Everything seemed to be going great for the Knicks as they approached this past offseason. They were coming off their best season in what seemed like forever. Julius Randle looked like a rock solid building block for the future. RJ Barrett had taken a leap as a wing scorer. Tom Thibodeau’s offense wasn’t good, but they played lockdown defense, which was enough to win games. The Knicks entered the offseason with a lot of hope for the future and a lot of high expectations for the upcoming season.
This season has been everything but pretty. There are way too many problems to even address in one article, but let’s take a look at some of the key contributors to the Knicks lack of success so far this season.
Whenever a team is struggling, the best player gets most of the blame. Sometimes that’s not justified, but not in this case. Julius Randle has been horrendous. Coming off an All NBA 2nd Team selection last season, the expectations were high, but Randle hasn’t come close to meeting them. His scoring is down by nearly five points per contest. His shooting splits have plummeted from last season. He shot 41.1% from three in 2020-21, compared to 30.8% this season. His advanced stats don’t help his case either. His Net Rating is down 8.5 points from last season. That’s too big of a dropoff for a franchise player. He’s not the only person responsible for the losing, but he has to play better if they want a shot to make the playoffs.
Another problem is that the Knicks have the slowest pace in the league this year by a mile. With such a young roster, why not push the pace a little? Against the Lakers the other night, they played fast and although they lost, there were a lot of positives to take away from the game. They played with a pace that would be good enough to be the fourth fastest in the league this year. Julius Randle seemed to enjoy the uptick in tempo as he put up a monster stat line of 32 points, 16 rebounds and 7 assists. He wasn’t the only one who had a good night. RJ Barrett had the best game of his career, finishing with 36 points on solid shooting splits. This is interesting because when Barrett played at Duke in his lone college season, he looked like someone with the potential to be an elite weapon and playmaker in the open court. He has great vision and can finish at the rim with his size and strength. They should look to find ways to get him running in transition more often. Others can also benefit from a more up and down style of play. Kemba Walker and Immanuel Quickley can be lethal in a faster paced offense. Their speed and quickness will be hard to contain for any team in the league. By playing at such a slow pace, Thibodeau is limiting their offensive ceilings as well as the team’s maximum offensive potential.
That leads us to the biggest problem the Knicks have. Tom Thibodeau. Thibs is a good coach. There is no denying that. He took this team to places no one ever imagined possible last year. With that being said, this year has highlighted some major problems with his fit with this team specifically. The pace is a huge problem, as mentioned earlier. Thibs is a defensive minded coach. He always has been and always will be. Last season that strategy worked out perfectly. The Knicks played slower than anyone in the league, but shut everyone down with the fourth best defensive rating. This year however, the defense hasn’t been as good and they are losing a ton of games because of it. They are down to 14th in the league in defensive rating.
The dip in defensive performance isn’t Thibs’ fault. The front office made some decisions this offseason to go out and sign a new starting backcourt that can score more than the guys they had in the past. The new guys, Kemba Walker and Evan Fournier, are way better offensively than the guys they replaced. That part they were right about. What they didn’t realize was that Walker and Fournier don’t play defense and don’t fit in with Thibodeau’s style of play. They have the two worst defensive ratings on the team and their offense isn’t good enough to make up the difference. They just don’t fit with the coach.
The biggest problem with Thibodeau has been how he has handled the playing time of newly acquired Cam Reddish. The Knicks gave up a 1st round pick to get Reddish a couple weeks before the deadline to add a young wing scorer to play alongside Randle and Barrett. Besides the obvious attempt of trying to lure Zion Williamson to New York by pairing up his two former running mates from college, this move was not made to have Reddish ride the bench while guys like Alec Burks and Evan Fournier eat up massive minutes. Thibodeau has yet to give Reddish a meaningful minute of playing time. There are rumors leaking from within the Knicks organization that Thibodeau didn’t want them to trade for Reddish, but they went ahead and did it anyway. There seems to be a big gap in the approach that the front office is taking and the way he is coaching the team day to day. It might be time to move on and go find another play caller who actually can coach this roster to its strengths.
The Knicks disappointing season is starting to spiral. They have to do something with the coaching staff or make a miracle trade at the deadline to stay relevant in an extremely deep and competitive eastern conference. The future isn’t completely ruined just yet, but the clock is ticking and the fans are eager for more winning.
