It wasn’t too long ago that people genuinely didn’t like this Knicks team.
0-10 vs the top-3 teams in the NBA. No signature win.
Defensive lapses. No bench. No toughness.
No fire. No resilience. Soft.
Soft was the main word. Any adversity, and they crumble. Trae Young rolled dice on the Knicks logo in MSG. Malik Beasley shimmied throughout MSG. The aforementioned Beasley called his Detroit Pistons mentally tougher than a Knicks team that had more negative PR than any 50-win team in the history of basketball entering the playoffs.