Knicks 2023-24 season preview: Strengths, weaknesses, concerns, predictions

Publish date: 2024-04-22

The Athletic has live coverage of Knicks vs Bucks in the quarterfinal of the NBA In-Season Tournament.

The New York Knicks have hope this season.

They were good in 2022-23, and unless things go awry this season, they should repeat. It’s been 22 years since this franchise followed up a season in which it won a playoff series with another in which it made the NBA playoffs.

If all goes as expected, the Knicks will end that streak in 2024.

New York won 47 games in 2022-23 and downed the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs before falling to the Miami Heat in the second round. Now, a new season is here. The NBA schedule opens Tuesday, and the Knicks play Wednesday when they host the Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden.

Whether you have tuned out of the Knicks since that final loss to the Heat or have followed so closely over the summer that you can list every player who has signed a two-way contract with them since July, there are plenty of storylines for you.

Let’s preview all of them.

How does the roster look today?

The Knicks are one of the league’s most unchanged teams.

They bring back eight of their nine rotation players from last season. The one change is signing former Golden State Warriors guard Donte DiVincenzo to a four-year, $47 million contract. To free up money for him, they traded Obi Toppin to the Indiana Pacers for two second-round picks.

Otherwise, the offseason was quiet. Josh Hart picked up a player option for the 2023-24 season and then agreed to a four-year extension that will keep him under contract through 2028. The starting lineup that turned into the best of the Tom Thibodeau era (Jalen Brunson, Quentin Grimes, RJ Barrett, Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson) remains intact.

Knicks roster

*Non-guaranteed contract
**Reported by SNY

Biggest strength?

It’s some mix of depth and continuity.

The Knicks underwhelmed during the preseason, winning only one of their four games, but the first few minutes of their exhibition opener should have quelled any questions about their offense, which finished tied for third in points per possession a season ago. Sure, the Knicks once again don’t have much 3-point shooting, though they are better in that area swapping out Toppin for DiVincenzo. But from the start, they returned to the successful ways of 2022-23.

During that first preseason quarter, the offense flowed. Brunson moved like the herky-jerky point guard Knicks fans saw all of last season. Players understood how to move together, and there was no question why: They had done it before.

The Knicks return eight of their nine rotation players from last season, and while teams on the other side of the extreme — such as the Phoenix Suns, who employ almost no one they did at this time a year ago — have to use the preseason to become familiar with each other, the Knicks needed no name tags.

They may not have a superstar, though Randle has been in All-Star in two of the past three years and Brunson is a candidate this season, but they have quality down the roster. Their ninth-best guy, no matter who you believe him to be, is a good player. Most teams can’t say that.

The second unit — comprised of Immanuel Quickley, DiVincenzo, Barrett, Hart and Isaiah Hartenstein — has a chance to outplay other bench lineups.

They’re loaded with playmakers, too. The Knicks can trust eight of their nine rotation players with the ball in a pinch.

Biggest weakness?

Some people could mention the lack of a conventional backup power forward. The Knicks never replaced Toppin with a similar type of player and instead will use Hart or even Barrett in that spot this season, but on most nights this won’t hurt them. Hart is a top-notch rebounder, even compared to backup fours, and it’s not like this is 1990. These days, most second-string power forwards are wings, anyway.

So, let’s zoom out and concentrate on a related matter as the Knicks’ largest flaw: It’s that they’re not so large at all.

Five of New York’s nine rotation players are 6 foot 5 or smaller. Three are big men: Randle and the two centers, Robinson and Hartenstein. And then there’s Barrett, who is the size of a wing but hasn’t proven to be a lockdown defender.

Every team could use a big wing to help its defense. The Knicks most certainly fall in that category.

Grimes will most commonly guard the other team’s best perimeter player, almost independent of size, just as he did a season ago when he would man a diminutive guard, like Trae Young, on one night and a big forward, like Pascal Siakam, on the next. If he struggles, Hart is next in the pecking order.

This probably won’t kill the Knicks during the regular season, just as it didn’t in 2022-23. But this team has high aspirations, as it should coming off a second-round playoff run. At some point in the postseason, you face a dominant wing, like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in Boston or Giannis Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee or Jimmy Butler in Miami. And while the Knicks defense has its strengths — such as the shot selection it forces, the way Robinson locks down the paint and some feisty smaller guys on the perimeter — whether they can match up with those dominant big wings remains a question.

One big concern

During my time alone rewatching video in my mother’s basement, I stumbled upon a familiar predicament. Once again, the Knicks’ transition defense is a problem.

