Good morning! I'll take your questions.
From S Castro: Which round will the Knicks lose in?
From rbnyc: Do the Knicks have a playoff gear? They have been acting as though they are bored of the regular season but maybe this is who they are?
These questions reminded me of a story I wrote for FiveThirtyEight several years back. During the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season, the Phoenix Suns had all the markers of a true contender, but it seemed like nobody could bring themselves to believe that they actually were one, for one reason or another.
So I wrote about how they hit those markers and why people were still reluctant to buy in. I explored the history of teams that played like the Suns were playing at the time and how they had typically gone on to have a lot of success in the playoffs.
The Knicks similarly have all the markers of a true contender: they're top five in both offense (third) and defense (fifth) as of this writing (Thursday afternoon), making them one of only three teams that can make that claim, along with the Boston Celtics and San Antonio Spurs. They're playing like a true contender, too, having notched a 22-7 mark over the last two months, with the sixth-best offense and best defense in the league — yes, ahead of the even the Oklahoma City Thunder — during that stretch.
Moreover, their Adjusted Efficiency on both sides of the ball is now at least 2% better than league average. There have only been 33 teams since 2010 with an ORtg+ of 102 or better and a DRtg+ of 98 or better. That's an average of about two teams per year. (There are, however, four such teams this season.) And those teams typically have playoff success.
Of those 33 teams, 19 of them went to at least the Conference Finals, 12 went to the NBA Finals, and eight won the whole shebang. On the other hand, only 14 of them failed to go beyond the second round and just three failed to win a series. So, there's a track record here. On average, teams like the Knicks go to the conference finals. (They win an average of 2.1 playoff rounds.)
And yet, it seems like there is still reluctance in some circles to buy into the Knicks as a true contender, mostly because they will shit the bet every once in a while (see: their Thursday night loss to the Charlotte Hornets after I had written up this post) and have gotten their asses kicked by the Detroit Pistons in all three matchups. I also think part of it is because the teams at the top of the Western Conference are so good that it's hard to think of any East teams as real contenders.
But I think the "playoff gear" thing might be part of it, too. And the question of whether the Knicks do have a playoff gear is an interesting one, because that was one of the concerns about the 2020-21 Suns, as well. I wrote about it in that story linked above, noting that their roster ratings from both FiveThirtyEight and ESPN showed a smaller differential between the regular season and playoffs than did those of other contenders. Those concerns didn't bear out, obviously, as the Suns ended up going to the Finals anyway.
The FiveThirtyEight roster ratings don't exist anymore, but Neil Paine has replicated them with his LAKER ratings, which actually have the Knicks as a stronger regular-season team than they will be in the postseason. The same is true of ESPN's BPI. So there's a belief in at least part of the statistical community that the Knicks might not have that extra playoff gear in them.
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of a "playoff gear" itself. I tend to think that reaching an extra level in the playoffs usually just comes down to giving your better players more minutes and excising negative players from your rotation.
The Knicks might therefore actually be more likely to have a playoff gear this year than they were a year ago because they have more room to ramp up the minutes than they did a year ago, given that Mike Brown is playing the starters lighter minutes than did Tom Thibodeau. They also seem to have a deeper well of bench players to cycle through than they did last year, assuming that Deuce McBride can come back healthy.
Does that mean they'll ultimately go further in the playoffs than they did last year? Not necessarily. They were probably pretty lucky to get to the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago, considering how much of a slog those first two rounds were and how often they found themselves fighting back from big deficits. It's entirely possible that they could be a better team this year and still come up short of the Finals or even get knocked out in the second round by Boston this time around.