Like every working coach of every team in the NBA East, David Fizdale of the New York Knicks fielded the question: What did he make of another all-NBA talent landing in the conference Saturday afternoon?
That’s when news broke that Jimmy Butler’s reality-show circus act of a trade demand had finally come to a merciful conclusion. Most of two months since Butler asked out of Minnesota, he was shipped to Philadelphia in a deal that transformed one of the East’s top handful of teams into an undeniably better one. Barely a month into its post-LeBron James era, the East looks more formidable than it’s been in years.