Fixing the First Five

New York's starting five is trending in the wrong direction. Is there a simple six to what ails them?

Good morning! The Knicks are back home tonight to face Jimmy Butler and the Golden State Warriors. Karl-Anthony Towns is questionable for personal reasons, so hopefully everything is alright on his end. Tipoff is at 7:30, and I’ll be on halftime to break down the first 24.

News & Notes

🏀 The Knicks have had an active few days.

On Sunday afternoon, they waived two-way players Matt Ryan and Jacob Toppin. Yesterday, they signed the recently released MarJon Beauchamp to one of those two-way spots, and he’s eligible to be active for 12 of the remaining 22 games according to Bobby Marks. Beauchamp was the 24th pick in the draft in 2022 and had some moments in Milwaukee. We’ll see if there’s any meat left on the bone here.

Perhaps most notably of all, Marc Stein reported that “the Knicks were right there with the Lakers in their determination before the trade deadline to try to convince Utah to engage in meaningful Walker Kessler trade talks. No dice, though. The Jazz made it clear they wanted no part of entertaining Kessler pitches in-season.”

The Kessler report is the latest indication that New York’s front office is having doubts about KAT’s long term viability as a full-time five. If Utah had been more willing to engage on Kessler talks last summer, would Towns be a Knick today?

Something to ponder entering the offseason, where I’m betting Kessler’s name will come up once again.

Fixing the First Five

Let’s start today’s newsletter off on a positive note, because there’s going to be some unpleasantness in the paragraphs to follow.

Your New York Knickerbockers are 40-20 after 60 games. This franchise has been around for 79 years and this is only the ninth time they’ve been at least that good this deep into the season. Let that sink in for a second.

Looking at the previous eight times they’ve started at least 40-20, the eventual outcomes for those seasons break down with perfect symmetry:

• 2 Championships

• 2 Finals losses

• 2 Conference Finals losses

• 2 Conference Semifinal losses

That even four-way split is going to upended in some direction by the end of June. The only question is which way.

Right now, given New York’s likely second round opponent¹, we know what the betting odds would look like. Boston will and should be considered heavy favorites regardless of how the rest of this season goes. They’ve more than earned that designation, even if they haven’t been nearly as dominant against the rest of the NBA as they have been in these three matchups.

But we also know that the Knicks have two wins for every loss not because they’ve played consistently great basketball, but despite the fact that they’ve played poorly for long stretches at a time. More than that, they’ve fallen short in several key areas that would usually hold a team back from achieving such a strong record.

Since opening night, we’ve pondered how many of those areas are fixable given the current constraints of the roster. Certain issues will almost certainly remain at least until the offseason, but other problems may have answers staring us in the face. Will we see those potential solutions play out over a significant enough sample size to make a #meaningful imprint? And if so, when?

No hypothetical has received more attention than a potential change to the starting lineup (or, more likely, a regular change to the closing lineup, if you believe - as I do - that there would be too many political complications with altering the first five for reasons we’ll get into later).

Part of the reason is that we’ve gotten a hefty sample size of the current group, and the data on those five speaks volumes.