Inside the Knicks’ Secret Formula That Could Finally End Their Title Drought

Step 2: Thinking About the Bigger Picture

A few days before the calendar shifted to 2024, the Knicks executed a blockbuster trade that helped them land OG Anunoby. At the time, some people were confused by this move as it sent away RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley and didn’t make the Knicks an immediate title contender.

Of course, Anunoby made the Knicks better right away. In fact, in his 23 appearances with the team that season, New York was 22.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than with him on the bench.

More than that, Rose saw the bigger picture. It wasn’t about what Anunoby could do for that team. It was about what the 6-foot-7 small forward would eventually do for them once Rose’s vision was complete.

This postseason, Anunoby was incredible for the Knicks. He had the highest true shooting percentage of any 20+ PPG scorer with at least five games in the playoffs, and that says nothing of all the impact he brought on the defensive side of the ball (92nd percentile D-DRIP). If not for Brunson’s 45-point masterpiece to close out the NBA Finals, Anunoby very well would have earned the MVP award himself.

Step 3: Not Being Afraid to Go All In

Today, it feels like teams are overly fixated on draft capital. It makes sense because future picks are unknowns, and sometimes, the less an owner knows about what’s coming up, the longer the leash is for a front office executive to go all in on the draft.

However, fortune favors the bold, and if a team wants to accomplish something special, its executives need to be willing to take risks. No one can ever fault Rose for being too cautious, as he parted ways with six first-round draft picks (and did a first-round pick swap) to acquire two pieces of their championship starting five: small forward Mikal Bridges and big man Karl-Anthony Towns (the 7-footer is 10th in the NBA in our DRIP metric).

Maybe, analytically speaking, one of those moves (*coughs* the trade for Bridges) could be viewed as an overpay. But all the assets in the world don’t matter if they never amount to a championship.

Step 4: Developing Homegrown Talent

The Knicks are far from the Oklahoma City Thunder in that they have outsourced much of their talent through trades and free agency. Their top six guys in total minutes played this season were all drafted by other teams.

But the Knicks also did a good job of developing a couple of their own guys – namely, Mitchell Robinson and Miles McBride, who played key roles in relieving some of the Knicks’ starters to help keep them fresh through the grueling stretch of the playoffs.

Step 5: Zigging When Others Would Have Zagged

The last piece of the puzzle was the decision to make a change at head coach last season.

Tom Thibodeau was the conductor of the most successful stretch of Knicks basketball this century. Most teams would have kept him beyond his five seasons, especially after he guided them to the 2025 Eastern Conference finals (their longest postseason run in 25 years).

But Rose felt Thibodeau was not the coach capable of getting them to an even higher level, so he replaced him with Mike Brown. The now 56-year-old coaching veteran reinvented the offense, trusted his bench (which kept his starters from being run to the ground), and squeezed the most out of a defense that displayed some warts against the Indiana Pacers in last year’s playoffs.

Brown was the right man for helping to make the Knicks NBA champions, and Rose wasn’t afraid of deviating from the status quo in order to find him.

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