How Important Is the 2014-15 Season to the New York Knicks?
Are the New York Knicks biding time, trumpeting patience and process as a way of readying themselves and their fans for another year of feckless basketball? Or are mentions of playoff contention indications of a team legitimately concerned with now, just as much as it is with later?
Different words have been flung around since the end of last season, many of them conflicting with one another. Instead of breeding balance, the Knicks are creating confusion, making it difficult—nigh impossible—to comprehend the importance of now.
Patience. Process.
Playoffs.
Which is it?
For a team so incontestably invested in dissociating itself from failures of years past, the Knicks have not entered 2014-15 with the fixed purpose or definitive direction conducive to redemption.
Patience and Process
If nothing else, the Knicks—buoyed by Phil Jackson and Derek Fisher's candor—have been forthright about their attempt to reinvent themselves. Said reincarnation begins on the offensive end, where they're implementing a somewhat-doctored version of the storied triangle assault.
This is not a halfhearted installation. Their roster isn't ideally built for the triangle, but what little control over the cosmetic makeup Jackson had he exploited. He re-signed Carmelo Anthony, mid-range extraordinaire; he acquired Jose Calderon, the ideal off-ball point man; and he signed the triangle-fit Jason Smith.
Commitment to fully triangle-ing has been further evident in repeated acceptance of the lengthy process at hand. No one involved is entertaining instant mastery. If it's not Jackson preaching patience, it's Fisher. And if it's not one of them, it's someone else.
Including Anthony.
"It's a work in progress now," he said ahead New York's regular-season opener, per ESPN New York's Ian Begley. "It's going to be a work in progress until the end of the season."
Indeed, the Knicks are facing a steep learning curve, one Doug Eberhardt and Mike Prada, writing for SB Nation, say cannot be skirted or abbreviated:
"Combine a willingness to suffer through that transition year with long-term roster stability and extreme patience from management, and maybe a team can succeed going all-in on the Triangle. That is what the Knicks, under Jackson's tutelage, will be hoping to accomplish. But that's a tough sell for any owner, general manager or fan base; New York, of course, is not noted for being laid-back.
Triangle advocates believe previous coaches failed because of that lack of patience, and not any inherent problem with the system.
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The triangle is complicated and, at its heart, endorses almost everything the Knicks did not last year: selflessness, ball movement, off-ball movement, spacing and reactive decision-making.
Elements of it have been integrated into other offenses over the years, aside from Jackson's Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. Those who tried to fully embrace it have failed spectacularly. (Think Jim Cleamons with the Dallas Mavericks and Kurt Rambis with the Minnesota Timberwolves.)
Recently, the triangle's core tenets have also come under siege as they pertain to today's NBA. In previous years, it's called for an onrush of mid-range jumpers and post-ups, two scoring methods that go against the league's three-point shooting influx.
These Knicks, then, must not only grasp the triangle but manipulate it.
Only three of Jackson's Bulls and Lakers teams averaged more than 20 three-point attempts per game. Twenty squads, meanwhile, cleared 20 attempts last year. It's adapt or die for this offense. And after the Knicks adapt, they'll have to wait some more.
Then some more.
They may, in fact, wait well into 2015-16, since the Knicks of today aren't the Knicks of tomorrow.
Roster turnover will play a significant part of their ongoing development. The team is flush with expiring contracts and impending cap space, the latter of which it intends to use.
"Carmelo took less money—even though it seems rather minuscule—but it's enough for us to have flexibility in the coming year and then as the years go on the pie's going to get bigger, things will happen," Jackson said, per Begley.
New faces—whomever they are—will need time, just as the current Knicks need time. There's no telling when the quest for headlining additions will end, either. It could be this summer; it could be next summer. This game of musical free-agency ventures could feasibly last for years.
And if the Knicks of today are merely a makeshift model for that broad, imprecise chase, how can this season itself be anything more?
Playoff Aspirations
Most teams in the Knicks' situation that are struggling with a new system and employing a temporary core would be classified as "rebuilding." They wouldn't be expected to make the playoffs or do much of anything at all. Most rebuilding factions would willingly relegate themselves to the draft lottery while evaluating young talent and experimenting with different lineups.
But for all the similarities that can be drawn, the Knicks are not most rebuilding teams.
Anthony makes them different.
Thirty-year-old superstars playing at their peak aren't typical components of lottery-lost franchises. Anthony returned to the Knicks knowing they wouldn't become insta-contenders—he's admitted as much—but his submission to their plan (and dollar signs) hasn't bought them unconditional time.
It was Anthony who called the Knicks a playoff team in August, per the New York Post's Fred Kerber, and the rest of team has followed suit.
"There's been teams that are learning a system, and once they figure that system out, they win," Amar'e Stoudemire said, via Newsday's Al Iannazzone. "When Tim Duncan played with the Spurs, his second year, they were somewhat of a new team but they won the championship. I'm sure we can search for that goal."
Comparing the Knicks to any San Antonio Spurs team of the last 18 years is beyond absurdly ambitious. But the crux of San Antonio's blueprint is one they are striving to replicate.
Like the Spurs, the Knicks are simultaneously planning for the future while trying to win now. However lofty or deluded that seems, they have no other choice.
Mixed Messages
What can we take away from the Knicks' patience-seeking, playoff-searching ways?
Not much. Not right now.
Some of what they're saying and doing trivializes this season. In addition to installing a new, complex offensive system, they've failed to elevate the ceiling of their 24th-ranked defense from last year. Their ability to lighten the scoring load that's sat upon Anthony's shoulders since 2011 is predicated upon ball movement and the shot-making abilities of inconsistent role players. Still-developing talents such as Iman Shumpert, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Cleanthony Early should also see substantial court time.
Next year's first-round draft pick in hand, developing offense in mind, bottom-feeding defense in tow, it's easy to say that 2014-15 will be nothing more than an empty, lottery-forsaken year for the Knicks. Not even Anthony's offensive dominance can completely kill that train of thought.
But so long as they play in the Eastern Conference, such wisdom is not infallible.
The East isn't built for traditional transitioning teams. Alleged tankers (Philadelphia 76ers) and raw-prospect-packed rotations (Orlando Magic, Milwaukee Bucks) make it implausible for a superstar-led team like the Knicks to count on bottoming out. It would take the most flagrant of tank jobs that, in all likelihood, would draw the ire of fans and perhaps the league.
Missing the playoffs also isn't an effective sales pitch. If the Knicks want to spend forthcoming cap space on a Marc Gasol or Goran Dragic in 2015, or a Kevin Durant in 2016, they'll want something of value outside Anthony to sling. They'll need signs of progress.
And, in this case, there are no better harbingers of transcendent change than wins and playoff appearances.
So, immediately, the Knicks are who they are unless injuries, a lack of talent, conference competition or a complete shift of course proves otherwise: the rare rebuilding team with its eyes fixated on tomorrow and its heart invested in today.
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com unless otherwise cited.
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