A look at what their moves mean.
It’s been quite a 72 hours for New York Knicks fans.
The franchise didn’t end up adding a superstar with the prodigious amount of cap room it had entering the summer.
But what they left with is much more important: respectability.
They brought back Derrick Rose and Nerlens Noel, two huge parts of a team that surprised in 2020-21 and made the postseason as the No. 4 seed in the East. They opened up the wallet to pay for Evan Fournier. And on Wednesday, reports indicated the Oklahoma City Thunder will buy out Kemba Walker and the Bronx native will sign with the Knicks.
Does that make the team that also includes All-Star Julius Randle, young wing RJ Barrett and breakout rookie Immanuel Quickley a title contender? No. Heck, it might not even make them a team a top-six squad in the East if some things don’t go right.
But you can see how the roster could surprise yet again. Fournier’s shooting and scoring will take pressure off Randle, who became the do-it-all centerpiece of the offense. Walker may not be the star he once was in Charlotte, but coming back to Madison Square Garden, the site of his Cardiac Kemba shot, could be the perfect spot for him to get the offense moving and to prove some of his health woes are behind him. The defense in the middle will be top notch with Noel and Mitchell Robinson prowling the paint.
That’s where the respect and relevance comes in. Finally — FINALLY! — the Knicks have a direction that isn’t floundering and struggling. The goal is to look like a destination again that isn’t the laughingstock of the NBA, and they can check that off the list.
That’s especially important in an NBA environment that has a serious lack of superstars who are free agents that end up wanting to leave. Giannis Antetokounmpo stayed with the Bucks last summer and look at what happened. Kawhi Leonard appears to want to stay in L.A. Chris Paul saw his best opportunity to win a ring was right back in Phoenix.
So the path to one of those upper-echelon names is probably through a trade, and that means being set up for a deal in the future where one of the elite talents in the league sees a situation where he can contend soon. That’s basically the case now.
That’s why I couldn’t figure out where the Knicks belonged on the winners/losers list I wrote on Tuesday. But it all came together with the Walker acquisition: they’re going to be a team opponents respect. The Knicks are a relevant team for the first time in decades, with an arrow pointing up.
That’s as big of a win as you could ask for from the franchise that hasn’t had many of them in recent memory.
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