Ingrained in the minds of fans is the classic model of how to build an NBA Champion: Get a bunch of superstars together.
Miami’s Big 3 with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Or Golden State’s superstar core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green (and eventually Kevin Durant). The Lakers with Kobe and Shaq (or later, Kobe and Pau Gasol). Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish in Boston. Compile multiple elite superstars, put the best affordable talent you can around them, and let those all-time greats do their unstoppable thing.
The Knicks shattered that mold.
It’s not that Jalen Brunson isn’t a star — he was second-team All-NBA this season and has made those teams three straight years — but Leon Rose and the New York front office didn’t just go out and try to stack stars on top of each other like this was a fantasy team. Or the Knicks through the 1990s and 2000s.
New York executed what the Indiana front office understood in building a team that came within a torn Achilles of maybe winning the NBA title a year ago, what Denver’s front office realized in building a championship team around Nikola Jokic, and what many other front offices are now understanding:
High-level depth wins in the playoffs.
It’s not about how great your superstar is at the top of the food chain, it’s more about not having a weak link for opponents to target. It’s about having a depth of players that a coach can trust. Mike Brown had OG Anunoby and Josh Hart and Miles Bridges and Mitchell Robinson and Landry Shamet and Jose Alvarado. Everyone contributed. There was no easy player to target, no weak link.
“It speaks volumes about this team, how versatile and the depth of our team,” Karl-Anthony Towns said of how the Knicks were built to win.
Playoffs are about matchups
Make no mistake, every team needs talent to win, and ultimately has to have a guy who can go get a bucket when you need it. The Knicks were a 53-win team with the league’s third-ranked offense and seventh-ranked defense this season, and they had a clutch guy in Jalen Brunson. The year before, Indiana made the Finals as a 50-win team led by a breakout season from Tyrese Haliburton, but a perfect complement of players around him. The year before that, a 50-win Dallas team was in the NBA Finals because they built a roster perfectly suited to maximize the talent of their superstar, Luka Doncic. That’s what Denver rode to the title the season prior to that in Denver, with quality players around Nikola Jokic.
Talent matters, but the playoffs are all about matchups. What matters more in the postseason than having a couple of household names at the top of the marquee is depth and versatility of talent. Teams can’t have a guy that other teams look at and say, “That’s an easy target.”
“[Knicks role players] have been ready from day one and not just our top five, but one through 18 have been ready from day one, you guys saw it,” coach Mike Brown said. “We called on different guys at different times, and every time we called on somebody, they stepped up.”
Mike Brown was the Knicks coach for this title run because Tom Thibodeau refused to trust and develop that depth enough, and so when he tried to pivot to it, that depth wasn’t there for him. Mike Brown got it from Day 1.
The need for elite depth even applies to the teams built more on the old model. San Antonio has Victor Wembanyama and two other top-three picks running the show, but it was facing the Knicks in the Finals because, in a seven-game series, the Spurs had fewer weak links and more shot creation than a banged-up, shorthanded Oklahoma City squad. That Thunder team won a ring the year before, not just because it had two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but because they could roll out depth beyond their stars with guys like Alex Caruso, Aaron Wiggins, Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort, Cason Wallace and on down the line.
Patience
New York’s current front office showed something sorely lacking from its predecessors (often under pressure from a much more hands-on version owner in James Dolan at the time): Patience. At least with the roster.
New York gave space to a roster to improve organically over time, and just make tweaks. No midseason “Let’s trade Karl-Anthony Towns for Giannis Antetokounmpo” overreactions. (The number of Knicks fans celebrating at the championship parade this Thursday who begged for that last February and would now deny they ever said it would be too high to count.) No, going out and compiling as many big names as possible without consideration for fit.
They gave time for the existing roster to grow comfortable around Brunson and for him to develop as well. For a long time, the knock on the Knicks was that Brunson and Towns would not defend well enough to lift this team to a title. New York was patient and let them grow as defenders until they became good enough.
New York also brought in guys who had won with Brunson in college in Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart — built-in chemistry. While New York traded Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Towns, and when that took time to come together, the front office gave it space and time. Eight of the top 10 scorers on the roster from the season before were back.
New York let this roster breathe and become all it could be.
When next season tips off, the Knicks, Spurs and Thunder are all going to be the first names mentioned as title contenders — as they should be. But if you want to see which teams have a chance to knock that big three off, figure out which teams have added quality depth, and will go into the playoffs with a roster that makes sense and doesn’t have obvious weak links to target. Check out the ones built with patience and chemistry in mind.
That’s the new working model in the NBA.
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