The New York Knicks are back in the playoffs for a third straight year but hopes certainly aren't as high as fans expected at the beginning of the season. A splashy offseason featuring trades for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns, following Jalen Brunson's team-friendly contract extension, raised the bar for the Knicks to become a legitimate threat to win an NBA title for the first time in over 50 years.
While New York became a more dynamic offensive team as a result of their moves, their defense slipped during the regular season and players like Towns were exposed on that end of the floor against the league's elite clubs. An 0-10 record against the NBA's top three teams (Oklahoma City, Cleveland, and Boston) hangs over the Knicks like a scarlet letter, to the point that the team was actively sitting players at the end of the season with a potential goal of avoiding the Celtics in the second round.
The Indiana Pacers beat the Knicks to the punch, dropping a game to Orlando on Friday night to lock up the 4-seed and Cleveland's half of the East bracket, leaving the Knicks with a first-round matchup against Detroit before a potential showdown with Boston in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. The feeling around New York is a far cry from a year ago, when the Knicks actively pursued the 2-seed in the East despite concerns of drawing Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round.
Karl-Anthony Towns and the Knicks have a lot on the line in the playoffs
Anything short of beating the Pistons would be a massive disappointment for the Knicks, whose three-point shooting could be the key to how far they advance in the postseason. Towns has been a key factor from the perimeter, shooting 42 percent from 3 during the regular season, but his volume from beyond the arc was a bit low at just 4.7 attempts per game.
With Brunson working his way back into game shape after missing several weeks with an ankle injury, the Knicks could use a big postseason performance from Towns to feel good about their chances of eventually competing for championships with this core. The playoffs haven't been a normal experience for Towns, who only made four postseason appearances during his time with Minnesota, but played a key role in the Timberwolves' run to the Western Conference Finals last year by averaging 19.1 points per game and nine rebounds a night.
The trades for Towns and Bridges left the Knicks as a top-heavy group with limited depth, which proved to be problematic against the elite teams the NBA has to offer during the regular season. There are few avenues to significantly solve the depth problem without removing a core piece, so seeing how this group (and Towns in particular) performs in the postseason will be a key factor in how Leon Rose shapes his roster going forward.
The Knicks clearly viewed Towns as a key ingredient to their roster when they moved on from Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to acquire him right before training camp. The numbers that Towns posted during the regular season helped him earn a trip to the All-Star Game and has him in the mix for All-NBA honors, but it will mean little to the Knicks' fan base if they either get upset by the Pistons in Round 1 or fall to the Celtics in a non-competitive series.
The hope that the Knicks have here is that a competitive showing against Boston in their final regular season meeting, when the Celtics played everyone but Al Horford from their rotation, is a sign that this group can hang with the reigning champs and just needs a tweak or two on the edges to vault into legitimate title contention. A third straight second round exit, particularly if it is a non-competitive one like most of the Knicks' matchups against the NBA's best during the regular season, would raise questions about whether Rose needs to pull off another blockbuster move to put together a team capable of winning a title.