Knicks Morning News (2023.10.07)

I think the idea that you need a superstar or a super team to win it all doesn’t necessarily hold true right now. We’ve had 5 different title winners in the last NBA finals. There aren’t any dynasties right now. It doesn’t feel like we’re in an era where a team needs a top 5 player and another all-star or two to win it all. A really well balanced team with several all-star caliber players and great supporting cast that is better than the sum of it’s parts could win it all. And we’ve got a team that has so much room for internal growth that if we got lucky and several of our young players took a big leap forward at once…we could break through and win it all.

I agree with all this.

However, to contend this way, imo, you can’t have any obvious team weaknesses. We still have clear weaknesses.

The spacing is still not right in the starting lineup with RJ, Randle, and Mitch starting.

RJ is too inefficient as 3rd option. You can settle for below average efficiency if the player is low usage and you are loaded on offense elsewhere as long as he’s having an impact in other ways. But you can’t have low efficiency as 3rd option for a guy that’s suspect on defense and brings no other above average attributes to the table.

On defense you can get away one bad defender. For us, that’s going to be Brunson. But when you have 2-3 it’s starts compounding into bigger problems. We don’t get consistent defense from either Randle or RJ also.

I don’t want to dump on RJ because I think he’s going to keep improving and may eventually be a good player, but IMO the difference between the team we saw last year and a serious contender is getting that longer wing that plays both sides better than RJ.

If we had a player like that the Knicks would be on my list of teams to bet to win it all. But I’m not sure management quite gets the problem. Every time we hear names that they are hot for it some superstar player that isn’t exactly going to correct what ails this team. It’s just going to make us better in some area.

We need a taller wing that defends at a very high level, that can play some backup PF if we go small, and that can score efficiently at a 3rd option level.

Gee I wonder who that might be?

There’s a chicken or egg debate as to whether having first-ballot hall-of-famers creates championships, or whether having championships creates first-ballot hall-of-famers; got that all under the cap when one guy is giving you a lot of it on his own. ‘

You need “w” scoring, “x” rebounding, “y” playmaking, “z” defense etc.. to contend for a championship. It’s obviously easier to build a team with all that within cap rules if you have one player that gives you a lot of it on his own. The math is tougher when you don’t, but it’s not impossible. You need a lot of attractive contracts so you can fit a lot of above average players onto the same team instead of the more typical top heavy team with less depth.

There’s one major player weakness on this team and that’s RJ. Replace a two sided negative player with a two sided positive player and spacer and this team is on the short list of contenders.

That’s what I was hoping for this off season.

As to the quote above, there’s definitely a chicken and egg component to it.

No one thought of Brunson as anything special until he showed that his playoff performances without Doncic the prior year were legit. Most thought we overpaid. It was the perception that changed, not the reality. He was terrific all year without Doncic. He simply sealed it by inching forward and repeating it. If he inched forward again, we replaced RJ with a productive 2 way player, and we made the conference finals or finals, perceptions of what he is would change further.