NY Knicks: 3 ways NY can still make it to the NBA Finals

The NY Knicks MUST rebound the ball better moving forward

Listen…The Knicks defense is ranked number one in the NBA and that’s amazing, but that has much less of an impact if the Knicks rebound poorly.

While New York has out-rebounded Atlanta in the first three games of the season, they showed shades of inability to grab rebounds at the end of the regular season.

We need to accept the fact that Mitchell Robinson is not returning and understand that Nerlens Noel, Taj Gibson, and Julius Randle are the guys we need to rely on to produce rebounds from now until season’s end.

Rebounding is another team quality that’s very important to success and if Noel and company can prove that they can compete with the all-star level bigs of the league, then that’ll be vital to a potential finals run.

In this current series against the Atlanta Hawks, the Knicks have in fact done a solid job on Capela limiting him to 12 boards per game when he averaged 14 during the season.

While the statistics are good, I do personally feel like the Knicks can do better based off of some of my observations.

I can recall plenty of moments in this series where the Knicks have allowed offensive rebounds simply because they didn’t box out their man leading to easy second chance points.

Don’t get me wrong, New York still has this Atlanta series to worry about and that’s the primary focus.

However, if the Knicks have remote struggles with the Hawks on the offensive glass, they won’t be sleeping well at night after facing guys like Joel Embiid. Look for New York to provide extra emphasis on rebounding throughout this playoff run.