Why Knicks looked poised to follow Cavs' model of success
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After the New York Knicks’ 122-112 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday, Jalen Brunson gave reporters reasons for optimism.
“I think we’re understanding each other a lot more,” Brunson said of the group assembled this past offseason. “It’s just, uh, we’re clicking. And we’re going to continue to click.”
The Knicks are on a five-game winning streak. Over the past ten days, they have the NBA’s best net rating and are only one game behind the second-seeded Boston Celtics in the standings. But despite having made runs to the second round of the NBA Playoffs in each of the last two seasons, these Knicks are missing something that no amount of offensive firepower can supplant.
While the Knicks’ starting lineup might be the most talented in the NBA, they’ll need more than a few months to gel and consistently show it. The synergy that helped teams like the Celtics and Nuggets win championships has not fully developed yet.
Karl-Anthony Towns has experience playing on teams that needed to entirely adjust their style of play because of new personnel. The former Timberwolves star told the media after a 25-point loss to the Thunder on January 10 that games like that would be part of the process.
“All 82 [games] ain’t going to go perfect,” said Towns. “I can tell you there’s going to be a lot of times we don’t look like the team that we were four weeks ago and we’re going to remind everyone a week later and then we’re going to be a whole other version three weeks from then.”
Why this Knicks core deserves time to truly make its mark
Not even three weeks after Towns made his comments, the Knicks hosted De’Aaron Fox’s Sacramento Kings, Ja Morant’s Memphis Grizzlies, and scored 143 points against each team. Their Wednesday night defeat of the Denver Nuggets was the team’s fifth straight win.
These Knicks aren’t just playing their best basketball yet, but it looks like they’re having more fun than ever. And the group is just beginning to scratch the surface in the team’s third full month together.
Yes, it was Brunson who led New York to the second round in both the 2023 and 2024 NBA Playoffs. But he and Josh Hart are the only two Knicks who started a game in the 2023 Cavs playoff series and have played for the team this season. Center Mitchell Robinson is still on the roster but has yet to contribute due to injury.
The talent around Brunson has changed both in its level and style of impact. The Dallas Mavericks did not often task him with being a “floor general.” But as the talent around him has changed on the Knicks, what the team needs most from Brunson has too. He continues to show development as a playmaker and, as a result, has slightly changed his role with the team.
The additional talent allows Brunson’s scoring to go from a necessity to a luxury. He’s already averaging 0.8 more assists than last season while scoring 2.8 fewer points per game. And his playmaking talent grades out as the fourth-best in the NBA thus far this season, according to BBall Index.
Brunson was the scorer the Knicks needed against the Nuggets on Wednesday night. His 18-point third quarter serves as irrefutable proof of that. But the end of Wednesday night’s win over the Nuggets was highlighted by his passing.
The guard put on a show, tallying four assists in just a two-minute and thirty-second stretch of play that put the game away, per Ian Begley of SNY. His 30-point, 15-assist performance in the win was one of his most impressive this season. But perhaps the most impressive statistic regarding Brunson’s passing came in a text from my Knicks Film School co-host Mensa Smith after the Knicks’ win over Denver.
“Fun fact: Jalen Brunson's career-high games in assists are 17 and 15,” Smith wrote. “They both came this season against the Denver Nuggets.”
The Knicks are on an upward trajectory. Brunson figuring out he can dominate games in different ways is part of that. But what’s next for this team? And what mindset is necessary to accomplish it?
What the Knicks can learn from the Cavaliers’ growing pains
On September 1, 2022, the Cavaliers’ trade for Donovan Mitchell sent shockwaves throughout the NBA world. Top news-breaker emeritus, Adrian Wojnarowski, even said that the trade made the Cavs “an Eastern Conference contender with potential staying power.”
But the NBA landscape at large took a more hesitant approach to judging Cleveland’s aggression. Acknowledgments of the team’s talent, youth, and potential were often accompanied by doubt that anything would come of it.
The skeptics were partially proven right in 2023. Funnily enough, fans were not as confident in the team after the Cavaliers were physically dominated by the Knicks in the first round of the 2023 NBA Playoffs. Jarrett Allen’s infamous post-series remark about the “lights being too bright” for the team did not help.
But the Cavaliers still pushed forward. That offseason, they added both Max Strus and Georges Niang and extended Caris LeVert’s contract. In January 2025, the team has the best record in the NBA at 38-9. Acknowledgments of the group’s upside ended up being more clairvoyant than any of the doubts regarding a potential extension for Mitchell.
None of this magically fell into place for the Cavaliers. The team knew its core was not a typical assembly of NBA stars, incepted by friends deciding at a 30th birthday party to solve their mid-career crises by teaming up. The Cavs trusted that they had the “right group of people” in the building and stayed the course.
In the time since the team’s acquisition of Mitchell, the roster around him has not drastically changed. But players like Mobley, Garland, and Mitchell himself have developed. This season, Mobley is on track to record both the highest usage rate of his career and a new best offensive EPM, per Dunks & Threes. Garland has found the best balance between scoring and playmaking of his career. And the leap Mitchell took as a playmaker in the 2024 season helped pave the way for both of those developments.
The Cavaliers were designed to be good with plenty of room for improvement. In 2025, the Knicks are the team making its first true foray into the stratosphere of contention that needs the patience the NBA landscape didn’t give the Cavaliers.
Why the Knicks’ best option is staying the course
The Knicks’ core is mostly under contract through the 2025-26 NBA season, including key bench players and the team’s recent draft picks. And Towns, Brunson, Hart, McBride, and OG Anunoby are signed through 2027. Bridges’ contract expires after the 2026 season but reports indicate he’ll extend with the Knicks after this season.
The team is tied with the Grizzlies for the league’s fifth-best record at 31-16. This is just the start for this Knick group. The players seem to understand that it will take time for them to develop championship-level synergy.
And if the fanbase, front office, and ownership are willing to stay patient and allow the team time to both make mistakes and learn from them? There’s no telling what this team’s ceiling could be.
Brunson and Towns were just named All-Star starters, giving the Knickerbockers their first duo of starters since 1975. The team has a head coach in Tom Thibodeau whom its players love playing for. And the only player on the roster older than 29 is veteran guard Cam Payne.
The Knicks’ front office built this team to be great now. But it truly built it to be a dynasty going forward. Not even five years after the team hired Leon Rose to run basketball operations, he has the main pieces to the puzzle in the building. Now it’s time to figure out how they fit together best.
Following Rose’s plan has served the Knicks well thus far. The team has no reason to panic and deviate from it. Brunson, the team’s captain, understands this. He told the media as much after beating Denver in their annual game at Madison Square Garden for the third straight season.
“Uh, we’ve played,” Brunson started, but then paused, “–what’s our record? 32-16? What is that, 48 games together? Just knowing each other, talking to each other, having better communication, making sure we’re on the same page – that just comes with time.”
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