The Knicks wave goodbye to the regular season & hello to whatever comes next

And then there was one – season remaining, that is. After an 82-game march that began with being outscored by 54 on threes in Boston and ended with Landry Shamet scoring his most points since 2022 to secure the win in Brooklyn, the Knicks wrapped up a 51-win season as the East’s third-seed. They’ll open the playoffs this weekend hosting Detroit. As is often the case in life, what they did may have end up mattering less than when they did it.

Shortly before Jalen Brunson’s ankle injury in March, the Knicks had won two-thirds of their games, a pace they maintained much of the season. Going 11-11 the last six weeks is no great feat, though it didn’t hurt their playoff positioning any, and the way OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges looked on offense those weeks suggested Brunson’s sabbatical may have been serendipitous. Two Knicks, Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, are likely All-NBA honorees. Maybe OG’s scoring explosion late in the campaign brought him enough attention for his defensive skills to finally be recognized. Josh Hart is a chaos wizard. Miles McBride hears his name chanted in this country more than many divine beings. Mitchell Robinson returned and is still the same big, blessed Mitch. Mat Ishbia, take note: there are 26 other teams who’d trade places with New York if they could.

And yet . . .

I’m trying to remember the last time the Knicks were this good (if top-heavy), not only in a year but over a stretch of them, and going into the playoffs with so much – what’s the word? It’s not quite “negativity,” and yet the best Knick team I’ve seen since the 1990s is heading into the first first-round series they’re heavily favored to win in a dozen years, and yet to paraphrase Marcellus there is something rotten in the state of MSG. Or at least in some fans’ perception of it.

Read any piece about the Pacers right now and it’s all rainbows and puppy dogs. Some of that stems from their reversal of form – unlike the Knicks, Indiana struggled the first couple months, then burst into the sprint they’re currently on – but some is due simply to the simpler life simplifying one’s notion of gratitude. Between Brian Daboll, Peter Laviolette, Patrick Roy and Aaron Boone, New York has more teams with coaches on the hot seat than Indiana has teams, period – and even still, despite the WNBA’s Fever finishing last season 18-9 with the league’s best offense post-Olympics, they fired Coach Christie Sides. The Knicks haven’t done gone 18-9 over any stretch since before the All-Star break. Is that where the angst is originating? What have they done for us lately?

Or is it more about Tom Thibodeau, specifically? Thibs is about to wrap his fifth year at the helm here, long enough for a gold watch and plenty of scapegoating. I don’t think any of the injuries the Knicks have suffered under his watch going into various playoffs have been because of overuse – not Mitch’s fractured right hand in ‘21, Julius Randle’s ankle injuries in ‘23, and neither his separated shoulder nor the bubonic plague that hit the locker room in ‘24. These Knicks enter these playoffs healthier than they have at any time under Thibs.

And yet . . . 

There’s angst about the 0-10 mark against the league’s three best teams. About their record against the league’s top-half, period (25-28 against the 20 teams to qualify for some postseason spot). And this being the home of Frazier, Reed, Ewing and Starks, there’s definite apprehension over a Knick team entering the playoffs with so many bells and whistles on offense and yet a defense with the second-worst rating (14th) of the Thibodeau era. 

There’s somehow more angst about this year’s first-round opponent than most, despite the Pistons possibly being the weakest first-round foe the Thibs Knicks have faced. What they’ve accomplished this season – the first team in league history to triple their win total from one year to the next – deserves recognition, undoubtedly. Hopefully J.B. Bickerstaff wins Coach of the Year (as some clever ducky suggested a month ago). Maybe Cade Cunningham is already ready for All-NBA selection. Malik Beasley’s one of the leading Sixth Man candidates. That doesn’t mean the Pistons are ready for a seat at the grown-up table.

The past is certainly not prophecy. But the last time Detroit won a playoff series, the Knicks were coached by Isiah Thomas. Cunningham was six years old. Of course, they could be the latest not-ready-for-primetime-players to show us they’re ahead of the curve. But Vegas tends to see the odds a bit clearer than teams’ fans usually do, and there are reasons they’re not banking on an upset. We’ll dive into more of the why in our playoff coverage later this week, but keep in mind the more you watch your own guys, the more you see their flaws. The Knicks big imports have been KAT and Bridges. The Pistons’ have been Beasley, Tobias Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr. Flip the script: if the Knicks were a plucky 44-win team led by that troika of talent and they were the road team going up against a team that was top-five all year, how would you feel? 

Then again, we are where we are now, and it’s not anywhere we’ve been for a while. As disappointed as Knicks fans were by the end of the Miami and Indiana series the past couple years, I think many fans both years would have admitted that was farther than they expected their team to finish, and that may have provided a little cushion heading into the offseason, softening the blow. But even though I don’t know anybody who expects the Knicks to beat the Celtics should they meet in round two, if our boys fall in six or seven I don’t expect the prevailing sentiment to be, “Well, that’s still pretty dang respectable. Good job, guys.” I imagine it’ll be closer to, “Thibs taught them to walk, and that’s great, but now it’s time to run and he keeps running them into the same dead-end and looks likely to run ‘em into the ground sooner than later.” That’s the thing about expectations: at first they feel like a ribbon, a reward for being of a certain quality, but before you know it they’re a yoke pulling you down.

Doesn’t matter how many teams might trade places with the Knicks. None of them can. Fair or not, everything they did the past six months was merely an overture. The next month or more will determine whether this opera is remembered as comedic or dramatic. Plenty of time to write themselves a whole new role, really – what they do next will mean so much more than what they have so far, because of when they’re doing it. And if you find yourself really struggling to process your angst, close this site and go read about what other teams have been up to today. Sometimes the grass on the other side is only greener ‘cuz it’s toxic — like when some dumb owner fires a championship-winning coach after one year (a year after hiring him ‘cuz you fired the prior championship-winning coach), all because it’s always someone else’s fault. Always.