. On the other side of the floor do-everything defensive maestro Tyson Chandler made up for the lack of size and defense elsewhere on the roster. For the Indiana series, Woodson tried to match up with their size directly, seemingly unaware of the reasons for his team's success to that point. The front office was similarly unaware as they traded a bunch of players and a bunch of draft picks for Andrea Bargnani, an uninspiring former first overall pick that was seven feet tall. He misses half the season and the Knicks play like a team with no identity, chemistry, or direction, which they very much are. Humpty Dumpty Dolan caps off the lackluster season by handing Phil Jackson $60 million to take over basketball operations for the Knicks. Many people are very excited about this. I'm not one of them.
2014-2015
Jackson brings in Derek Fisher as head coach, primarily because Fisher played under Jackson when he was head coach of the Lakers and would attempt to have the Knicks play Jackson's trademark triangle offense. Here's the trouble with that idea: Phil Jackson made this archaic strategy work when he was coaching some of the greatest basketball players to ever live. At this point, all it did was make the Knicks look more outmatched and outmanned than they already were. A laughable season ends with the worst record in Knicks history (17 wins). The hope and positivity that existed for the franchise just a few years ago are now officially a distant memory.
2015-2016
In refreshing news, the Knicks acquire some useful players in the offseason. Robin Lopez, Arron Afflalo, and promising rookie Kristaps Porzingis - a 7-foot-3 monster who plays like a shooting guard - are inserted into the rotation. They're still two quarters and a dime short of a dollar. They show improvement compared to the season prior, which was inevitable, but Fisher doesn't make it past the All-Star break. They finish 13th out of 15 teams in the Eastern Conference. They would have been rewarded with the seventh pick in the draft for finishing this low, but it was sent to the Nuggets as part of the Carmelo Anthony trade in 2011. Yay. Being a Knicks fan is very much a fruitless endeavor again.
2016-2017
The Zen Master makes some curious moves heading into the season. He hires a new head coach in Jeff Hornacek, who spent the prior three seasons running the Phoenix Suns into the ground, and swaps out some of those useful players for some less useful, more expensive new ones. He also publicly feuds with Carmelo Anthony and Porzingis - his two best players - throughout the season. But the real story of this forgettable season is an incident that occurred on February 8, 2017. The Knicks were hosting the Clippers at the Garden when halfway through the first quarter TV cameras shifted focus to the crowd behind the basket where Charles Oakley was seen among a sea of security guards, angrily pushing one out of his face. The hoard of guards force an incensed Oakley toward the exits as the Garden faithful chants his name. It's the most excited a Garden crowd will get all season. Of course, this all stemmed from nepo baby Dolan getting his feelings hurt by Oakley, who accurately and appropriately was critical of the franchise when asked by the press. When Oakley showed up to a Knicks game, he activated his henchman like a cowardly comic book villain. Being a Knicks is becoming unbearable again.
2017-2018
After pushing the franchise backwards for three consecutive seasons, James Dolan and Phil Jackson decide to part ways. That means Steve Mills and Scott Perry - two seemingly nice men who have proven to be unremarkable when tasked with building a successful basketball team - will steer the ship for the Knicks. They trade Carmelo Anthony, a player who had been an All-Star every season that he played in New York, even as the team finished way below .500 for five consecutive seasons. That leaves Porzingis as the franchise cornerstone and he makes his first All-Star appearance. It doesn't matter, though. The team finishes just why of 30 wins. At some point during the season, I remember having a conversation with a Sixers fan who commented on Porzingis being a great player to build around. I was quick to tell him how unexcited I was about this because the Knicks would find a way to get rid of him over a few million dollars within the next few years. That's just how they operate. Oh yeah, and Porzingis tore his ACL in February and wasn't even able to play in the All-Star game.
2018-2019
My prediction about the Knicks and Porzingis starts to play out way earlier than I thought. They don't offer him a rookie deal extension - which should have been a no-brainer - because they want an extra $10 million in cap space for next summer's free agent class. He's out for the whole year, but is then traded to the Mavericks in January for a bunch of expiring contracts to make even more cap space. David Fizdale, a young, hip candidate is hired as head coach and charged with trying to navigate a roster completely devoid of talent. The Knicks win 17 games and I'm teetering on not caring about them at all. The only thing keeping me around is a beastly rookie named Mitchell Robinson who plays like he would fit in with the glorious Knicks teams of the '90's.
2019-2020
Heading into the summer the Knicks are armed with the third overall pick in the draft and $74 million to spend on free agents. The headliners of the free agent class are Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. The only person on earth that thinks this dumpster fire of a franchise has even a fraction of a chance at getting these guys is Jimmy Dolan. Instead, they choose to join the Brooklyn Nets, which definitely hurt li'l Jimmy's feelings. The Knicks settle for Julius Randle, a talented, but flawed player and add a handful of overpaid role players. They use their high draft pick on RJ Barrett, a dynamic 19-year old wing out of Duke. Fizdale is gone before the calendar hits 2020 and the Knicks are still a terrible team.
