A New Beginning

Dream big dreams. The Knicks are back.

Good morning! Are you ready for some basketball!

That’s right…it’s media day around the league, and while the Knicks will certainly take their own approach to the festivities, it is a day of new beginnings nonetheless.

To commemorate, I have a jam-packed edition of the newsletter for you today. It’s also the kickoff to what will be a massive amount of season preview content in this space in the coming weeks. And hey, wouldn’t you know, it’s the beginning of the month! In other words, there is no better time to become a full subscriber than right now, and help support Knicks Film School with your subscription.

Thanks in advance for your support, and here’s to the start of another season of Knicks basketball!

🗣️ News & Notes ✍️

🏀 So much for the Jrue Holiday sweepstakes.

Boston took a big swing earlier this summer, trading one of the best defense-first point guards in the league to give their offense a unicorn-sized facelift. Now they replace the outgoing Smart with a better version in Holiday, giving them arguably the most versatile six-man core in all of basketball.

Much like Milwaukee after the Dame trade, there is risk. Boston is very well set up for sustained success, but 2029 is still a ways away. More imminently, they had to give up one third of their three-headed big-man rotation, and will rely even more on the oft-injured Porzingis and 37-year-old Al Horford to stay upright. They also had to give up the reining 6th Man of the Year in Brogdon, who while apparently plagued with injury concerns of his own, was still a significant part of their core.

It’s obviously a price they’re happy to pay. Boston now rejoins Milwaukee atop the East arms race, likely with a bit of separation behind them. Also like the Bucks, trading for Holiday themselves kept him out of the hands of a rival.

🏀 It’s a moot point now, but hat’s off to Mike Vorkunov and Fred Katz of the Athletic for catching something I missed in their Jrue Holiday writeup on Friday:

“A rule in the new collective bargaining agreement says that because the Knicks are hard-capped, they can’t take back more than 110 percent of the salary they’re sending out in a trade.”

Even though taking back 125 percent of the salary they’d have sent out to acquire Holiday wouldn’t have put New York above the hard cap they can’t exceed, by virtue of the fact that they are hard-capped, they’re still limited to 110 percent when it comes to incoming money.

That means my pitched trade of RJ plus minimums wouldn’t have worked. Instead, they’d have needed to include Evan Fournier’s salary to make the money work. I initially dismissed this notion because Jrue for RJ and Fournier would have put the Blazers dangerously close to the luxury tax.

Is that why Holiday isn’t a Knick? I doubt it. New York was never going to give up the sort of distant unprotected draft asset that Boston included, not with a big trade still to be made.

🏀 I’m loath to even include this in the newsletter because it isn’t news, but because it seemed to cause quite the stir on the interwebs, let’s talk about Mitch’s trade value.

In his Friday piece on Deandre Ayton, Yahoo’s Vince Goodwill explained why the Blazers thought they got fantastic value in being able to acquire the former No. 1 overall pick for almost nothing. To drive home the point, he mentioned non-star centers either fetching large returns or their teams demanding a lot for their services. In that context, Mitchell Robinson’s name came up:

“The asking price for a player like New York’s Mitchell Robinson, sources told Yahoo Sports, is multiple first-round picks — probably a non-starter for most clubs.”

It’s been reported (and I’ve heard the same) that opposing teams have regularly called the Knicks about Mitch over the last few years and, as Goodwill notes, are told that it would cost an arm and a leg.

That’s it. That’s the story.

But because we live in a world where an aggregation account can generate massive engagement by taking a line in a story completely out of context, and where content creators can increase their own exposure by commenting on the original tweet without bothering to check the source text, this became a thing.

It shouldn’t have.

Excitement Countdown: No. 1

Before we get to the obvious list topper, a mea culpa: somehow, Quentin Grimes didn’t make my top 10. I assure you, this was an oversight. I’m wildly excited about Grimes this season, and he’s certainly somewhere in the top 5. Next time, I should probably write out all my entries before hitting “send.” Oops.

With that out of the way…

No. 1: Jalen Brunson (aka, Him)

How does he possibly follow up an opening act like that?

Seriously: in the span of 93 games (97 if you count preseason), Jalen Brunson became the most revered Knick since Carmelo Anthony, and he did so with a more universal approval rating than Melo ever had.

