The New York Knicks have been an astonishing success story this season. Expectations were low in head coach Tom Thibodeau’s first season after a quiet offseason and there didn’t seem to be much reason to hope for anything better than a middling-to-bad 2020-21 campaign.
We couldn’t have been more wrong, as our preseason win-totals predictions show.
The New York Knicks have been an astonishing success story this season, and they have these three surprising players to thank for it
The Knicks are 39-31 and sit in a fifth-place tie with the Miami Heat, and they’re just half a game behind the fourth-place Atlanta Hawks. They are safe from exposure to the play-in tournament with a 4.0 game lead on the seventh-place Boston Celtics and are firmly locked into a spot no worse than sixth in the Eastern Conference.
Even the most optimistic of New York Knicks fans would be hard-pressed to claim that they could have expected how this regular season has gone. It’s simply been a remarkable turnaround for a woebegone franchise in a massive media market and a coach in Thibodeau looking to prove that he still has a place in the NBA.
There are many things to credit for their 18 (or more) win jump from last season’s 21-39 effort, but we’re going to take a look at three players who have surprised us the most. This trio is not only the most surprising, but they are also perhaps the group most responsible for actually getting the Knicks where they are today.
Let’s begin.
3 most surprising New York Knicks: Julius Randle
Make no mistake, Julius Randle had a fine season last year. He averaged 19.5 points, 9.7 rebounds, almost a full steal (0.8) per game. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Nobody could have seen the star turn he would take this season as the NBA’s prohibitive favorite to win Most Improved Player. His numbers have taken a leap across the board, and his impact on winning has followed suit.
After a perfectly fine 2019-20, Randle has been spectacular this season. He’s averaging 24.0 points, 10.2 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game as a scorer and facilitator. And suddenly after years of being a mediocre shooter, he’s turned into a dead-eye sharpshooter. Prior to this season, he had only shot over 27.8 percent from 3-point range once before, in 2018-19 with the New Orleans Pelicans when he shot 34.4 percent.
This season, he’s shooting an absolutely ridiculous 41.2 percent. In essence, Julius Randle has been a poor-man’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, if that facsimile had a 3-point jump shot. If this is truly what Randle is now, he’s a player with very few matches or comps in the entire NBA.
On a surprising team full of unexpected delights, Julius Randle is at the top of the list.
3 most surprising New York Knicks: RJ Barrett
How many times must we be reminded of this? Giving up on a 19-year-old rookie is a losing proposition, and that’s a lazy mistake too many fans and media members make every year. RJ Barrett is the most recent example of a player to take a year-two leap and leave detractors feeling (and looking) silly.
Barrett didn’t have a bad rookie season last year after getting drafted third overall, but with Zion Williamson and Ja Morant going before him and plenty of productive rookies getting selected after him, it wasn’t a season to write home about. He averaged 14.3 points and 5.0 rebounds, played 30.4 minutes in 56 games with 55 starts, shot 40.2 percent from the floor and 32.0 percent from 3-point range.
All numbers and indicators suggested that he may just be another NBA player, which is fine, but not exactly what you want from the third overall pick in any draft.
He’s shown a whole lot more of what built his draft pedigree in the first place this season. His averages are up nearly across the board with 17.6 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and like Randle, he’s turned into a sharpshooter. Barrett is shooting 39.8 percent from 3-point range, and since a slow start to the season, he’s shooting 44.8 percent from long distance over his last 55 games and 237 attempts.
From being just another guy on a 21-win team a year ago to being somebody who could dramatically impact a playoff series, RJ Barrett has been another massive surprise for the New York Knicks.
3 most surprising New York Knicks: Derrick Rose
Derrick Rose started the season with the Detroit Pistons, although it was a foregone conclusion he’d be moved sometime before the NBA trade deadline. It was also assumed that he would likely have his pick of destinations, thanks to his team-friendly contract, and considering his ties with Tom Thibodeau, the New York Knicks were all too likely to be that destination.
Sure enough, long before the trade deadline rolled around, Rose got traded to his favored place and rejoined his former Chicago Bulls coach.
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For this writer, it seemed like a foolishly sentimental move on the parts of both Rose and the Knicks. Sure, Rose wanted to play for a coach he loved in a city where he had some experience, and plenty of NBA teams would like to have Rose on their roster for a host of reasons, but what was the point?
The Knicks were 11-14 at the time of the trade, and even that seemed like overachieving compared to last season. It didn’t seem like it moved the needle, and they gave up a likely valuable 2021 second-round pick (via the Charlotte Hornets) along with Dennis Smith Jr. for his services.
As it happens, the Hornets did a bit of winning to diminish the value of the pick, and Derrick Rose turned out to be a cold-blooded killer off the bench for the Knicks. The Pistons were happy to get anything of value for Rose, so it was ultimately a win-win scenario, but he’s been absolutely phenomenal in New York.
The Knicks are 22-11 in games he plays, and they have a nearly unbelievable +11.9 net rating when he’s on the court, and it’s -0.8 when he’s off the court. Of course, this is due in no small part to the fact that he’s playing plenty of minutes against opposing bench units, but he’s still frying them nonetheless.
I gave the Knicks a D+ for this trade initially, but it’s proven to be nothing short of an A-grade.