The Root of the Knicks’ Success? Caring When They Didn’t Have To.

Brown’s first Knicks team lost 26 of its first 40 games, then caught fire, won 24 of 30 and steamed into the playoffs to win a round (for the record, against the Nets).

As with Julius Randle now, Bernard King was their lone star then, the one indispensable Knick, wearing the same No. 30. While other teams have required an Etch A Sketch to chart their stars’ nightly lineup availability, Randle has lost one game to injury and none to rest, leading the league in minutes played.

Load management is generally for the established elite, not for a guy in the midst of a remarkable breakout season, and who began it with a partially guaranteed salary for 2021-22.

Beyond Randle, Leon Rose, the team’s president, built a deep roster of interchangeable parts, ready for a condensed schedule promising to be marred by pandemic unpredictability. When the starting center Mitchell Robinson went down, the peripatetic young veteran Nerlens Noel stepped up. When Burks, a strong contributor to the team’s improved offense, was out because of virus protocols, Rose and Bullock picked up the scoring pace.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/sports/basketball/knicks-playoffs.html