“The New York Knicks are in the playoffs and one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference,” is not a statement you would believe to be true at the start of the 2020-21 season, but this year was quite a magical year for the New York Knicks!
Hiring Tom Thibodeau turned out to be a fantastic move by this organization, as he went on to be named Coach of the Year, keeping Julius Randle also proved to be beneficial, as he went on to win Most Improved Player, and having both Leon Rose and Scott Perry run this Knicks’ front-office has worked flawlessly.
The Knicks not only made the playoffs this year for the first-time since 2013, but they finished the regular season 41-31, the 4-seed in the Eastern Conference! Defensively, the Knicks were one of the best teams in the league all season long and now, they have a chance to expand on their success this offseason.
With nearly $60M in cap space, Leon Rose and Scott Perry are going to be very busy in terms of looking for All-Star level talents to add to their roster, but they will also be looking for ways to improve the youth of their team through the draft. Having a great balance of veteran and youthful talent is key for any team in this league and the Knicks have a pretty good foundation going right now.
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Randle, Barrett, Toppin and Quickley are all young talents on this roster and D-Rose, Bullock, Gibson and Burks make up a balanced group of veteran players who all played big roles with the Knicks during the 2020-21 season. Bringing back some of these veteran players will be key for the Knicks in the offseason, but they could potentially look to replace them with young talents in the draft.
With the 19th and 21st picks in this year’s draft, New York could absolutely look to package these two picks together in attempts to land a big name star, but they could also add two key talents to their roster to help them build off of their playoff appearance this year.
The options for New York in this draft are endless and a lot of what they do depends on who is available and who becomes available during the draft, but at the end of the day, here are the New York Knicks top four options with the No. 19 pick in this year’s draft.