Is that fair? Or were our standards so much higher for Anthony because of how he came into the NBA - a presumed rival to LeBron and Wade for league-wide dominance for years to come?

Those expectations followed him to the Knicks much in the same way Brunson’s did, except Jalen’s were on the opposite end of the spectrum. $100 million or no $100 million, this was still a second round pick who Dallas elected not to pay. He was an underdog before he ever put on the uniform.

And New York loves itself a good underdog story.

Chapter 2 of that story is going to be more complicated though. Not only are individual expectations higher, but anything less than playoff success will be seen as a step backwards.

(whether that’s fair or not is a different story, as I’ll get into below.)

That means Jalen Brunson once again has the deck stacked against him - a situation he seems to revel in as much as any player in the league.

Never in my life as a Knicks fan has a player regularly exceeded my expectations. There’s something that tells me Brunson is going to be that guy.

I can’t express how much that means. After years of writing this newsletter, I’ve gone fully over to the dark side. I view players not with rooting interest but with a full analytical bent. They are means to an end. How can they help the Knicks win a title, either in our uniform or as pawns to be sacrificed for the greater good? It doesn’t really matter which, not to me, not anymore.

But Brunson, man…he makes me feel like a kid again, the way I used to watch Patrick Ewing and fully believe he could win any game on his own. Michael? Hakeem? Shaq? Didn’t matter. Pat has what it takes.

What a time to be alive.

I know in my head that Brunson isn’t that caliber of player. But in my heart, deep under the many layers of rocky gravel, I believe he can win any game, any time, against anyone.

That’s why I’m more excited for Jalen Brunson than everything else about this Knicks season combined.

Consequences

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

- Albert Camus, The Rebel

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

- Nietzsche

How can a basketball season mean everything and nothing all at once?

In some ways, the 2023-24 campaign for the New York Knickerbockers will be the ultimate exercise in futility. At 50-to-1 to win it all, they would nearly double the longest odds on record if they became champs, a designation currently held by the 2015-16 Warriors who were +2800 before the season started.

Maybe a week ago, one could justify a bit of wide-eyed optimism that the Knicks could compete for a conference title if everything broke just right, but following the Lillard and Holiday trades, that ship seems to have sailed.

At the same time, barring major injury, this team is far too good (and too entrenched in its current path) to be in the mix for a high lottery pick.

Whether they are on the high or low end of the league’s juicy middle is debatable; that they are squarely in NBA purgatory - for the moment at least - is not.

That’s easy to forget sometimes, especially when the wins (or losses) start to pile up. Victories on the road to nowhere are no less exhilarating, just like defeats without major consequence are no less heartbreaking. Imaginations run wild over the course of 82 games. They have to. It is why we watch. Why we root. Why I’m going to pen thousands upon thousands of words over the next three weeks digging into lineup possibilities, ordering East tiers, making bold predictions and the like.

All told, our imaginations are ultimately why we let a bunch of strangers so thoroughly dictate our mental and emotional well-being on a daily if not hourly basis.

(Just me? Might just be me.)

None of it, mind you, changes the reality that this season doesn’t really matter - not if you go by the old Tiger Woods mantra that if you come in second, you’re just the first loser.

But of course, things are never as simple as they seem.

Even though the Knicks are not a genuine threat to win it all, we might have to go back three decades - to the last time they had a real shot - to find a season with greater import. It was 30 years ago that Riley, Ewing & Co. went into October of 1993 as title favorites. It’s the only time that has happened in the recorded history of preseason odds. Ever since, the organization has toggled between also-ran and league laughing stock.

That stretch may finally, mercifully, be coming to an end.

Whether it does or doesn’t very much depends on what happens this season.

Even if the outcome doesn’t mean a darn thing.

---

It is old hat at this point:

The Knicks are good, and have the assets for a trade that will make them great.

At this point, suggesting that New York isn’t well-positioned to trade for a star is the hot take.

On the surface, it is true. The stars (pun intended) are aligned, or at least as aligned as they have ever been.

Primarily, the Knicks have become a winning organization, such that a star could envision success in their uniform. That’s the biggest difference between the current situation and the ill-fated pursuits of yesteryear. New York City, by itself, is not a big enough draw to overcome organizational incompetence.

But NYC with a decent team?

Now you’re talking.

