NY Knicks: Can team follow in the Bucks’ Championship Blueprint?

It didn’t take long for NY Knicks fans to find a way to make last night’s game six Bucks win about them.

The last bits of confetti were still drifting down to the floor as Knicks fans took to Twitter to filter Milwaukee’s moment through orange and blue glasses.

One popular sentiment I saw could be summarized as follows:

See…this is why the Knicks should avoid big trades just keep building the right way.

Keep building “the right way.”

It’s such a fascinating idea. What I’m able to glean that people mean by that expression is that a team should draft and develop their own championship core.

A common refrain at the start of the NBA Finals was that the Knicks should build like the Suns. You know…draft a bunch of guys and grow them into a finals team in a few years.

That idea ignores how many wrong picks the Suns made in the post-Nash era. The Suns have drafted 24 players since 2012, only two are still on their roster.

There are two more players on the roster when you factor in players they traded for on draft night.

Can the NY Knicks replicate what the Bucks were able to accomplish?

Draft and develop the core is not really what the Bucks did. If you consider their core to be Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and Jrue Holiday, only one of those men was drafted by the Bucks.

They traded for both Middleton and Holiday.

When you expand out even further to players like Bobby Portis, P.J. Tucker, Brook Lopez, and Pat Connaughton, none of those guys were drafted by the Bucks either.

Since picking Giannis in 2013, the Bucks have also traded away two players they drafted that a lot of Knicks fans covet: Norman Powell and Malcolm Brogdon.

To follow the Bucks blueprint, the Knicks will have to give up some young player on this roster that you really like to focus on developing the two keys guys as they did with Giannis and Middleton.

All of this is also ignoring the 6’11”, 242-pound demi-god in the room.

Giannis is otherworldly, and you need otherworldly talent to win in the NBA. You’d have to go back to the 2004 Pistons to find a team that won the title without having a top 5 player on their team.

A baby born the year the Pistons won can legally drive a car in most states.

Maybe you believe R.J. Barrett can get to that level, or that at the very least he could become the Middleton figure on a championship team. He’s still very young and made tremendous improvements this year.

If he doesn’t become the guy, though, the Knicks will have to acquire a superstar in some way, shape, or form.

Then, the Knicks will have to surround that core with complementary players, many of whom will not be players the Knicks have drafted.

And listen, it’s understandable if you don’t want to push all your chips in for Damian Lillard this summer. The idea of a disgruntled Luka Doncic, Zion Williamson, or Donovan Mitchell becoming available in the near future is much more appealing to me personally.

I get it.

This “build the right way” nonsense has got to go, though. The only “right way” is the way that ends in hoisting the O’Brien Trophy.