By the end of their season-ending 130-109 drubbing in game seven of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the New York Knicks looked a little like Wile E. Coyote after a full episode of failed attempts to take out the Road Runner: limping out on crutches, both eyes blackened and X’d out, nose broken and squeaking like an accordion with little birdies flapping around their heads. The Knicks made a valiant effort against the Indiana Pacers (who seemingly made every jump-shot they attempted) but could only do so much given the injuries that had spread throughout the team like a virus over the year, afflicting Julius Randle, OG Anunoby, Mitchell Robinson, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Josh Hart. Jalen Brunson’s broken left wrist in the third quarter was the final straw: If the series had gone one more quarter, the Knicks would have been so shorthanded they might have let you or me play.
This was a truly inspiring season, one of the most thrilling in New York sports over the last 20 years. But now Knicks fans, floating on air for a fortnight, must deal with the indignity of watching the hated Pacers play the hated Celtics for the right to reach the NBA Finals. And yet this doesn’t feel like the end of something but the beginning of an extended run of Knicks success. With that in mind, here are five major takeaways from this 2023–24 season with an eye toward what the Knicks might do moving forward to make sure that next year, they’re the Road Runner.
The biggest thing that happened this season, and maybe the biggest thing that has happened to the Knicks in decades, is that Jalen Brunson established himself as the sort of superstar you build an entire team around. The guy the Knicks signed for a four-year, $104 million contract two summers ago — a contract that was ridiculed by many for being too pricey and perhaps unduly influenced by Brunson’s father, Rick, being a Knicks coach — now looks like a monumental bargain: I think he might be........