They are also deep, maybe deeper than any team in the league when it comes to spots four through nine in the rotation. What they lack in top-end talent, they make up for in honest-to-goodness contributors who can enhance any roster. This is good for obvious reasons, but in the context of this discussion, it means they’ll have enough left over to field a contending roster even after they send out two or three key pieces in a major trade.

In addition to lots of good players, New York still has that bevy of picks they’ve been hoarding - a bank they weren’t about to break for Holiday. Between picks and swaps, the Knicks have 11 first round draft assets in total (or 10.5 if you think the Wizards protected first is now in doubt). Other teams have better picks - distant unprotected firsts from other teams whose future may not be bright - but almost no one can top the Knicks in both quality and quantity, or at least none likely to be in the running for a MVP-level acquisition.

Best of all, they no longer need to worry about keeping enough in the kitty for the next star trade, because Jalen Brunson (see above) has rendered that conversation moot. One star - the right star - will be enough.

We know all of this. The proof of concept was on full display last season. You can’t fake how dangerous this team became following the Josh Hart trade, or how thoroughly they dismantled the Cavs, owners of the second best net rating in the league. You can’t fake Brunson’s leadership and shot-making, or how everyone slots perfectly into their proper role behind him. Assuming good health, it is hard to imagine how this team won’t at least be good.

But in the NBA, there’s often an ocean-sized chasm between good and great.

Very few teams are promised greatness. With shorter contracts and stars playing fewer games, life atop the NBA’s perch is as fickle as ever. In the 2021-22 season, 13 teams won at least 55 percent of their games. Eight of those 13 failed to top 55 percent again last season.

Going back and looking at the last three seasons, only three teams have won at least 55 percent of their games in each of those years, and they just so happen to be the teams that employ the last five MVP recipients: Milwaukee, Denver and Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, there’s a litany of teams employing MVP-caliber talent that have missed at least one recent postseason entirely. Several more have gone from conference finalist to first round out, or worse, play-in casualty. The Bucks, Suns, Sixers, Nets, Clippers, Lakers and Mavs have all recently experienced the unfortunate reality of entering October with title hopes, only to exit the spring with major fundamental organizational questions that led to upheaval or the threat it.

In the NBA, nothing is promised.

Which brings us back to the Knicks, and the fact that this season has massive stakes, even if a title almost certainly isn’t one of them.

New York doesn’t need to win 50 games, nor do they need to make a conference finals. They don’t even need to get as far as they did in last year’s playoffs. The specifics are largely immaterial because progression in the NBA is not linear. A bad matchup, ill-timed slump or unexpected injury can wash away a great regular season in no time.

But you know a team on the right track when you see it. And they have to appear on the right track when this season ends, whenever and however it does.

Why does that matter so much? Because mega-stars still have agency when it comes to which zip code they relocate to.

The Dame Lillard saga and the Donovan Mitchell sweepstakes before it would both seem to provide evidence against this theory. But in both cases, the teams in their respective desired destinations tried to drive a hard bargain. That won’t be a problem if the sort of fish Leon Rose has been after finally wriggles free. KD got to Phoenix. Harden got to Brooklyn and then Philly. Kawhi got his preferred wingman to LA before he signed on the dotted line. The Lakers landed AD.

When a team is willing to pay, and a star wants to go, things usually have a way of working out.

Does a star have to push his way to New York? Not necessarily. Again, Dame and Donovan ended up in places they didn’t expect. But the reporting suggests that both weren’t fully against either location, as Lillard reportedly was with Toronto. More importantly, they had three and four years on their respective contracts at the time of each trade. Joel Embiid can hit free agency in 2026, just two seasons after next summer.

(I mean, really…who did you think I was talking about this whole time?¹)

When I think about how the next seven or eight months need to go, I keep going back to the 2013-14 Golden State Warriors. They had been the surprise of the playoffs just a year earlier, upsetting the higher-seeded Nuggets before pushing the Spurs to six games thanks to Steph Curry’s postseason coming out party. They followed that effort up by topping 50 wins for the first time in 20 years, but the playoffs ended with a disappointing seven-game loss to the Clippers in the first round.

It didn’t matter. Sure, a coach got fired, but there was no mistaking what was on the horizon.

