Opinion
Marcus Morris is probably the best player on the New York Knicks right now, and when you start to realise that and really properly feel it, you begin to understand exactly where the Knicks are.
Morris is a handy gunner off the bench in his ideal role, which he fulfilled for the Celtics the past two years.
He is not just miscast as the best player on an NBA team – his casting in the role is some sort of magnificent farce that points to the ridiculousness of precisely how horribly things can go for mismanaged franchises.
The Knicks have an array of other lower-tier Morrises – vaguely useful players who are dreadfully but necessarily overstretched on this team. Julius Randle was born to play for the 2019-20 Knicks – soaking up usage and piling up meaningless stats in the quest to win 24 games. It’s not clear what Bobby Portis does, but enough teams have been willing to pay him to do whatever it is.
The point guard situation is interesting, or at least something sitting in the same room as interesting. Elfrid Payton, Frank Ntilikina and particularly Dennis Smith Jr all have useful talent, and their playing time is a worthwhile investigation into any future they might have.
Smith, the major piece of the Kristaps Porzingis trade, is the key. He is Russell Westbrook-lite on the athleticism front, he can pass, and his shot is workable. He has all the physical tools, but on the court he is lost and tentative – he only reacts and doesn’t manipulate space and angles as much as he awkwardly, over-zealously jumps into them as soon as they spring up on him.
Kevin Knox looks the part, but he hasn’t really done anything well so far, and it’s not clear what he’s supposed to do well.
The future of the team is RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson – the former so impressive with his combination of size, strength and vision, and the latter dynamic and rare with his explosiveness and rangy limbs that come from nowhere to destroy possessions.
But neither of Barrett and Robinson profile as superstars. Barrett has size but not much burst and doesn’t shoot the lights out to compensate. He changes speed expertly – everything slows down for him and feels easy, as he carefully moves to one spot, waits for what he knows will happen, then confidently moves through the opening to the next spot – but looks worryingly at times like a taller DeMar DeRozan.
Inefficiency may always plague him.
Robinson might have more upside if he can hone his defensive instincts and add polish and positioning to his devastating raw skills.
All of the above is to say that New York right now are not good, although not completely devoid of talent or interest. They are, though, in the bigger picture almost entirely devoid of hope.
The worst owner in the NBA is not going anywhere. Until James Dolan leaves, the Knicks are likely stuck in basketball hell.
You would figure that by virtue of playing in the Big Apple, in a league with a salary cap for equalisation and a draft system that rewards failure, the Knicks once every now and then would luck into a second-round playoff team, but Dolan is so bad that it’s only happened once after 2000.
(AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
Bigger picture strategy has been an abomination and every public manifestation of the team’s management has been a dire reinforcement of how bad you imagine things are behind the scenes. Signing four power forwards in the offseason has turned out predictably poorly.
But, in spite of it all, the Garden still rocks. The atmosphere is ferocious – the games still feel immensely meaningful even if they absolutely aren’t. It’s always a cauldron, given life through desperation – not for wins but desperation to matter again.
Madison Square Garden is in the heart of midtown – you walk in, you walk out, and what you’re seeing in between feels like it should be important. In the context of the NBA standings it really, really isn’t, but the crowd – the beaten down but unbreakable crowd – makes it feel as though it might be.
Across the bridge, the Nets have nothing except their superior players and professional management. Barclays is empty, with so little history and so few fans – the seats filled more with tourists ticking ‘an NBA game’ off the list because the tickets are cheaper in Brooklyn than they are in Manhattan.
Maybe it will get louder when Kevin Durant comes back next year to take the court with Kyrie Irving, but New York will always be a Knicks town – it just needs a real Knicks team again.
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