.jpg)
2020-2021
Real change for the better starts to happen. At the end of the prior season, Leon Rose was brought in to run the Knicks' basketball operations. This was a curious choice since his only previous basketball experience was as a player agent, but at least it's something different. In his first order of business he hires Tom Thibodeau as head coach, a former Knicks assistant in the 90's who changed the fortunes of Bulls and Timberwolves as a head coach in recent years behind tough defense and a short rotation. A subpar roster buys into Thibodeau's defensive philosophy and Julius Randle - playing for a new contract - emerges as an All-Star. For the first time in eight years, the Knicks reach the playoffs and get stomped on by the Atlanta Hawks. Randle has a horrible series and after one step forward, I'm just waiting for the two steps back that are coming because this is the Knicks.
2021-2022
The team maintains the defensive identity that Thibodeau requires, but the inevitable Randle regression happens. Offensively, they just can't hang with the rest of the NBA and fall short of the playoffs. However, Leon Rose starts making roster moves with purpose. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, Rose acquires marginal players that will mostly thrive under his head coach while stockpiling draft picks and incremental cap space to set up for the future. The process of building a good roster takes time, effort, and patience. Rose seems willing to put in the time, make the effort, and practice patience. But part of me is anticipating that James Dolan is about to do what he does best: ruin it all before we even get to the good part.
2022-2023
Instead of focusing on a high-profile free agent that has very little chance of actually coming to New York, Rose puts on the full court press to sign Jalen Brunson (someone both he and Thibodeau have known since he was a toddler when his dad was playing for the Knicks). As a Villanova fan, I'm ecstatic. I followed Brunson closely over his three years as a Wildcat, growing from reliable role player to National Player of the Year and collecting two national titles along the way. His NBA career is on a similar trajectory. He improved steadily over four years with the Mavericks and just came off a dominant playoff performance filling in for the injured Luka Dončić. I'm confident he can do great things with the Knicks if the front office doesn't screw it up like they always do. Interestingly, their defense falters throughout the season, but they now have an elite offense led by Brunson. They trade for Josh Hart near the deadline, Brunson's former Villanova teammate. Like the Brunson signing, it's not a high profile move, but Hart gives the Knicks exactly what they need. Also, he's hilarious. The Knicks win a playoff series by doing what the team is actually designed to do! In the second round they face a tough Miami team and Brunson shows that he has another gear. In Game Six, down three games to two, he puts the struggling Knicks on his back and valiantly scores 41 points but falls just short of forcing a Game Seven at the Garden.
2023-2024
In the summer of 2023 Leon Rose makes yet another shrewd mid-level acquisition by signing Donte DiVincenzo who was teammates with Brunson and Hart at Villanova. This makes my heart sing. Just after Christmas, Rose surprisingly deals RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley - two young, productive fan favorites - to the Raptors for OG Anunoby. I'm initially confused by the trade, but two things quickly become clear: (1) OG is an absolute MENACE on defense, he can literally handle any other player one-on-one and consistently erases his teammates' mistakes on that end of the floor, and (2) he fits in seamlessly with the Knicks offense, making sharp cuts to the basket and hitting corner three's. The Knicks win 50 games, Brunson is an MVP candidate, DiVincenzo sets a single-season Knicks record for made three's, and I'm the happiest I've been as a Knicks fan in a long time. In the second round of the playoffs they take on the Indiana Pacers but are missing Julius Randle for the whole series and Anunoby for most of it. They fall in seven games and it feels like the Knicks are one move away from being legitimate title contenders.
.jpg)
2024-2025
That move comes in the form of...ANOTHER former Villanova teammate of Jalen Brunson. This time it's Mikal Bridges, a wiry borderline star that Rose trades five first round draft picks for. For a minute the Knicks seem poised to have four former Wildcats in the rotation, but Rose makes a blockbuster deal just prior to the start of the season. DiVincenzo and Randle are headed to Minnesota in exchange for Karl-Anthony Towns, a big center and perennial All-Star who can shoot the lights out. The trade of depth for star power yields mixed results. They finish with 51 wins and struggle with a young Detroit team in the first round more than they should. Then things get interesting in the second round against the defending champion Celtics. The Knicks suddenly start playing like a battle-tested veteran team and storm back from 20-point deficits in each of the first two games in Boston. They stun the Celtics in six games. It's the first time in my life that I see the Knicks take down a juggernaut in the playoffs. The magic runs out in the conference finals against the Pacers, but we now know this team is capable of slaying giants. Rose fires Thibodeau after the season, which is an odd choice (not good or bad, just odd). I'm still not sure if the Towns trade was one move too many or if he really is the right Robin to Brunson's Batman. I do know that it will be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out...
Comments
Post a Comment