The Knicks had dreams of going to Las Vegas and playing in the NBA’s In-Season Tournament semifinals. Reality got in the way.
New York’s goal was to win the NBA Cup and use it as a platform to be a championship contender. The Knicks had that opportunity against the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night, but the team confronted reality. Not only were they not good enough to beat the Bucks, 146-122, but they’re not good enough to be an NBA championship contender.
The roster is the same as last year’s, for the most part. In the offseason, New York signed Donte DiVincenzo, but he’s a bench player who’ll play limited minutes. So, the bottom line (odds tell us) is that the Knicks will be a reasonably capable regular-season team that can be good enough to get into the playoffs and perhaps get past the first round if the matchup is right. But that’s it.
Anyone who thought they could defy the odds was fooling themselves, and that conclusion was patently evident against the Bucks. The Knicks had no one to stop or slow down Giannis Antetokounmpo, who scored 35 points on the night, and the team couldn’t defend against the 3 (the Bucks made 23 on Tuesday night). It’s not as simple as saying it wasn’t the Knicks’ night, and everything went right for the Bucks.
What happened Tuesday happens just about every time the Knicks play an elite team. The stats say 2-8 in 2023-34 when facing plus-.500 teams. It’s Jalen Brunson and a bunch of inconsistent players; that’s what the Knicks are. Unless the Knicks point guard puts on a standout performance, the team is hard-pressed to beat an elite team. Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes, Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, and DiVincenzo are consistently inconsistent, and that’s a sorry situation for Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau.
In big moments, the Knicks need a player capable of complementing Brunson, but they don’t have such a player.
Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose had a chance to upgrade his roster in the offseason, and he should have signed Anthony Towns, who’s playing these days like an MVP candidate for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Imagine Brunson executing the pick-and-roll with Towns. They could also use another serviceable point guard who can spell Bruson instead of playing him 45 minutes per game.
The Knicks knew they needed to improve the roster but decided they’d bet on an improving Grimes and Quickley. And as good as Barrett is, does anyone think he will elevate the Knicks when it counts? It boils down to the old saying — Hope is not a strategy.
Okay, we can comfort ourselves that it’s only December, and there’s plenty of time left. But what seems likely is a repeat of the last two years–beat the awful and mediocre teams and lose to the elite teams. And that makes me wonder why so many fans are excited about the Knicks. I don’t get it.
I grew up in the ’90s when the Knicks were contending for championships. New York was considered a failure in those days if it didn’t meet those standards. Even then, it had been a long time between championships, and today, the length has stretched to a half-century.
That’s one of the big reasons Tuesday’s loss figures to be bigger than it otherwise might be. It tells us we shouldn’t get excited about this team, a conclusion reinforced by last night’s 10-point loss to the Celtics, which (in contrast) was Boston’s tenth consecutive home win.
It looks like another long season at The Garden.
