The Knicks may not improve next season (and that’s OK)

The Knicks’ breakout fourth seed season is definitely the start of something special — but could next season actually feature a bit of a regression? Short of a huge splash in free agency, it might — and it’s not a big deal.

The Knicks probably won’t improve as a basketball team next season. They might even take a step back — or, as others may word it, regress. And that’s OK.

No, I’m not trolling you. No, I haven’t suddenly become a dispassionate, self-loathing Knicks fan after years of unapologetically being an overly optimistic homer.

Following a season in which the Knicks wildly outperformed expectations under the guidance of Tom Thibodeau, I can see why you’d think I’m full of shit in my assessment. The Knicks have plenty to be optimistic about moving forward. Julius Randle had an All-NBA-caliber star leap; 20-year-old RJ Barrett established himself as a high-minutes, high-effort, two-way starting-caliber wing; Mitchell Robinson should be back and healthy to anchor an already-established elite defense again; and Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin made promising rookie debuts. The front office, which was both competent and prudent — two qualities previous Knicks regimes failed to exhibit — has two first round picks and over $50 million in cap space to add to this already promising foundation.

So why, pray tell, would the Knicks, coming off a fairytale season — with a number of promising young talents and any number of avenues to add talent to the roster — take a step back?

First of all, I’m not saying the Knicks can’t make another step forward next season. If they trade for Damian Lillard, or sign Kawhi Leonard, or add a primary ball handler like Chris Paul or Kyle Lowry in free agency, they almost definitely will. However, for a variety of reasons, I’m betting the most likely scenario is the Knicks fail to land any of these players.

You might respond with, “but they still have buttloads of cap space!”

You’d certainly be correct. They do! Unfortunately, the list of free agents you’d describe as genuine needle-moving pieces is limited. Are players like Spencer Dinwiddie, Norman Powell, Evan Fournier, etc., ones that significantly improve the Knicks?

I understand the inclination to believe they would, but the answer isn’t clear. Improving from 41-31 and a fourth seed is significantly harder to achieve than reaching that point from the bumbling, incompetent farce of a team the Knicks resembled for years prior to Thibodeau’s arrival on the bench. Furthermore, I’m not entirely certain the front office will see tying up long-term money into free agents they don’t consider significant difference-makers as a prudent choice, so if they can’t land the more premier names on the market, it’s not clear to me they’ll be content to splurge on lower-caliber, good-but-not-great players.

Another factor to consider is that any significant investment in free agents likely comes with the cost of retaining players from this season’s roster. No, losing Elfrid Payton isn’t going to hurt — not unless your name is Scott Perry, anyway — but it’s when you have to start making decisions among the troika of Reggie Bullock, Alec Burks, and Nerlens Noel where things get tricky.

Now, to be clear, all three of these players are flawed in their own ways, something which was painfully clear in the Knicks’ first round beatdown at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks. However, they were highly competent and functional cogs which helped drastically bump the Knicks’ baseline up during the regular season.

Losing any of them would hurt, and there’s no guarantee replacements will be able to replicate the same impact. That isn’t because those players are so uniquely skilled, but Bullock and Burks 40% shooting from three this season on volume wouldn’t be easy to simply plug and play with free agent X. Noel was able to step up when Robinson was injured and provide a level of rim protection to maintain the defensive integrity of an elite unit that won’t be easy to replicate.

Additionally, two Thibodeau stalwarts who are near certainties to return, Derrick Rose and Taj Gibson — who will be 33 and 36 at the start of next season, respectively — are less certain to replicate their impressive 2020-21 forms. At their ages, it’s simply not advisable to assume their production will stay consistent — especially in the case of Rose, given his significant injury history and the heater he was on from the perimeter last season. In fact, if for no other reason than to preserve his impact, the regression could simply come from reducing his minutes load.

Now, all of this could be offset even without any meaningful improvement via free agency if the existing young talent on the roster progresses. Unfortunately, development isn’t always linear for young players. One of the most significant and necessary leaps Barrett and Quickley must make will be as off-the-dribble shot creators. It will happen, but they need reps to improve, and latitude to experiment and get comfortable doing so. Those in-game reps may be painful at times and require the fortitude to eat short-term pain for long-term gain.

Perhaps more significantly for Quickley, if the Knicks are unable to land one of the top point guard options on the market, it will thrust him into a more prominent primary ball handler role again. That’s a role where he showed promise, but also where he struggled at times to find the balance between hunting for his own shots and guiding the offense to create for others. This is an investment into a player’s future that could provide enormous upside for the franchise — one I strongly believe is the most prudent option if they fail to land Dame, Paul, or Lowry — but it’s yet another where the benefit figures to lie in the future rather than the team’s present.

On the positive side of the ledger, it’s difficult to envision a scenario where Toppin isn’t significantly more comfortable on the court next season. There were promising signs over the last few months of the season, and he was arguably the biggest positive in a short and dismal playoff run.

Again, though, an increased role for Obi likely means a certain amount of minutes every night alongside Randle, a lineup which will compromise the Knicks’ defensive solidity, at least initially, and require patience and experimentation to get right. In the long run, that cost-benefit tradeoff could pay huge dividends for the Knicks given the duo’s offensive potential, but it will take time and patience to reap the rewards.

Perhaps the biggest and most uncomfortable candidate for regression is Randle, the team’s' unexpected franchise player. Do I think what he achieved this season is unsustainable? On a very broad level, no. I buy the improvements as a shot taker and maker. The improvements as a decision maker and passer, and willingness as a defender all strike me as the type of mid-career progressions players make when they come to the realization of what really matters in the grand scheme of winning games at a high level in the NBA after experiencing the frustrations of years of losing.

I buy the Randle star turn, but even within that broad scope, there’s likely to be a little room for regression. Is he really a 41.2% 3-point shooter? Is he really a prime-Carmelo-Anthony-level mid-range scorer? Even slight regression in these areas would hurt the Knicks on the margins considering his scoring volume, and those margins can turn a few wins into a few losses. There’s the possibility the Knicks can help Julius improve his volume of shots and percentage at the rim with better spacing and by using him at the 5 more often next season, but short of adding a high-level primary to the roster, it’s still likely his shot diet strongly resembles what we saw this season, which was among the most difficult of any player in the NBA.

That’s a lot to digest, and I promise I’m not trying to rain on your parade. Lord knows, I, like every other Knicks fan on the planet, enjoyed every god damn non-Elf minute of this season. More so, even after writing everything you just read, I am genuinely very optimistic about the Knicks’ future prospects. This is the most promising position the Knicks have been in to enjoy long-term sustainable success since the Ewing years.

But they just made an incredible one-season leap. Some of the veterans who helped lift the team to that level are unlikely to return, and replacing their production in free agency is neither guaranteed nor easy to do. While the team has a number of younger core pieces who can potentially help fill the void, that will require further progression, which may not take hold immediately.

A season of stagnancy with the team unable to improve upon the standing they achieved last season isn’t the worst thing in the world. In fact, not chasing that improvement by throwing money around in the free agent market is arguably the best way for the franchise to keep open their pathways to genuine contention in the long-term, short of landing one of the premier players in a limited market this offseason.

Sometimes you have to take some lumps, because there isn’t an easy linear path to get to where you want. If the cost of a brighter future is risking some short-term regression by allowing Barrett, Quickley, and Toppin to spread their wings so they’re ready for primetime when the time comes, so be it. The Knicks are staring at that potential reality entering this offseason and that really is OK, because with what they’re building, there’s more to look forward to than just today.