Barring Jalen Brunson shocking the world yet again, these Knicks won’t follow the precise path of those Warriors. They need outside help. But they can prove to everyone that they’re a team on the rise, and that all they’re missing is one big piece to put them over the top.

To use a popular bit of sports parlance, the vibes for this season need to be positive, if not immaculate. That means no repeat of the disaster that was the 2021-22 season. Instead, here are a few humble suggestions about how to keep the arrow pointed north:

🏀 Jalen Brunson needs to repeat last season. Not improve on; just repeat.

Over the course of FIBA, Brunson went from Captain America to US Agent. His defense became a major talking point amidst America’s downfall, and his score-first mentality was viewed in direct opposition to Tyrese Haliburton’s more even-keeled approach. His play this season needs to wipe away any and all lingering aftertaste of that experience. Brunson needs to remind everyone that his shot-creation justifies his defensive shortcomings, and that he’ll have no issue being just as effective if placed alongside a superior offensive engine.

🏀 A young player needs to elevate his status. When Zach Lowe and Ramona Shelburne were going through possible Giannis destinations on a recent Lowe Post podcast, Zach’s one question about the Knicks was whether they had a true blue chip prospect.

It’s a fair query. RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley have both had moments where they’ve shown glimpses of All-Star upside, but neither is viewed as the level of cornerstone piece that usually goes out in a star trade. Quentin Grimes has elements of the prototypical 3 & D-plus wing, but he’s a little small, and has room to grow in all areas. Does he have another level to reach? I’m bullish, but that’s far from a certainty.

It doesn’t really matter which one it winds up being, but it would be awfully helpful to New York’s long term plans if of these guys emerges from the fray.

🏀 They can’t be bad. I know…only the highest level of analysis here at Knicks Film School.

Let me be more specific: they can’t be last year’s Bulls, Hawks or Wolves. All three teams won between 40 and 42 games and made the play-in. Atlanta and Minnesota even made the playoffs, while Chicago can always tell themselves they were three minutes away from the NBA Finals. On paper, none had a disastrous campaign akin to, well…the Knicks from the previous season. And yet, the vibes emanating from each were unmistakably bad. Had they been in the running for a major star trade, those vibes might have done them in.

That’s it. That’s the list.

Not mentioned here are two of the most prominent members of the organization, Julius Randle and Tom Thibodeau, and that’s because the book on each one is already written.

I’m as big a supporter of Thibs as you’ll find, but even he admits that coaches are hired to be fired. If there are questions surrounding his long-term aptitude, that won’t be the thing that holds them back from a major transaction.

Randle is a bit trickier, because he remains a pillar of their offense. It’s overly simplistic to suggest he can just be the outgoing salary in a star trade if he has a down year or a poor postseason, because Julius might not be the preferred cup of tea for an organization starting over. Even so, with just two more years on (at worst) a fair contract, Randle’s presence - good or bad - won’t be the thing that stands in their way from an upgrade.

And that’s really it. It’s not about this season, but it’s also all about this season. The Knicks need to do enough over the next 82-plus games not only to market themselves to the star or stars who could be looking for new homes, but to put together the best package for that inevitable trade.

It’s also worth noting that there’s a fair bit of overlap in that Venn diagram: the better they are, the more pressure a star will put on their current team to send him to New York, and the less likely it is that a team with a better offer will actually deal for someone who wants to be elsewhere.

It’s all been leading up to this. Every move New York has made, every pick they’ve acquired, and every trade they’ve already bypassed…it’s all been leading up to the moment they can take that long-awaited swing for the fences.

Now it just comes down to getting the count in their favor.

Nothing and everything on the line, all at once.

The 2023-24 season has arrived.

🏀

#BlackLivesMatter

1. We’ll have another 10 months to debate the Embiid thing, and surely we will. But it is largely a waste of time. As I’ve written about on a few occasions, for a variety of reasons, their big trade will be much easier to make under the salary cap next summer. More importantly, James Dolan is not going to give Leon Rose an infinite runway. If a bigger or better star target than Embiid emerges, the Knicks will surely be in on it, as we thought they might with Giannis before the Lillard trade. But if none does? It’s Embiid all the way. If that scares you, consider a harsher reality: The Process doesn’t force his way out of Philly, and Leon is left to consider the bevy of B- star options he bypassed this summer.