One of the oddities of the postseason run this past spring was how much better the defense looked against top-notch teams, like Cleveland and Miami, than it did during the regular season, when it was wishy-washy. On some nights, the Knicks submerged on opposing attacks. On others, they opened up lane after lane for open shots or kick-outs to stand-still 3s. Whether they were stingy or generous often came down to how they defended after missed shots and turnovers.

The Knicks rarely gave the ball away last season, one of the reasons their offense was so explosive, but when they did, it often meant points for the other team. They were second-to-last in the NBA in points allowed per possession following live-ball turnovers, according to Cleaning the Glass, ahead of only the Houston Rockets, the most famously undisciplined group since The Little Rascals.

But during their four preseason games, the transition defense somehow looked worse. And it wasn’t just because the team failed to enter exhibitions with regular-season intensity.

There were possessions when they failed to stop the ball, ones when they should have gotten into a help position but didn’t. Their communication was jumbled, which was a theme for the first half of last season, though it got better after they acquired Hart, a big-time talker in transition, in February. If a dribbler attacked the paint on the break, he was probably getting to the rim. They owned by far the most-porous transition defense during the NBA preseason, per Cleaning the Glass.

Normally, as a proud preseason nihilist, I’d say this is just four ugly performances inside a team that needs the preseason less than your average one, considering they know each other so well already. But that poor transition defense was a theme a season ago adds concern. The Knicks don’t have to own the best transition defense in the NBA. But they can’t be the worst.

Will Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson earn NBA accolades this season? (Evan Yu / Getty Images)

Any award winners this season?

The obvious answer here is Randle landing another spot on All-NBA, as he’s done during two of the past three seasons. Or maybe it’s Quickley, the NBA Sixth Man of the Year runner-up in 2022-23, finally garnering the honor this season.

But those are boring responses, so let’s get bold: A season after he didn’t even slide onto the All-Star team, Brunson will make All-NBA.

There are important people with the Knicks who insist what we saw from Brunson last season is not the peak of his game. After Jan. 3, he averaged 27.9 points on 52 percent shooting from the field and 45 percent from 3. He finished off the Heat series with 38 points in Game 5 and 41 in Game 6 when Miami’s defense draped him and he twisted through it anyway. It’s created justified Brunson optimists, who argue that the 27-year-old didn’t just improve coming into last season; he also got better throughout it. Brunson in March was superior to Brunson in November. The optimists expect the trend to continue.

Dominating to that degree from Jan. 4 on is too long to be just a hot streak. And if the version of Brunson that presented himself for the final four months of last season shows up for all of 2023-24, the Knicks have an efficient point guard scoring nearly 30 points a game.

That’s a good way to sneak onto an All-NBA roster, especially if the production comes on a team that should fight for homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Player analysis of young rotation

RJ Barrett

On only the second day of training camp in Charleston, S.C., Stefan Bondy of the New York Post innocently referred to Barrett as one of the team’s vets while asking the former No. 3 pick a question. Barrett interrupted, somewhat baffled at the label. “I’m only 23!” he said. Don’t age Barrett just yet.

But he’s also been around for a while at this point. He’s entering his fifth pro season, the first year of a four-year, $107 million contract he signed last summer. It’s time for him to take another step, and he believes he’s in a position to do it.

Barrett had an unconventional offseason last summer when he waited around for that extension, which he was eligible for in July but didn’t sign until September. Because of that, he didn’t engage in high-risk activities, which included pick-up basketball, a norm around the NBA for players waiting on big contracts. But it hurt him throughout 2022-23, which he admits.

This summer could not have gone differently. He competed in the FIBA World Cup for Team Canada. He enters with positive momentum off a third-place finish, which followed a strong NBA playoff run.

He doesn’t just need to even out his 3-point shot. He also must continue the quick decision-making that turned him into one of the Knicks’ top postseason performers in May. Maybe all the high-stress minutes he played over the summer will help.

Immanuel Quickley

Quickley, entering Year 4, is an obsessive student. Look no further than how his defense has evolved since his first NBA season when he couldn’t figure out where to rotate. Now, he’s the Knicks’ most-disciplined defender.

But Quickley has progressed in other ways, too, namely as a decision-maker with the ball. The Knicks will look out for him to take another step in that area this season.

Quickley will always boast a scoring mentality. It’s who he is. But it’s not like he’s failed to develop. As a rookie, he was an instant offense chucker. Come his second season, he leaned toward scoring but popped some passes that made you go, “OK, he wouldn’t have done that a year ago.” Come his third, he climbed to second in NBA Sixth Man of the Year voting, in part because he understood how to run an offense better than ever.

But the consistency hasn’t arrived yet, which showed during the playoff run when he took on a smaller offensive role and lost aggressiveness once his scoring bogged down.

