There was an NBA playoff game played in Boston on Wednesday night, and for a legion of New York basketball fans there had to have been more than a tinge of regret that it was the Heat playing the Celtics at TD Garden and not the Knicks. The Knicks were the better team across 82 games; the Heat were better across six.
In the arithmetic of postseason hoops, 6 > 82.
And always will be.
Five days later, given the blessings of initial time and distance, maybe it’s a little easier to separate the good stuff from the bad from this first extensive Knicks playoff run in a full decade, two rounds and 11 games that answered some questions and created others. But three things seemed to emerge as fact.
1. Jalen Brunson is absolutely, positively, 100 percent the right block around which Leon Rose must build. Brunson followed up a sterling regular season with a terrific playoff run in which he carried the Knicks most nights, averaged 27.8 points and 5.6 assists and shot .474 from the floor. He is a keeper, and at a team-friendly price.
2. The Knicks need a go-to player to work with Brunson. Can that be Julius Randle? The initial returns weren’t favorable, and Randle’s approval rating among Knicks fans is tumbling downward. This remains the haunting missing piece. The Knicks can be a nice team as is. To be more than nice, they need an alpha to pair with Brunson.
3. RJ Barrett’s ceiling continues to expand.
And of all of them, No. 3 might be the most intriguing element of the Knicks’ entire blueprint. Barrett made extraordinary strides from Year 1 to Year 2, and from Year 2 to Year 3. This year, Year 4, began with him being dangled in trade rumors involving Donovan Mitchell, and then signing on for a second contract with the Knicks, a four-year deal that could yield as much as $120 million.
For a time, it was a fair question if perhaps, at 22, Barrett had peaked his upside. His 2022 regular-season numbers were down in points (20.0 to 19.6), rebounds (5.8 to 5.0) and 3-point shooting (.342-.310), and Tom Thibodeau often chose to go with either Quentin Grimes or Josh Hart in fourth quarters.
But regular RJ watchers also knew that he’d recommitted to his midrange and interior games, and became a ferocious driver of the ball. He improved his 2-point shooting (a career-high .495) and improved from a 71 percent to a 74 percent foul shooter.
More intriguing was what he did in the playoffs. His first trip the to postseason two years ago was forgettable (as was just about every Knick who played against the Hawks). He started these playoffs slowly in Cleveland, and ended them with a 1-for-10 shooting thud against the Heat, and the bylaws of recency bias means that that’s the performance that will cling in a lot of memory banks.
But in those middle eight games — final three against Cleveland, first five against Miami — Barrett was terrific. He averaged 22.5 points and shot 49.5 percent, 38 percent from 3, against two of the highest-rated defenses in the league. He was smart with the ball, and engaged on both ends.
Now, the three poor games count, too; you can’t just cherry-pick the good stuff. But that does offer proof that for a fourth straight year Barrett’s arrow is trending up. And, again, he won’t turn 23 for another month. Across the NBA’s first 50 or so years he would have likely only been a rookie this year. That does matter.
And so does the fact that those eight solid games came in the playoffs. Golden State GM Bob Myers once put it this way: “The playoffs are nothing like the regular season. They are two completely different sports. You watch the playoffs, you know who can play basketball. That’s when you evaluate players.”
And by that grading standard, Barrett did awfully well — and that doesn’t even hint at the fact that when he faced his would-be trade foil, Mitchell, in Round 1 he played him at worst to a draw and a few nights outplayed him. Barrett isn’t ever going to be that alpha we discussed earlier. But he’s already proven he could be the third-best player on a good team.
No reason to think he couldn’t be third-best on a great team, too, if the Knicks can ever find that foundational piece and that fantastical place.