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Ingrained in the minds of fans is the classic model of how to build an NBA Champion: Get a bunch of superstars together.
Miami’s Big 3 with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Or Golden State’s superstar core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green (and eventually Kevin Durant). The Lakers with Kobe and Shaq (or later, Kobe and Pau Gasol). Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish in Boston. Compile multiple elite superstars, put the best affordable talent you can around them, and let those all-time greats do their unstoppable thing.
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The Knicks shattered that mold.
It’s not that Jalen Brunson isn’t a star — he was second-team All-NBA this season and has made those teams three straight years — but Leon Rose and the New York front office didn’t just go out and try to stack stars on top of each other like this was a fantasy team. Or the Knicks through the 1990s and 2000s.
New York executed what the Indiana front office understood in building a team that came within a torn Achilles of maybe winning the NBA title a year ago, what Denver’s front office realized in building a championship team around Nikola Jokic, and what many other front offices are now understanding:
High-level depth wins in the playoffs.
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It’s not about how great your superstar is at the top of the food chain, it’s more about not having a weak link for opponents to target. It’s about having a depth of players that a coach can trust. Mike Brown had OG Anunoby and Josh Hart and Miles Bridges and Mitchell Robinson and Landry Shamet and Jose Alvarado. Everyone contributed. There was no easy player to target, no weak link.
“It speaks volumes about this team, how versatile and the depth of our team,” Karl-Anthony Towns said of how the Knicks were built to win.
Playoffs are about matchups
Make no mistake, every team needs talent to win, and ultimately has to have a guy who can go get a bucket when you need it. The Knicks were a 53-win team with the league’s third-ranked offense and seventh-ranked defense this season, and they had a clutch guy in Jalen Brunson. The year before, Indiana made the Finals as a 50-win…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/knicks-title-highlights-shift-big-150449242.html
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Publish date : 2026-06-15 15:04:00
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