ESPN’s Brian Windhorst: How the Knicks Can Run It Back as NBA Champions

For a lifelong Knicks fan like Rich, the word still does not feel real. Champs. He said as much to Brian Windhorst, marveling at what New York just pulled off and at a front office he called competent beyond competent. The ESPN insider agreed the Knicks have built something rare, and then he explained why the hard part is keeping it together.

The immediate question is Karl-Anthony Towns and whether he takes a discount to preserve the roster. Windhorst called it a huge question, and one he could not answer for the big man. What he could do was frame the ripple effects. The Knicks, he said, are breaking other teams. Boston does not think it is better than New York. Charlotte, an ascending team, decided it could not get good enough and moved LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges. Cleveland is trying to hold its group together. Part of the reason Toronto is chasing Kawhi, Windhorst argued, is that the rest of the East looked around and asked who is actually beating the Knicks four times in seven games right now.

The complication is money, and specifically the second apron. Jim Dolan came out after the Finals and said he would not go there. Windhorst understood the instinct, since the second apron is less about spending than about the roster-building mechanisms it locks away. But he made the counterintuitive case. If you are not planning to change your roster anyway, what does losing that flexibility cost you? This, he said, was the moment to consider it, because staying in the apron would mean keeping Mitchell Robinson and Landry Shamet. Windhorst believes there was hope Dolan would revisit the edict, and he is not sure that he has.

Rich pushed on the roster around the stars. Windhorst singled out Jose Alvarado as a keeper, the local kid doing well, and recalled Sean Elliott's warning before the Finals that Alvarado had given his teams fits. He credited the Knicks with marrying the ultimate star to the ultimate leader, a supporting cast, a front office, and a coach who empowers them. Normally, he said, you would be careful letting the inmates run the asylum, but not when the leader holds everyone accountable and has a decade of history with the group.

On the other side of the Finals, Windhorst turned to the Spurs. The first order of business is a formality, locking Victor Wembanyama into an extension. After that comes the real work. Windhorst pointed out that San Antonio felt small at times against New York, that the Knicks actually had more size on the floor, and that things went poorly whenever Wembanyama came off it. The Spurs already drafted two big men, a signal they are thinking about it, but Windhorst expects them to hunt for more size so they are not forced to run Wembanyama into the ground and watch him fade late in games. For a Knicks fan still processing a title, it was a reminder that the chase never really stops.