What’s Next for the New York Knicks After 2024 NBA Playoffs Exit?

We save the Knicks’ most important next step for last: Bagging another star.

This is actually an easier ask than last year. Back then, you could (and should) have argued New York still needed a best-player upgrade. Jalen Brunson has since taken a stick of dynamite to that stance.

Skeptics will worry about building around a 6’2″ guard. That’s a concern best tabled for Brunson’s post-prime. You don’t finish inside the top five of MVP voting by accident. And his rise affords the Knicks a level of optionality they didn’t have before. Their next star doesn’t have to be better than him, or necessarily as good as him. They just need to be better than who’s already in place.

That invariably leads us to an awkward Julius Randle discussion. You could argue the Knicks would be in the conference finals if his shot creation was at their disposal. You could also look at his tiny-but-terrible playoff sample and how New York fared during the regular season when it deployed Brunson alongside OG Anunoby, Donte DiVincenzo, Josh Hart and Isaiah Hartenstein and conclude that Randle is more valuable as matching salary in a trade and/or someone no longer guaranteed a spot in the closing lineup.

Whichever side of the fence you land on doesn’t really matter. A healthy Randle may have propelled the Knicks further into playoffs, but to what end? New York wouldn’t be favored to beat Boston or whichever team, Dallas or Minnesota, that comes out of the Western Conference.

Yes, this is an incredibly lofty bar. That’s also the entire point. The Knicks must be judged against reaching the highest possible peak. They’re unlikely to do that with Randle as their second-best player—or even just their second-most important shot creator. New York knows this. The front office will continue to prowl the trade market for stars this summer, according to The Athletic’s Fred Katz.

Identifying the right player is less about the Knicks’ own acumen and more about the landscape itself. They have the draft equity and matching salary to get a deal done. But they need a sensible co-star to shake loose.

Someone like Paul George (via opt-in-and-trade) or even Mikal Bridges would be ideal. Are they also gettable? If not them, then who? New York should (probably) steer clear of another small guard (i.e. Donovan Mitchell), and Tom Thibodeau may not be the best guy to optimize a star center. The list of possibilities opens up after that.

This search should unfold independent of Randle’s future. Well, sort of. He is extension-eligible this summer (2025-26 player option). The Knicks can talk themselves into offering him a new deal if the money’s right, but they’re better off waiting in case his (should-be) expiring contract can be used in a trade. Do things get awkward, maybe untenable, if they try to or actually extend Brunson and not him?

The Knicks can’t afford to care. Their mission is to preserve this year’s spirit while improving the top-end talent. That doesn’t have to come at the expense of Randle’s future, but it might. DiVincenzo and Hart have long since graduated from matching-salary tools (and are super tight with Brunson). Unless the Knicks can use Mitchell Robinson and Bojan Bogdanović to match money, Randle’s $30.8 million salary may be the primary vehicle through which they land the player better suited to elevate their championship equity.

And no, waiting to see what happens next season isn’t a viable option. Star-hunting will only get harder as the Knicks get more expensive and future draft picks turn into actual players. New York deserves credit for biding its time and trade resources, and this isn’t a call for the team to do anything at the cost of everything. But now is the time for these Knicks to operate with even more urgency than they’ve shown.

The clock on their window of opportunity is ticking, and more importantly, they’re officially good enough to make the swing they’ve actively (and wisely) avoided over the past few summers.