The New York Knicks Are on a Fast Track to Nowhere

Most NBA teams have a discernible direction. These directions aren't always urgent (Orlando) or successful (Brooklyn). Some are reflected in singular players (Dallas). A few you must squint to see (Chicago), but you can, in fact, see them. Others are complicated by surprise (Utah) or disappointment (Minnesota) but nevertheless visible.

Scattered throughout the league, though, are a handful of organizations without concrete course.

The New York Knicks are one of them, if not leading the aimless charge.

This has been semi-clear for longer than many will care to admit. It is painfully obvious now on the heels of another telltale loss, this one a 145-135 Sunday defeat at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder that evoked effusive boos from the Madison Square Garden crowd.

In many ways, this was the quintessential Knicks loss—a confluence of everything that remains wrong, both fixable and absolute, with a nod to their Jekyll and Hyde extremes.

They opened with a 48-point first quarter on 20-of-31 shooting. Nine different players scored in the 12-minute frame, and New York led by as many as 13.

Over the next two quarters, the Thunder outscored the Knicks by 28 points (86-58). Shai Gilgeous-Alexander absolutely roasted New York's "defense," scoring 21 of his 37 points in the third alone. Oklahoma City rained hellfire from three, going 13-of-18 (72.2 percent) on its triples across this 24-minute span.

Not bad for a team that entered Sunday 25th in points scored per possession and 29th in three-point accuracy (31.8 percent), eh?

One loss is not typically all-revealing. Letdowns happen over the length of an 82-game regular season, inexplicably blown leads and all. But this Knicks loss, like many others, featured many of the same issues that have plagued them all year—and in seasons past.

New York's defense has allowed teams to bombs away from deep without much resistance since 2022-23 tipped off. Closeouts range from half-assed to nonexistent for long stretches, and the primary offenders are exactly who you think they are.

Only the Timberwolves and Toronto Raptors allow a larger share of opponent shots to come as uncontested threes. The Knicks rank 27th overall in the frequency with which they surrender long-range attempts and don't counteract this volume with a detectable identity elsewhere.

They limit looks at the rim, but that's often a function of offenses not needing to venture inside the arc for quality shots. They neither force turnovers (26th) nor effectively crash the defensive glass (25th). The latter wart is new, though not any less damning. Julius Randle is the lone Knicks big who places higher than the 38th percentile in defensive rebounding rate.

Oklahoma City did not win the fast-break battle on Sunday (it was a 14-14 stalemate). That's something of a minor miracle. The Knicks rank inside the bottom five of both transition frequency (26th) and points allowed per possession (27th). They are dead last in points allowed per possession after committing a turnover, according to Inpredictable.

Sitting a hair below .500 fewer than 15 games into the season shouldn't be the end of the world. But this presumes the Knicks are built to be better—that their biggest obstacles are coaching, injury concerns or work-in-progress chemistry.

Coaching comes closet to being the answer. I already called for the Knicks to fire Tom Thibodeau after their Nov. 2 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. People with clearly, let's say, vested interests in the situation weren't thrilled about it. I stand by it. My issues with him are neither original nor specific to this season.

Stubborn roster mismanagement has been his default even dating back to his Coach of the Year campaign in 2020-21, and it was on full display Sunday.

RJ Barrett picked up his fourth foul at the 9:58 minute mark of the third quarter. Thibs proceeded to sub him out for Evan Fournier.

And Barrett never saw the floor again.

When asked about the decision afterward, Thibs' answer predictably lacked substance:

That is—and I don't say this lightly—asinine logic.

Fournier has played most of this season like he deeply wants the Knicks to land Victor Wembanyama. In no world is he the answer over Barrett.

Never mind that Fournier went 0-for-3 during his 14ish second-half minutes. (He was a plus-six during this stretch, for what it's worth.) Barrett is no worse than the second most important person in this entire organization. You don't rope him to the bench for the chance to maybe, possibly, potentially win a November matinee against the Thunder.

Spelling Barrett for a bit amid foul trouble is one thing (and also debatable). And he hasn't turned in the most complete season.

His performances are littered with drives to planned destinations unknown and frustratingly inconsistent defense, and he was 2-of-10 when Thibs took him out on Sunday. But his play over the previous seven games warranted benefit of the doubt:

To Thibs' credit, he did at least dust off Quentin Grimes to chase around SGA.

Oh, wait, no he didn't.

Because Grimes is "situational." Because his conditioning isn't up to snuff. Because he suffered a left foot injury that's largely kept him out of the rotation. And because the Knicks are clearly too good to give him reps outside garbage time. And also because Grimes might still, you know, be injured. In which case, uh, why is he "situational" rather than just out?

Transparency is not the Knicks' preferred mode of operation, so Grimes' status might be above Thibs' pay grade. The lack of invention behind lineups and rotations is not.

Remember when he really, actually played Randle and Obi Toppin together for 10 glorious minutes against the Philadelphia 76ers on Nov. 4? And how the Knicks were a plus-14 during that span? And how they came from behind to beat the Sixers? The duo has logged 32 total minutes since—and didn't play together against the Thunder.

