It Will Have Been Enough

While being an NBA POBO/GM, i.e. the final say over all personnel matters short of the owner’s veto power, is not rocket science, but it’s a very tough job. All of them make mistakes, and all of them require a bit of luck to be successful.

Leon was a novice in the job but had many of the rudiments just by being highly successful on the other side of the negotiating table. Still, predictably, there were growing pains.

His very first big decision (hiring Thibs) ended any chance of tanking. That decision was widely panned here, perhaps rightfully so given the perils of skipping over perhaps the most reliable path to attaining a “tentpole” player at a bargain price. It led many here to dismiss him as just the next incompetent stooge in the Dolan pipeline of guaranteed misery. His second big decision, drafting Obi Toppin with his first (and only) top-10 pick was also far from ideal, as most KB posters knew at the time.

It led many to believe that we were on a glide path towards the treadmill of mediocrity, in large part because Thibs would coach in a way that masked the underlying flaws of the approach until the team hit its hard ceiling in the playoffs. The nadir was in 2022 after Leon foolishly believed that mostly running back the 2021 team was a good idea. There was a massive here at KB outcry over draft-day decisions in consecutive years. We entered the age of “incineration,” “mezzanine,” and “purgatory.”

But then, the most Leon of moves, dripping with nepotism reminiscent of the Chris Smith accommodation, Leon hired presumed dirtbag Rick Brunson as a precursor to outmaneuvering Mark Cuban out of a young, ascending, potentially very good but physically limited scoring PG. In doing so, Leon made more curious draft day moves. Who knew at the time that acquiring this kid would be the single greatest personnel move in the franchise’s 80-year history? I doubt that Leon did, or even Jalen himself. But that’s what happened. A single move was so magnificently impactful that it made all of the questionable ones and the downright bad ones seem like minor quibbles in retrospect.

There would be more debatable moves…the prices paid for OG, Bridges (!!!), KAT, drafting Pacome…and some bad luck….iHart being so good that he priced himself out of an extension, Julius blowing out his shoulder just when the team looked like a juggernaut, OG blowing out his hammy in the midst of a critical playoff series, Mitch’s ankle issues…and the growing discontent with Thibs’ unique brand of stubbornness…and a feeling that even if we got through a watered down EC, OKC would be there to there to block our path to the championship podium.

When Leon (or Dolan if you must) fired Thibs, he took a lot of heat for doing so “without a plan.” The Knicks asked permission to speak to a bunch of coaches under contract, most notably Jason Kidd. Once Leon was rebuffed, he interviewed a bunch of retreads and settled on Mike Brown. I don’t recall a single poster here that was thrilled with the hire, beyond some “well, at least it’s not Thibs” relief. But I also don’t recall anyone thinking that Brown was a “bad” choice. He had just come off being fired in Sacto after “losing the locker room” and in particular, publicly calling out one of his star players for making dumb decisions in crunch time, a guy named De’Aaron Fox.

Brown went on to have a solid, if unspectacular season, finishing behind the upstart Pistons and Mazz-driven Celts and winning a tiny bit more than Thibs did the prior year. And although the team finished the season on a high note, the playoff seeding took a funky turn on the last day of the season and we wound up playing ATL, who rested their starters in Game 82 purpose to play us. OG’s hammy.

And when we went down in excruciating fashion in games 2 and 3, the shit hit the fan here. Mikal was absolutely crucified, and by extension, Leon Rose and Mike Brown. Hopes of getting to the finals for the first time in 27 years, or winning a championship for the first time in 53 years, was dangling by the thinnest of threads, especially because Boston and Detroit and OKC was the likely gauntlet in that moment.

And then everything changed. We blasted the Hawks into oblivion. Boston choked away a 3-1 lead. The Pistons got their asses kicked by the Cavs in game 7 on their home court. We survived a close game 2 vs. PHI in an otherwise uncompetitive sweep, culminating in an country ass-kicking on their home court in front of hoards of Knicks fans to complete the sweep. We overcame a 22-pt deficit with 7+ minutes left on the way to sweeping the shit out of the preseason faves and roared into the finals on an 11-game streak. And all of the shit talked about Brown, Mikal, KAT, and Leon seemed like a distant memory. We all became believers.

But we also believed that our opponent would likely be the Thunder, who we haven’t beaten in forever. They were banged up, but surely could close out the young, brash Spurs. But they couldn’t. That Wemby performance in Game 1, especially that game-tying logo 3, loomed too large. And now the path was crystal clear. The Spurs were too young, too untested, too overtaxed to deal with the juggernaut that was now our team.

And the finals were all we could have asked for. Sweeping the first two games on the road in dramatic fashion. Losing a hard-fought game 3 with a sideshow ruining the vibe. Then going down 29 points in the 3rd of game 4, only to mount the greatest comeback in playoff history, sending the city into a frenzy.

