It wasn’t that long ago that the #1 thing the Knicks could hang their hats on was their depth.
Go back to the 2022-23 season. The team had a good starting lineup of Jalen Brunson, RJ Barrett, Quentin Grimes, Julius Randle, and Mitchell Robinson, but that lineup didn’t gel that much. It was the bench, consisting of Immanuel Quickley, Isaiah Hartenstein, Deuce McBride, Josh Hart, and Obi Toppin. They had two veterans on lucrative deals, Evan Fournier and Derrick Rose, as emergency depth.
The next season,
although Toppin departed, the team grew stronger with the addition of Donte DiVincenzo. From 2022 through the end of December 2023, the Knicks were as deep as any team in basketball, albeit with a lack of high-end talent to seriously contend. It was on December 30, however, that the Knicks began to coalesce and try to take the next step by sacrificing depth for elite talent. Out went Barrett, Randle, DiVincenzo, Grimes, and even Hartenstein through free agency; in came OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Mikal Bridges.
Taking a sledgehammer to the depth was a necessary evil, but it also limited the Knicks’ ceiling in 2024-25. Predictably, Tom Thibodeau overused the starters with a lack of capable depth, and while the overuse didn’t backfire, the team would have few options when their starting five got predictable and turned into a negative lineup by the end of the season. Mixing in a healthy Robinson and McBride helped, but those lineups never gelled early because both battled injuries. Landry Shamet, Delon Wright, Precious Achiuwa, and Cam Payne filled in, but showed little aside from flashes.
Fast forward to mid-September. Training camp is about to begin across the league, and the only Knick to hit free agency last offseason that has a job is Shamet, who re-signed a week ago. The other three haven’t even secured a camp invite. That says something when the Knicks signed eleven people in about a week to fill their roster ahead of a preseason trip to Abu Dhabi. It would not be very hard to upgrade the depth from last season, but given their lack of resources, the Knicks did a great job.
They agreed to a veteran minimum contract with microwave bench scorer Jordan Clarkson after he cleared waivers to start free agency. Next, they inked forward Guerschon Yabusele to a two-year deal with the taxpayer mid-level exception. After two months of radio silence, they signed a small army to compete for the last roster spot(s), but ultimately, it’ll be between the incumbent Shamet and a valuable secondary ballhandler in Malcolm Brogdon. Even the two-way players have promise, as Tosan Evbuomwan and Trey Jemison III showed flashes last season of being able to fill in as emergency depth.
It really is night and day. Last year, you struggled to see how the Knicks could go beyond a nine-man rotation. There were nights that they had to go into their stash of unproven, not-ready rookies. This year, the Knicks will go in with a stable nine-man rotation with several options behind to mix and match.
We don’t know what Mike Brown will do with the starting lineup, but he has options. If he goes double big with Robinson alongside Towns, you could find spot minutes for second-year big Ariel Hukporti off the bench. If McBride starts, you could still use him in a variety of different lineups as a spot-up shooter that can share the floor and mask the defensive concerns of Brunson and Brogdon. He could even experiment with Yabusele as the fifth starter after his strong Eurobasket performance, and the team would have the depth to mix-and-match lineups.
While the team isn’t perfectly fluid (example: Brunson will never share the floor with Clarkson, hopefully), they boast enough pieces to be able to run many different types of lineups.
You want defense? How’s a McBride, Bridges, Shamet, Anunoby, Robinson lineup sound?
Last possession of a quarter? You could see the big four and one of several offensive dynamos, depending on the situation.
Non-Brunson lineups? Brogdon can be the backup facilitator. If Mike Brown is creative enough with his rotations, he’ll be able to use Bridges and Anunoby in many different situations, staggering them to supplement lineups that feature substandard defenders. If Big Mitch is healthy, it’s even better.
The biggest problem in my mind is that this isn’t NBA2k. Players have egos, and the Knicks now might not have enough minutes to go around. My lone problem with signing a guy like Brogdon is that I struggle to come up with lineups that involve two of him, Clarkson, and Brunson. None of those guys are even average defenders, and when you add the possibility of KAT playing alongside them? Mike Brown is a great offensive mind, but I’m not sure sacrificing defense like this is the move.
Someone is gonna get upset with the lack of minutes. Prior to training camp last year, there were grumblings of a discontent DiVincenzo before the trade due to a likely reduced role. Veterans who sign short-term deals are always looking for an opportunity to parlay into a new payday. The Knicks need their big four to play a lot to get to where they need to go, so it’s not like they’ll be playing under 30 minutes a night.
Ultimately, it’s a blessing, not a curse. There’s a chance things could get messy down the road, but the moral of the story is that the Knicks have real depth again. If they can deploy it properly, there will be a variety of lineups that they can run and get experience with over the course of an 82-game season.