Spare me the plus-minus (minus-28). It is skewed heavily by the Nov. 5 loss to the Boston Celtics. The sample overall is too small to be deemed conclusive. It's on Thibs to make it conclusive.

Mitchell Robinson is out with a right knee injury. Thoroughly explore the pairing for crying out loud, especially if it ensures Toppin never winds up logging fewer than eight minutes in a game...like he did against the Thunder. (Yes, his court time is up during Robinson's absence. No, that doesn't make this excusable.)

By the way: Thibs should be criticized for not experimenting elsewhere.

Continuing to deem Toppin-Randle a break-in-case-of-emergency pairing receives most of the attention, but nearly 90 percent of Barrett's possessions have still come alongside Randle. And heaven forbid Thibs play more than two of his perimeter youngsters at a time:

This stuff matters, because self-discovery matters. The Knicks are not title contenders. Right now, they aren't even a play-in team. Developing kids and plumbing unproven lineups should be at the top of their to-do list.

And yet, while Thibs deserves plenty of blame, the front office of team president Leon Rose and his primary decision-makers have not done nearly enough to justify keeping their jobs.

Maybe they have a problem with the way Thibs coaches the roster. They're also the ones who assembled it—who rushed to extend Randle after an outlier 2020-21 campaign, who gave Fournier three guaranteed years, and who, worst of all, continue to give Thibs a depth chart that allows him to overindulge his commitment to veterans and rigidity disguised as continuity.

Armchair idiots like myself can call for Thibs' job. And if we're being honest, we know this ends with him losing it:

Still, Thibs isn't the only problem. He probably isn't even the biggest problem. Another coach could take over and prioritize development or functional flexibility, and that won't rescue the Knicks from the carefully crafted vague position they're in now.

Jalen Brunson is their best player. He's really good. But you can only go so far as a team when your best player is maybe a top-50 guy.

That's why New York is biding its time to trade for a superstar, silly goose! As Shams Charania noted during an appearance on FanDuel TV, "executives around the league" believe that "the Knicks are kind of hoarding" their first-round picks and "just waiting for that next megastar to become available" (h/t Posting and Toasting).

This theory, though a titillating headline, is just making fine powder out of a record already broken down into smithereens. Acquiring a star has supposedly been this front office's plan all along. They then proceeded to...not acquire Donovan Mitchell, a star who wanted to play in New York.

Whether mortgaging the farm for him was the right call is a separate matter. The Knicks were "literally one first-round pick away” or "a Quentin Grimes away" from making it happen, according to Charania. In reality, New York is probably better off. The Cleveland Cavaliers were one trade away from imminent, if not instant, title contention. The Knicks were not, and draining their asset pool could have locked them into a glitzier-looking bubble of mediocrity they're drifting within now.

But what does it say that New York was prepared to give up so much just to chase early playoff exits? That Mitchell was the first of multiple stars? Good luck with that. The superstar trade market isn't conducive to acquiring more than one.

Landing Mitchell and Rudy Gobert drained draft-pick caches in Cleveland and Minnesota, respectively. Ideally, you should have at least one star or future star in place before going all-in for another.

The Knicks don't have that player. Barrett is the closest they get to a blue-chip cornerstone, and he's apparently not a lock to play over Evan Fournier when Thibs is searching for life.

It is here where New York differs from so many other not-good teams. Oklahoma City has its timeline (SGA, Josh Giddey, Chet Holmgren). The Houston Rockets have their timeline (Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., Alperen Sengün). The Magic have theirs (Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, maybe Jalen Suggs and Wendell Carter Jr.). The Detroit Pistons have theirs, too (Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren).

So on and so forth. It doesn't matter whether you believe in the long-term viability of these young cores. They exist, and their teams are built around optimizing and prioritizing their development. The Knicks front office hasn't done that for their young guys. And worse, they haven't put the team in a position to find that pole-star prospect.

Skirting an actual rebuild, while questionable, is not without merit when you're in the star-acquisition game. The Knicks don't appear married to that, either.

Mitchell alone wouldn't have vaulted them into contention, but there are maaaybe five players in the league who would—and none of them are on the verge of getting dealt. Meanwhile, the Knicks themselves seem to know they won't stumble into star arrivals during free agency. Red-carpet names aren't leaving via the open market anymore, and we sure as hell know New York's front office hasn't amassed all those first-rounders to draft and develop.

Much of this could be forgiven if the Knicks were at least invested in fully, coherently exploring the hand they have now. They're not. We wouldn't be here, discussing yet another meltdown that wanted for rhyme and reason if they were.

Jeff Haynes/NBAE via Getty Images

Is New York rebuilding? Open to it? Are the Knicks devoted to the superstar chase? Worried about re-entering the top six of the East first and figuring out the rest later? Do they aspire to have a Charlotte-esque monopoly on the nine through 11 seeds?

These are basic questions, and the inability for New York to answer them is equal parts maddening and longstanding. It's also not surprising.

Fundamental directions are mirrored in how a franchise is built and managed.

Built by Leon Rose, managed Tom Thibodeau, these Knicks are the spitting image of an organization that hasn't the faintest idea of what it's doing or where it's going.

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Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass and accurate entering Friday's games. Salary information via Spotrac.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.