After being eliminated in the Eastern Conference finals by the Pacers in 2025, the Knicks opted not to make any major changes to their roster. While the team signed Jordan Clarkson in free agency and drafted Mohamed Diawara using a second-round pick, its biggest roster move last offseason was using the taxpayer mid-level exception to add Guerschon Yabusele, who was a poor fit in New York and was traded to the Bulls along with cash at the 2026 deadline in order to get him off the club’s books.
The Knicks’ most significant change ahead of the 2025/26 season was firing head coach Tom Thibodeau and replacing him with Mike Brown. Both steps of the coaching change were heavily scrutinized. Thibodeau had just led New York to its best season in a quarter-century, and the team only landed on Brown after being denied permission to interview several coaches already under contract, including Jason Kidd, Billy Donovan, Quin Snyder, Chris Finch, and Ime Udoka, which created the impression that the Knicks’ new head coach was a fall-back option.
Questions about whether Brown was the right fit for the job persisted for most of 2025/26, as the Knicks had a streaky regular season that saw them run out to a 19-7 start and claim an NBA Cup title before they dropped nine of 11 games in late December and January.
After finishing the regular season with a 53-29 record – two games better than their 2024/25 mark – and securing the No. 3 seed in the East, the Knicks were widely regarded as a second-tier contender in the East, with oddsmakers considering the Celtics and Cavaliers the best bets to win the conference and New York viewed as roughly on par with the Pistons. Enthusiasm for New York’s title chances didn’t exactly surge as the club lost two of its three games in the first round vs. Atlanta.
But in Game 4 against the Hawks, the Knicks embarked on one of the best regular season or playoff runs in NBA history, setting a league record by winning their next 11 games by a combined total of 262 points (23.8 per game) to make the NBA Finals.
New York was an underdog in the Finals and fell behind by double digits to the Spurs in the first quarter of every single game of that series, but the team’s chemistry and playoff experience were difference-makers, and Brown pushed all the right buttons — despite outscoring San Antonio by just 12 points in the series, the Knicks won four of five games and claimed their first championship since 1973.
The title run was the culmination of an impressive series of roster moves by president of basketball operations Leon Rose, who pulled off arguably the greatest free agent heist of the 2020s when he signed Jalen Brunson away from the Mavericks on a four-year, $104MM deal in 2022.
The rest of the Knicks’ starting lineup was acquired in a series of trades, with Josh Hart sent to New York from Portland in a four-team deal at the 2023 deadline, OG Anunoby dealt from the Raptors to the Knicks several months later in a trade that sent Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett to Toronto, and Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns landing with the team during the 2024 offseason in a pair of blockbusters that saw the Knicks give up Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, and six first-round picks.
Long-suffering NBA fans in New York will be celebrating the Knicks’ first title in 53 years for a while, but team owner James Dolan put a bit of a damper on the party prior to last Thursday’s championship parade by announcing in a radio interview that he has no intention of operating in the second tax apron in 2026/27.
Brunson, Hart, Anunoby, Bridges, and Towns are all under contract for at least the next two seasons, so Dolan’s edict doesn’t mean the Knicks’ core is at risk of breaking apart this offseason. But it does raise questions about whether the team will bring back a few reserves who played crucial roles off the bench during New York’s title run. We’ll take a closer look below at whether Dolan’s professed roster-management strategy makes sense and what it would mean for the Knicks if he doesn’t have a change of heart.
The Knicks’ Offseason Plans
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