Quickley has gotten better at running pick-and-rolls and leading an offense during each of his pro seasons. He’s proving he’s a starting-quality guard, even if he plays behind Brunson. If he does it, the Knicks bench could sweep up other teams.

Quentin Grimes

I’m just waiting for Grimes, who is entering Year 3, to shoot 40 percent from 3-point range. It feels wrong that it hasn’t happened yet.

The release is on point. His balance is impeccable. He worked out with former NBA sharpshooter JJ Redick over the summer, not just because Redick was so dominant from beyond the arc but also because he was notoriously one of the league’s best-conditioned players. Redick would scamper around screens over and over until the defense was too exhausted to follow him.

Getting to that level is a goal for Grimes.

During the third preseason game, when many of the team’s rotation players sat out on the first half of a back-to-back, Grimes drained seven 3s, three of them off the dribble. There is a versatility to his shooting. The Knicks need it, too. He is the one starter who is at his best outside of the arc.

The Knicks could use the extra spacing, and Grimes turning from good to great from deep would help.

DiVincenzo’s impact

The Knicks have made a conscious effort to acquire players who fit Thibodeau’s personality: the gritty, play-hard types over which the coach obsesses. Brunson fits that description, as do Grimes and Hart and Miles McBride. And so does DiVincenzo, who sank 40 percent of his 3-point attempts last season and can help defensively, too.

New York downgraded its size to bring in the shooting guard, but basketball is less about height than it is about how a player uses that height. For example, DiVincenzo had a better rebound rate last season than Toppin did. He will help what’s been a clear mission for this team. The Knicks are loaded with loose-ball hounds, guys who run down long rebounds especially well, like DiVincenzo, Quickley and Hart.

Which Randle will show up?

Will it be the Randle who struggled during his first season in New York while he carried too much of an offensive burden? Or will it be the Randle who made All-NBA during his second season in New York while carrying an even heavier burden and somehow strolling with perfect posture? Or will it be the one who struggled in the playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks later that season? Or will it be the one who regressed the following season, when he started missing jump shots and let his frustrations out for 82 games? Or will it be the one from last season, who renovated his game alongside Brunson and returned to All-NBA status because of smart shot selection, ferocious rebounding and quicker decision-making? Or it be the one who once again struggled in the playoff run, though this time it may have been because he was fighting through a painful ankle injury that led to offseason surgery?

The good news for Knicks fans is that the two-time All-Star is saying all the right things.

He is fully recovered from the offseason operation and says his goal is to become more efficient this season, an area where he improved significantly in 2022-23. He doesn’t want to take more 3s, per se, considering he hoisted more than eight a game last season, but he wants to find better ones: more off the catch, fewer off the dribble. He has bought into his role next to Brunson, the Knicks’ primary ballhandler, which takes stress away from Randle.

But how it goes down is anyone’s guess. Randle is capable of winning the Knicks a game on any given night, but he’s also been prone to inconsistent energy and moments when he fades away. We mentioned the problems with transition defense; well, he’s the team’s biggest culprit.

I’m a believer in inertia. Randle is coming off his best season ever, and he works well with Brunson. Chances are, that will continue. But he has to prove it in the games that matter most, too.

Bold predictions

The Knicks will finish fourth in the Eastern Conference, behind the Bucks, Celtics and Cavs.

If the Knicks are treading around .500 or better leading into the trade deadline, and it would be a massive disappointment if they weren’t, they will use Evan Fournier’s $18.9 million salary and a draft pick to trade for an expensive player who helps with one of their weaknesses.

The Knicks, which are constantly on the hunt for a star, will not trade for one during the regular season. The rumor mill will heat up with them contending for a mega name around draft time.

Either Brunson or Randle will make All-NBA, if only because the Knicks don’t take rest days and the league now has a rule that a player must participate in 65-plus games to be eligible for awards.

Mitchell Robinson will average more offensive rebounds per game than defensive rebounds per game.

The Knicks will break the record for most two-way contracts signed throughout one season. They have already signed a player to a two-way contract seven times since the offseason began. Seven! And they haven’t even played a game yet. I have no idea what the record is, nor do I care to look it up, so I will call victory on this one no matter what happens.

(Top photo of Donte DiVincenzo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k3Jvcm1pbHxzfJFsZmpoX2eAcLfNopqkq11nfXN%2FjGtrZquVlsCwuoypqZ6umZrEbr%2FTq5ynn6SdwG7DxJqip52jqLK0ecKopZydoqPAbrzRnpuim6SevK%2B%2Fjg%3D%3D

WinkBlog