The Knicks have signed enough role players now, and have certainly set some kind of world’s record for signing ex-Villanova Wildcats. The Knicks found themselves a real and appealing star last season, if not a superstar, in Jalen Brunson. They even managed to win a playoff series, something they have now done exactly twice in this century, which means in the century when James L. Dolan has become the face of the executive suite at Madison Square Garden, and who knows more about facial recognition than Jimmy?
The Knicks play hard for Tom Thibodeau. Twice in the last three seasons they’ve been in the 4-5 first round series in the Eastern Conference. But the question Knicks have to ask themselves as another Knicks season is about to begin is this:
When is this enough for a fan base that has been waiting almost as long for a title as Jets fans have?
Or maybe the real question to ask about the Knicks, under Dolan and quiet man Leon Rose, is this:
Where are they going this season, north or south, and that doesn’t mean up Eighth Ave. or down Seventh?
It is without question that the Knicks have established themselves as a nice, middle-class team under the leadership of Rose and Thibodeau and William Wesley, the great and mysterious Wizard of Oz at The Garden. And they did play the Heat, who went on to the NBA Finals, a very hard series in the second round last spring before final losing by four points in Game 6 in Miami.
It is also an absolute fact that Rose has only been on the job as Dolan’s top basketball executive since March of 2020, which is not a lifetime in professional sports, but is still a long time.
The Knicks seem, at least for the time being and perhaps for the foreseeable future, stuck in the middle of the Eastern Conference. They’re not where Phil (The Thrill) Jackson left them when he became Dolan’s basketball savior-in-chief, which means nowhere. They’re no longer one of the NBA’s lost franchises, which they were under Jackson and the way they once were under a basketball confidence man named Isiah Thomas.
But where are the Knicks, exactly, going into a season when two Eastern Conference teams — Bucks, Celtics — are considered co-favorites to win an NBA title? Are they better than the Heat, or Cavs, or even the Nets? And by the way? Chris Young took over the Texas Rangers the same year that Leon Rose took over the running of the Knicks. You know where the Rangers are going? They’re going to a World Series that opens in their ballpark on Friday night.
The Knicks haven’t played for the title since 1999. They are moving up on having gone as long without winning a title as the Rangers did before June of 1994, another time the Knicks made it to the Finals. We know that Knicks fans are forever. They continued to pack the Garden through all the losing, and all the times when Dolan raised ticket prices. But in a world where you are either moving towards the big trophy or away from it, who looks at this Knicks team, as young and athletic as it is, and sees it making even the conference finals this season? Or next?
Who sees them going toe-to-toe with the Bucks of Giannis and Chris Middleton and Damian Lillard, or the Celtics of Jayson Taytum and Jaylen Brown and Kristaps Porzingis and now Jrue Holliday, who may help the Celtics more than Lillard is going to help the Bucks? It’s a lot of question marks, I know. So, too, are the 2023-24 Knicks, who could make a move up to No. 3 in their conference, or go the other way if anything ever happens to Brunson.
Somehow there was this fever dream around here, because there always a fever dream like it with the Knicks, all the way back to LeBron, that Giannis was somehow going to end up at the Garden. He wasn’t, even before he signed that $186 million extension with the home team. Now the next longshot dream is Joel Embiid, who looks around at his immediate future in Philadelphia and wakes up one morning and decides he’s the one who wants to go play somewhere else, and the somewhere else is 33rd Street, New York City.
Again: Brunson is terrific, and should have been an All-Star last season. Julius Randle, as head-scratchingly inconsistent as he can be, has already been an All-Star. RJ Barrett, a former No. 3 pick in the draft, is still a work in progress, though he still doesn’t turn 24 until next June. Josh Hart, ex-Villanova Wildcat, is a high-level role player, you bet, and Donte DeVincenzo, also ex-Villanova Wildcat, is going to be a crowd favorite at the Garden, almost without question.
The Knicks still need a superstar. As good as Brunson is, you saw the difference between him and Jimmy Butler last spring when the money was on the table. The Knicks need someone like Embiid, or Luka Doncic or — don’t laugh — Ja Morant, the player the Grizzlies drafted right before the Knicks took Barrett in that same draft. The whole world knows how Morant looked like an idiot last season, as he seemed almost drunk with pride being an idiot waving around guns. Maybe he won’t be anything more than that. Or maybe he’s learned a lesson before blowing what should be a promising career, the way Latrell Sprewell once did at the Garden.
The Knicks are an appealing team. They are. They’re going to be fun to watch. But, in the words of the great Al McGuire, when do they move uptown?
Mike Lupica
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