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Optimism about the Knicks is a relatively new idea. The franchise languished for most of the first 20 seasons after James Dolan—the Cablevision heir—took over in 1999.
The Knicks’ lone bright spot came in 2012–2013: a 50-win season and second-round playoff exit, both firsts since 2000. They made a habit of spending over the luxury tax with little to show for it, were infamously spurned by LeBron James and Kevin Durant in free agency, and made splashy, questionable hires.
The other constant: Dolan cultivated controversy for all kinds of reasons—from strange emails sent to unhappy fans to the ejection of legendary Knicks enforcer Charles Oakley from a 2017 game, to Dolan’s alleged meddling in situations such as the Carmelo Anthony trade, to Madison Square Garden’s use of facial recognition technology to ban Dolan’s enemies. For a while, it was not uncommon to hear “Fire Dolan” chants raining down from the Garden faithful.
Today, the Knicks have a different aura. They boast the second-highest NBA valuation at $7.5 billion and, after notching their first consecutive 50-win seasons in 30 years, have vindicated the league’s fourth-highest payroll at $193.6 million. They’ve made the playoffs four of the last five years after missing the playoffs 15 of the prior 20.
Last season, they advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals before falling to the Indiana Pacers in a hard-fought, seven-game series. They have two 2024–2025 All-Stars in Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, surrounded by a versatile supporting cast that includes playoff-tested wings and a rotation deep enough to weather injuries.
What changed? It might be as simple as one great hire.
The turnaround can be traced back to the early March 2020 arrival of Leon Rose as team president. He professionalized the franchise, including through strategic front office hirings and the appointment of head coach Tom Thibodeau—who this season surpassed Pat Riley for fourth in all-time wins for a Knicks coach, and has the fifth-highest winning percentage in franchise history among coaches who roamed the sidelines for at least 100 games. The Rose-led Knicks also established some goodwill, bringing back the Big Fella, Patrick Ewing, as a basketball ambassador.
Under the Rose regime, the Knicks chose not to trade the farm for players like Donovan Mitchell or Zach LaVine. Instead, they built on top of their foundation in a way that made basketball sense, like swiftly trading for Towns before the season once it became clear starting center Mitchell Robinson was not going to be ready, or reuniting Brunson with Villanova teammates Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges.
Rose has made plenty of strategic moves, but one unexpected splash—and a stroke of good fortune—is the primary reason for the team’s transformation. As Brunson tells it, the Knicks were not a lock to land him before they signed him to a four-year, $104 million contract in 2022.
“I really did want to stay in Dallas,” Brunson said on an episode of Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes’s All the Smoke podcast last year. Brunson says he was ready to re-sign and could have gotten a four-year, $55 million deal, but the Mavericks decided to wait and keep their options open. By the time they made an offer, Brunson had proved to himself he was worth more, and when the offseason came, he signed with New York, where his father, Rick Brunson, is an assistant coach.
The signing was surprising at the time, as Brunson was reliable but not a superstar by any measure. Ultimately, even a tampering penalty was well worth it. In addition to back-to-back All-Star appearances, Brunson was named to the All-NBA second team last year. Hart recently called him the “king of New York.”
Perhaps most importantly, Dolan, who can still regularly be seen sitting right underneath the basket at home games, has stopped meddling on the basketball side of things. The enigmatic billionaire seems to have determined it’s more fun to play music and run businesses, like the Sphere, the innovative music and entertainment venue in Las Vegas.
In fact, Dolan oversaw the spin-off of MSG Sports and MSG Entertainment into separate entities. Both businesses are reporting strong performance. For fiscal 2024, MSG Entertainment reported revenues of $959.3 million, a 13% increase compared to the prior year, and MSG Sports reported revenues of $1.03 billion, which it said represents a record and an increase of 16% over the prior year.
He’s made clear he has no interest in selling the Knicks, or the New York Rangers. But for the last five years, he hasn’t operated like a man who should be asked to sell his teams. Last month, on an episode of Brunson and Hart’s podcast, Roommates Show, Dolan said stuff fans want to hear, like the Knicks “have a team that’s going to be together for a while” and “this isn’t going to be our only season.”
It sure sounded like he understood that building with patience is the path to winning, rather than, say, trading for past-their-prime versions of Steve Francis (2006) or Tracy McGrady (2010).
The Knicks stumbled a bit down the stretch, but they dealt with injuries, including Brunson being out for an entire month. Injuries, which befell them during last year’s postseason, could always spring up again. But they have more talent and experience than the team they’ll face in the first round, the Pistons, though they won’t be a pushover. Detroit defeated the Knicks in three of four matchups this year, and Cade Cunningham, who averaged about 31 points, 8 assists, and 5 rebounds against New York during the regular season, could be the best player on the floor any given night. Importantly, the Knicks have home court advantage, which this season was exactly that, an advantage; they went 27–14 at MSG this year.
For all the positivity, there’s no guarantee the good times will continue. The tides can turn quickly in the NBA—just ask Luka Dončić. As the Knicks prepare for Game 1 on Saturday against the Pistons, storm clouds are already forming in anticipation of a potential playoff meltdown. In Round 2, they would most likely face the Celtics, who beat the Knicks in all four matchups this season and three of their four meetings last year.
Knicks beat reporters Ian Begley and Steve Popper recently suggested that Thibs could be on the hot seat, and potential other changes could be coming, including with regard to the roster, if the Knicks fail to impress this year.
A first-round flameout would not be fun, but the Knicks should tread carefully before making any drastic decisions. After years of chaos, the Knicks finally found stable ground. Now they have to survive the weight of expectations.
