The New York Knicks have been using this entire regular season to find out about themselves. New head coach Mike Brown's mentality has involved caring less about winning every single game and caring more about having all of the information necessary to optimize the team's approach to the NBA's grueling postseason. In the team's next four games, though, they play the San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Denver Nuggets. Wins and losses are going to matter, but they're going to learn a lot about themselves either way.
Knicks face two former MVPs, one future one in next four games
With the Knicks' upcoming schedule including faceoffs with two former MVPs in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic, it's only fitting that it begins with a bout against someone sure to win an MVP award in the future in Victor Wembanyama. The Knicks haven't seen the Spurs since New Year's Eve, when Wembanyama's group got revenge for the NBA Cup prize cash that the Knicks (hopefully) took home from Las Vegas.
New York gets a bit of MVP-respite in their next game against the Raptors, who they ironically had to defeat to earn their December trip to Las Vegas. Then they have to play Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic in back to back contests, hosting the former but heading to the Mile High City afterwards.
Brown's Knicks always say they care about winning, but the head coach is never afraid to tell reporters that learning as much as possible about his team ahead of the postseason is also always one of his main goals. The coach won't sub a fourth-string reserve in during crunch-time just to see what happens, given that he hadn't previously collected any data on those situations.
But he will give lineups, or individual players, more chances than they would receive in a situation where a team was desperately jockeying for a playoff spot. Most recently, the coach told reporters after the team added Jeremy Sochan on the buyout market that he'd force the young forward into the rotation as a means of figuring out exactly what Leon Rose's front office had brought to the table midseason.
While Sochan might end up being worse than whoever Brown would have played in those minutes otherwise, that data itself is of immense value to the coach, his staff, and the management group that hired him this past offseason. Former head coach Tom Thibodeau undeniably delievered results. But the Knicks' front office wanted to perfect its process in hopes of making great results as repeatable and sustainable as possible.
They chose Brown to lead that charge. He's got a big set of tests coming up this week.