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The Knicks have experienced a renaissance under Leon Rose’s stewardship since he took over in March 2020. It seems that almost every move the front office made before this season had worked, using a combination of savvy, smarts and connections to put together the best Knicks team in a generation.

The Knicks have not only drafted and scouted well, thanks to assistant general managers Walt Perrin and Frank Zanin, but also they have combed the NBA ranks to find the right veterans for notoriously picky head coach Tom Thibodeau. The cap and strategy team, led by Brock Aller, New York’s VP of basketball and strategic planning, seemed to have its hands on a string of deals the franchise won on the margins.

But the Knicks were the most divisive front office in the NBA among league executives. Rival executives lauded their work but also had questions about the two big swings the team took this past offseason. For some, the Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges deals pushed them off ballots or stopped them from ranking higher.

“If they hadn’t made the Mikal Bridges trade, they would be on here,” one team executive said. “I didn’t think that was the all-in move. They paid the price of what I thought would have been a better player.”

“I would not be in the Karl Towns business for $55 million a year,” an assistant general manager said.

Still, there is a lot of respect for the Knicks. They were third on three ballots and just missed a vote from several executives.

Read the rest of our front office rankings here.