Assessing the '24-25 Knicks, Part I

In the first of a 3-part look back at the season that was, today we look at the President and Head Coach

Good morning! It’s taken a few days for it to sink in, but the offseason is fully underway. There’s a lot of noise right now about what the Knicks might do in the coming days and weeks, and I’ll of course cover it all right here when anything concrete emerges. For now, we’ll begin our look back at ‘24-25 campaign with an assessment of two of the most important people in the organization…

Assessing the '24-25 Knicks, Part I

I’m starting off today’s newsletter with a shout out to reader Chris Dayton, who messaged me over the weekend calling this the most “funstrating” Knicks season he can remember. I was jealous I didn’t think of it myself.

Because of the nature of this season, I do think the majority of us are ready to move on to the Summer of Giannis KD the Taxpayer Midlevel Exception, and we’ll get there soon enough. I do want to spend the rest of this week looking back at this season though, mostly because it was a lot to process, and I find that level of clarity to be important when it comes to talking and thinking about the future.

I spent some time this weekend thinking about how best to do that because there’s no shortage of ways we could go, but I think the smartest move is to go through each of the key figures involved and talk about what went well and what didn’t. To add a little fun to the exercise, I’m going to end each section by comparing the figure in question to an MCU movie because I just watched Captain America: Brave New World over the weekend and boy do I have some thoughts.

We begin at the top…

Leon Rose, President of Basketball Operations

Jeremy Cohen did a good job on yesterday’s pod of going through the moves Rose made last summer and defending the process behind each one. His conclusion (as will surprise no one who has listened to Jeremy over the years) was incredibly well-reasoned, evidence-backed and nuanced. In short, he concluded that when you really look at it, Rose’s summer was not only defensible, but necessary.

Is he right? I think so, but as usual, the answer is complicated. To explain why, let’s start with the most controversial trade of last offseason.