And finally, mounting yet another gritty comeback to fill Knicksville with the unadulterated joy we have all been dying for for most of our lives, without subjecting us to three to six more days of unbearable anxiety. The greatest gift we will ever have in our lives as diehard Knicks fans….the end of decades of suffering…felt like being released into the glorious sunshine of a summer day after a long stint in prison for a crime we didn’t commit.

We are all Andy Dufresne. Or Red. Take your pick.

Thanks Leon! Thanks Jalen! When the time comes, I can die a happier man because of you two. The others as well, but especially you two.

KAT is going to have a PR problem if he pouts over not being offered a max extension, given that Brunson is widely (if not exactly accurately) perceived to have taken a massive pay cut to help construct this team.

If I were Leon, I’d call his bluff. Offer him something like a 3year/$50M AAV extension. If he turns it down, let him test free agency in two years. If he pouts, his trade value should be pretty high. KAT has been going on and on about being grateful. If he turns around and says “show me the money”, show him the door.

“Agree it might happen, but don’t see the team stoking up a PR problem for KAT if he isn’t offered the extension as something particularly conducive to hanging a 2026-27 banner.

To tie up the details, he’s eligible to be offered the extension on July 6.”

I mean, if Leon caves, whatever…like I said, lifelong grace from me. But objectively, I think I would draw a red line at 30% of the cap, maybe even a tad less. Anything more than that is not going to age well; at that number he can always be salary filler or dumped with a first if necessary.

“…but this was the most dominant playoff run of all-time. Second is probably ’83 Sixers and then one of those Warriors teams with KD, 2017 or 2018, can’t remember which.”

Statistically there’s no disputing this. But having such a run is dependent on many things, most important of which is good ol’ fashioned strength of opponents. It doesn’t take a lot of mental gymnastics to conclude that this was one of the least competitive slates of opponents that any champion had to navigate, especially given the scheduling (e.g. all of Philly, Cleveland, and San Antonio having to play us after surviving harrowing 7-game slugfests.) But you can only play who is in front of you, and we deserve enormous credit for being as dominant as we were.

In the big picture, I will once again say, who cares? No one anywhere is diminishing what we accomplished, in fact, they are glorifying it! For now, at least. Alas, I expect that the poo-pooing will begin once the euphoria dies down, especially from fans of Pacers, Celtics, Pistons, and Spurs. Next season is gonna be all about putting us in our place. Teams are gonna bludgeon Brunson from pillar to post. My hope is that he starts getting an MVP whistle, which he richly deserves after the shit the NBA tried to pull with those Wemby flagrants. Same with KAT.

“The Spurs team we gentleman’s swept was really fucking good.”

Not really. They were really good defensively but couldn’t really shoot a lick in a league that prioritizes shooting. They were prone to both rookie mistakes and had (not clever as a) Fox as their “brain on the court.” Nothing that happened wasn’t entirely predictable, not because of the Knicks greatness but because of the Spurs’ weakness. See: Brian Cronin.

“Yeah, they were young, but they sure didn’t look that young when they were finishing the season 30-4 or beating the defending champs.”

They beat a badly hobbled OKC team that was weak at the position where SA was strongest, and it still took them 7 games. If we had beaten the Spurs missing Castle and Harper, would that feel the same?

Using SRS across eras is not very convincing. I’d go with the eye test every time over that nonsense. Especially in a year where a third of the league was actively tanking.

“You have to admit it’s the best argument ever though. “Are we one of the league’s greatest ever champions, or merely great champions?”

These are high class problems. This is way better than “Is Alexy Shved a potential building block?”

Perfectly said.

One thing we can all agree upon is that this Knicks team is one of the three greatest Knicks team ever. Are they #1? It could certainly be argued that they are. They didn’t just blow through their opponents, winning 9 straight road games along the way, they did so with a burden of history and media pressure few teams in any sport, let alone basketball, have had to bear…with the additional burden of not having home court and being underdogs against a team that won 9 more games than them and knocked off the defending champs on their home floor.

We can have fun arguing about how they would have matched up against those other great Knicks teams, or other great teams in general, but man, it’s invigorating to argue down from the mountaintop.

It bears mentioning that as coaches go, none of Snyder, Nurse, Atkinson, or Johnson are anywhere close to elite. I would put Mike Brown above any of them any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Would this Spurs team have lost to this Knicks team if vintage Pop was coaching them? Or Spo? Or Carlisle? Or Kerr? A coach can only do so much, but all 4 game were won on the margins.

All I know is that Mitch Johnson loved him some De’Aaron Fox!

There is no reason to assume anything other than the Knicks would have wiped out the Celtics, especially once Tatum pulled up lame, but even without that. The Celts were frauds all year that Mazzed their way to that record.

Detroit might have presented a bit more of a challenge, but they were overhyped frauds as well.

Neither of those teams had another level to go to. OTOH, we all knew that Brown was experimenting and juggling all year, and that certain guys were underachieving.