This hasn’t been the dream season we envisioned entering the year. If you came from the future and told everyone the Knicks would be the No. 3 seed and considerably behind the No. 1 seed in late February, I’d imagine near-universal disappointment. That’s fine, that’s reasonable.
What’s not reasonable is the way some people act after every single loss. Losing sucks, there’s no question about it, but you don’t need to write a thinkpiece about the entire organization after an off night. It’s an 82-game season, you’re not going undefeated. I think most people understand that, but then you also get takes like this on social media after the team’s disheartening loss against the Pistons on Thursday.
If you’re ever on social media, especially when one of these games are going on, you see the same tropes.
“This team doesn’t care”, “They’re soft.”, “They’re pathetic.”
This is especially the narrative after all the Pistons games. I understand it’s a different Pistons team than last year, but we also have to remember the regular season doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s also a misrepresentation of how Thursday’s game went. While the Knicks absolutely got punked in the first two meetings, they overall played with a good amount of intensity on Thursday. You know why the score was lopsided? The No. 3 3pt shooting team in basketball couldn’t buy one, while the worst wide-open shooting team in basketball once again shot over 40%.
The sky is not falling because the Pistons seem to have our number. There’s no guarantee that, assuming the Knicks stay in the 2 or 3-seed, the Pistons would even be the matchup in the Eastern Conference Finals! People saying that these three matchups are the reason they have no chance to come out of the East are being dishonest.
Different sects of the fanbase have different criticisms of the team. Some blame Jalen Brunson’s isocentric playstyle, which prevents guys like Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns from getting in rhythm. Some blame Mike Brown’s coaching style for not getting Towns the ball and treating him more like Domantas Sabonis. Some get on Josh Hart for the bad stretches when he misses an assignment off-ball defensively, and his reluctance to shoot. And then, of course, there’s criticism of Bridges and Towns for being soft.
Are some of these criticisms warranted? Sure! The Knicks are far from perfect, but they’re still a damn good basketball team. But some of these narratives are silly, especially the small, small sect that calls Brunson a ballhog and shows misleading on-off numbers.
But honestly, the most frustrating part about this stuff is glorifying the past. And no, I’m not talking about the 1990s or the 2013 Knicks, I’m talking about the recent teams. There was an unironic tweet during the 11-game skid that the 2021 Knicks, because of the defense and physicality, would beat this team in a playoff series.
(Speaking of the 11-game skid, this is possibly the worst tweet I‘ve ever seen.)
Nostalgia is a real virus. That 2021 team was the first playoff team for an entire generation of Knicks fans, but they were tremendously flawed. Once the Hawks learned to turn Julius Randle’s water off, it was over. Do we really think that team would be able to score enough in the playoffs and lock up Brunson and KAT? Seriously?
The more sensible nostalgia acts are coming from the 2023-25 teams. The Knicks played with a certain level of grit then, but people forget how things went for those teams.
The 2023 Knicks were an inspiring group that was genuinely ten-deep. The problem? The team’s second-best playoff performer was 23-year-old Quentin Grimes. Randle, RJ Barrett, and Immanuel Quickley were terrible against the Heat.
The 2024 Knicks might’ve been the most fun team to root for, and that’s what this boils down to. You love to root for the undermanned underdog with likable players and personalities, who play with a certain level of nastiness. But that team had a ceiling; their second option was Donte DiVincenzo. Now, if you want to talk about the January 2024 Knicks, I’m listening. They were special. But you were never getting that team again, not with the CBA forcing Isaiah Hartenstein to OKC.
There’s also a lot of comparing Tom Thibodeau to Mike Brown, some reasonable, some not. But let’s not act like the same people who are yearning for Thibs weren’t the ones begging for him to be fired midseason last year.
And that’s my point. There has always been something to complain about. In 2021, they couldn’t score. In 2023, they had no offense aside from Brunson in the playoffs. In 2024, a similar story. Then, when you add the offensive firepower, the pendulum swings the other way.
Make no mistake, this is the best Knicks team since Patrick Ewing was wearing orange and blue. They’re on pace for 52 wins. While they’ve had frustrating losses to Detroit and San Antonio, they’ve beaten Boston, Cleveland, Houston, Toronto, and Denver. They went 0-10 vs the top-three teams last year and 5-14 against teams that won at least 50 games. This year, they’re 7-5 (technically 6-5 but the NBA Cup counts to me, dammit) against teams playing at a 50 or more win pace. It’s a Pistons issue right now, not a crippling league issue.
It’s one thing when the likes of Draymond Green or Charles Barkley use buzzwords to insult this team. They’re outside media personalities who benefit from clicks. It’s disingenuous when it’s our fans doing it, pretending that we aren’t less than six years removed from Mo Harkless starting games with regularity and less than eight years removed from Allonzo Trier being our most promising player.
You know what, maybe I just need to get off social media.