NY Knicks: Grading New York’s 2021 Free Agency Class

In this offseason, the NY Knicks did not make any franchise-altering moves due to the lack of star power in this year’s class.

With that being said, the team made a few short-term and team-friendly deals, to help them improve for this upcoming season.

Last season, the Knicks exceeded expectations and made the playoffs, which is a feat many thought was not possible.

The Knicks, a very young team with a great head coach, went as far as their defense would take them, as they were one of the better defensive units in the NBA.

Head coach Tom Thibodeau has preached defense for essentially his whole career and helped the Knicks rank 4th in the entire NBA in defensive rating per NBA stats.

What grades would you give to each of the NY Knicks’ Free Agency moves?

Although the term “defense wins championships” may be a bit outdated, it helped this young and underwhelming roster to a top 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.

While this Knick team made their mark defensively all season, the offensive side of the ball was a completely different story.

They struggled all year offensively and their stellar defense was only able to take them so far.

When the first round of the playoffs came around, the Atlanta Hawks beat the Knicks in five games as the Hawks’ tremendous three-point shooting was too much for the Knicks to handle.

The offense simply was not good enough to keep up with a high-powered offense like the Hawks.

As important as defense may be, in order to succeed in the postseason, the Knicks needed to improve on the offensive end of the floor.

The Knicks did just that in signing players to very team-friendly deals that will significantly help the team’s porous defense.

Next, I will be grading both signings and re-signings that the team made to help not only keep the defensive core but also add offensive players as well.