Unfamiliar Territory

Don't look now, but the Knicks are the envy of the NBA

Good morning, and Happy Friday!

I hope everyone enjoyed deadline day. If yours was anything like mine, it felt like running a marathon (or at least what I imagine running a marathon feels like).

Because the day was so jam packed, with a seismic trade AND a gritty, gutty, hard fought loss in which essentially six guys played in the second half, this is one of two KFS Newsletters you’ll get in your inbox today. This one is a bonus edition, available to all subscribers, while the next will be a more in-depth recap on the trade deadline and last night’s game, coming your way later this afternoon.

Enjoy!

Unfamiliar Territory

Four and a half years ago, when I took over this newsletter from the great Jeffrey Bellone, my primary goal was to even the playing field.

Back then, New York’s front office routinely put the old adage - “any press is good press” - to the test. Whether you searched newspapers, the internet or magazines (remember those?), you’d have had better luck winning the lottery than finding a positive story about our beloved basketball team.

Not that any soliloquies were deserved. The team was a mess, going nowhere fast, and was justifiably the butt of league-wide jokes, much in the same way that the Pistons are these days.

But even as things gradually started to change behind the scenes and on the court, positive stories remained hard to find. Sure, “LOL Knicks” may have been replaced by “The Knicks still need a star,” but it’s always been about what this team didn’t have and what they couldn’t do.

So you can imagine how unnerved I was yesterday when one national media outlet after another (after another after another after another after another) were all climbing over themselves to praise the Knicks, not only for having a successful deadline day, but for putting themselves into position to challenge for the East.

The East! The whole freaking conference. Imagine that.

Except we don’t need to imagine too hard, because that’s how much they’ve turned things around.

Even the news about OG Anunoby’s elbow surgery, which will reportedly keep him off the court for three weeks after a more conservative approach wasn’t getting the intended results, didn’t dampen the mood. Quite the opposite, in fact. Instead of “why can’t New York have nice things,” it was “how smart by Leon, being proactive and keeping this news from breaking until after the deadline.”

It’s like the entire NBA media apparatus took a page from George Costanza’s book and started doing the opposite of what had been their instinct for so long.

And just like with George, things are working out swimmingly.

Truth be told, the whole thing has thrown me for a loop.

Now, instead of pumping up the possibilities of this team, I almost feel the need to pump the breaks. They have one superstar, but two are usually needed to make the biggest noise against the best teams. I’m also compelled to harp on the “when healthy” corollary that dogs perpetually injured teams and stars, but that suddenly applies to the Knicks. Even with all their guys, the East is so stacked that there’s no guarantee they get out of the first round, let alone make a run to the Finals.

And yet, yesterday’s moves weren’t about guaranteeing anything. This isn’t a league where guarantees exist. Name a contender, and I’ll show you a team that has either fallen far short or expectations and/or failed to get out of the first round in one of the last few seasons.

No, yesterday wasn’t about guaranteeing anything; it was about putting the Knicks in the conversation. The real conversation. The conversation about making their first Finals appearance in a quarter century.

Whatever their percentage chance is now, it’s higher than zero, which is where I’d have had it yesterday morning, even after a 16-3 stretch that at times featured a level of dominance we haven’t seen since Patrick Ewing’s prime.

When this season began, we thought that depth was their greatest strength. They had to sacrifice that depth to improve their ceiling, but with yesterday’s trade, they became even deeper than they were to begin the year.

Their strength became stronger, and their weaknesses became non-existent.

In the midst of all that, their best player graduated from “borderline All-Star” to “no doubt about it Superstar.”

The pieces figure to fit beautifully, if only because of the versatility of each puzzle piece, like skeleton keys that unlock all sorts of goodies. Outside of Brunson and their centers, everyone can play multiple positions, with no shortage of possible combinations. While they may have gotten older and their defense lost an important piece, they also got bigger. Size was already a strength, and it just improved even more.

More importantly than that, this is a sport that begs the same question of every team with aspirations in May and June. In short, how many guys can you put on the floor at one time who can stress out a defense in multiple ways? The team with the player who puts the most stress on the defense often wins (and we have a pretty good one of those), but one man can’t do it all.

In Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks, New York added two players who can play on and off the ball, can shoot the lights out, won’t get played off the floor defensively, and can create offense for themselves and others if the need arrises.

The sacrifice here - their age, and Quentin Grimes, who himself was the last true young “asset” on the roster - wasn’t insignificant.

Then again, this trade wasn’t just about improving playoff possibilities. The Knicks need to get there in one piece first, and to do that, they were desperate for reinforcements. That became even more clear after the Anunoby surgery news.

It was a trade for today, a trade for tomorrow, and perhaps most importantly, a trade for whatever comes next.

New York was not expected to contend for anything this season, and even after this trade and the OG deal, their timeline really hasn’t changed. Yes, they owed it to this group to give it a real chance in the coming months, but their sights are still set on a grander prize.

From that perspective, this move carries even more benefits. Aside from maintaining that ballyhooed ~ $20 million salary slot (Bogey makes $19,032,850 next season, to be exact), they don’t figure to have to use any exceptions this summer, like they did last July in signing Donte DiVincenzo. That means they won’t be hard capped, as they are now, which in turn means they’ll have more flexibility than almost any contender when it comes to making significant moves.

And best of all, they are liquid.

The Knicks entered this season with eight tradeable first round picks and three tradeable first round swaps, and they emerge from yesterday’s action with that entire treasure chest untouched.

Not a single bad contract sullies their books. There is no looming free agency nightmare. Their best player is as content and entrenched in their culture as any across the league.

The future is as bright as it has been in a long, long time. That’s somewhat ironic now that their entire young core has been dealt away, but building a contender always comes with costs. That’s especially true for any team who didn’t luck out by getting a franchise cornerstone in the draft. This front office has done everything possible to overcome that deficit, and are now on the doorstep of that rarest of NBA success stories: contending for it all without bottoming out.

Bit by bit. That’s how Leon has always done it, and that’s what his head coach preaches ad nauseam. Be better today than you were yesterday, be better tomorrow than you were today. One step at a time.

We know what steps they have left.

Step one, get healthy.

Step two, get acclimated.

Step three, get cracking.

Unfamiliar territory, indeed.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”