How Knicks' early superteam bid compares to others through the years
Yesterday at 01:37 PM
The New York Knicks, and specifically their starting lineup, undoubtedly qualify as a "superteam". They added former All-Defense wing Mikal Bridges and a four-time NBA All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns to a team with two or three other stars—one of whom, Jalen Brunson, is a potential MVP candidate.
However, as we've seen in the recent past, superteams don't all work out like the Steph Curry-Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors. In fact, they've failed more often than not in recent years.
New York is 10-7 through their first 17 games in 2024-25. That’s a fine record, but it doesn’t quite live up to expectations, especially for a newly formed superteam. In fact, they’ve laid a few eggs so far this season, losing winnable games, healthy or not. Specifically, New York had no business losing to the Utah Jazz (November 23) or Chicago Bulls (November 13).
They’ve also looked incredibly strong at times, including in their most recent 145-118 road win over the Denver Nuggets. And much of the inconsistency is probably a result of a lack of chemistry.
Still, it's worth identifying recent superteams since Durant left Golden State as a means of understanding what building one does to a team’s chemistry and outcomes. As a means of explaining the logic regarding how we defined the formation of a superteam, we only considered teams that imported their core. In other words, we did not consider the Boston Celtics, as their two most important players are homegrown.
Los Angeles Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the few post-Warriors superteams to win a championship. The superteam came together after the Lakers added Anthony Davis in 2019-20 to a core that was led by LeBron James. They won it all in their first season together. Skeptics will remind you that it was won in the bubble. And it has resulted in just that one, so far.
To say the Lakers have struggled since winning their latest championship is a major understatement. Following the 2020 championship, the Lakers have been eliminated in the first round on two occasions and failed to make the playoffs once. Their only other quasi-successful season was in 2022-23 when they advanced to the Western Conference Finals.
Still, the 2019-20 Lakers won 17 of their first 20 games. They finished the season 52-19, which was good for the first seed in the Western Conference.
Sure, James and Davis are still unquestionably elite. However, the Lakers mortgaged their future, giving up too many draft assets (sound familiar, Knicks’ fans?) and young players. So, now they have to deal with what they have, for better or worse. Having said that, the Lakers are off to a strong start in 2024-25, with a 10-7 record. So, we’ll see how this season plays out. If they win one more championship, the experiment might be deemed a success. But that’s a big if.
Brooklyn Nets
If the Lakers are the best example in terms of outcomes, the Brooklyn Nets are the most personal example due to their proximity to the Knicks—and because they swooped in and signed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in the Summer of 2019, both of whom were pursued by the Knicks, their ascent stung even more.
But for all the hype around the Nets, they failed to advance beyond the Eastern Conference Semifinals. They did achieve five consecutive playoff appearances, but that’s far from what they’d hoped to accomplish.
Through the first 20 games of each season, Brooklyn went 10-10 in their first season (with only Irving), 11-9 in 2020-21 (with Irving and Durant), and 14-6 in 2021-22 (with Irving, Durant, and Harden). However, it’s important to mention that the trio played only 16 games together while on the Nets, going 13-3, and they obviously weren’t all added at one tie.
To be fair, the Nets never really got a fair shake. Durant missed his first season with the Nets following a knee injury suffered in the finals in the season prior. Irving missed 35 home games the following season due to an unwillingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. And James Harden, who the Nets traded for in the middle of the 2020-21 season, was clearly not the same caliber player he was in years past during his time in Brooklyn.
Milwaukee Bucks
Like the Lakers, the Milwaukee Bucks also won a championship; however, that was before they finished putting their superteam together. The Bucks added Damian Lillard prior to the 2023-24 season, and the results since are less-than-ideal.
Milwaukee started out pretty well, winning 14 of their first 20 games last season. But their offense was less innovative after replacing coach Adrian Griffin with coach Doc Rivers. The Bucks finished 49-33 last season, good for the third seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. However, they went only 17-19 with Rivers in charge.
Unfortunately for Milwaukee, injuries to both major stars (Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo) led to an early exit in the 2024 playoff, where they were eliminated in the first round by the Indiana Pacers.
The future looks even duller in Milwaukee. The Bucks are currently 9-9 through 17 games, good for fifth place in the East. They are 7-3 in their last 10 games, providing fans with a modicum of optimism, but they’ll have to keep that pace up to live up to expectations.
Los Angeles Clippers
Speaking of failures, the Clippers were an abject one. Los Angeles constructed a core around Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, and it looked like a perennial Western Conference Finals team.
Los Angeles started off strongly. They went 14-6 in their first 20 games. But the Clippers are still the Clippers, and they didn’t achieve nearly the success they’d hoped to on the whole.
Los Angeles has been plagued by injuries to their two superstars since they signed with the Clippers in 2019. They only qualified for the playoffs in four of the five seasons in which Leonard and George were there. But they didn’t advance beyond the Western Conference Finals, and George signed with the Philadelphia 76ers before this season, marking an end to this particular chapter.
Philadelphia 76ers
The 76ers have taken two stabs at forming a superteam since Durant left Golden State. Most recently, the 76ers signed George, as mentioned above, this past Summer. And the results have been putrid thus far.
Philadelphia is 3-13 through the team’s first 16 games. And there has been no shortage of drama. Joel Embiid nearly fought a reporterafter missing the team’s first five games despite playing in the 2024 Olympics. And George has missed eight of the 76ers’ games so far with knee injuries. Still, the 76ers are far from a finished product and they will still scare the pants off opponents in the playoffs, if they qualify.
But this isn’t the 76ers’ first attempt at a superteam. They also tried to form one before the 2022-23 season, when they traded Ben Simmons and other assets to the Nets for James Harden. That team started off its first season together with an 11-9 record. On the whole, that particular experiment blew up in the 76ers’ collective faces, as Philadelphia shipped Harden off to the Clippers after the start of the 2023-24 season.
Phoenix Suns
The final entry on the list of superteams is the Phoenix Suns. Just two years removed from a 60+ win season, Phoenix pushed its chips to the center of the table, trading a number of assets for Durant mid-way through the 2022-23 season. They signed Bradley Beal before the following season, adding the two all-stars to Devin Booker in an attempt to overwhelm the NBA with an ultra-talented core.
The Suns got off to a slow start. They won just 12 of their first 20 games and went 49-33 overall in their first season together. But it looks like adding an actual point guard, Tyus Jones, has helped. The Suns are currently 10-7 and look like a much more competent team so far in 2024-25.
Still, Phoenix fans would like to see more success considering how much they gave up for their superteam.
Can the Knicks’ superteam live up to expectations?
Superteams seem like a thing of the past. The NBA’s current salary cap is simply too punitive to dedicate the requisite amount of cap space needed to sign two or more max-level free agents. And trading for them is not only challenging but bleeds a team of future assets.
But New York was smart in constructing their superteam. Theirs is built around younger stars; no Knicks’ starter is older than 29 years of age. And while the Knicks did send out an eye-popping number of picks for Bridges (although no meaningful picks for Towns), they’d diligently collected picks in the years prior. And unlike most teams, they’re presumably deep enough to withstand the next few seasons without first-rounders.
Further, while New York is 10-7 through 17 games, it’s important to mention—again—that the Knicks are without one starting-caliber center (Mitchell Robinson) and an important backup big man (Precious Achiuwa). So, they will be even more complete come the playoffs, assuming they remain healthy.
However, health (or a lack thereof) was an important factor in most of the above-mentioned superteams. So, we’ll have to wait to see how it plays out for the Knicks. Hopefully better than it did for the Lakers, Bucks, Clippers, 76ers, and Suns.
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