The New York Knicks have started their season with a 2-2 record after their latest 121-111 defeat at the hands of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night.
Despite Jalen Brunson's 36-point effort on 56.0% shooting from the field, New York took their second loss of the year and now currently hold the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference.
For the Knicks' newly-minted head coach Mike Brown, he tends to view heavily judging an early-season slog as an unreliable method for determining how his team will perform moving forward.
In fact, he recently shared with the New York Post's Stefan Bondy that he'll be opting to take a more patient approach to his evaluation of the roster.
"It'll take some time," Brown told Bondy on Thursday.
"It's hard to get a true evaluation in the first five to 10 games. I think y'all have been in this league long enough, the first month or month and a half, everybody feels like they have a chance and guys are playing hard and engaged and sometimes you have teams that are on top, they're not going to finish on top."
"Come about December or end of November, we should have a pretty good feel."
To Brown's credit, it is admittedly difficult to judge an NBA team's entire 82-game season outlook off of four contests to begin the year.
One portion of the Knicks' on-court output that the two-time Coach of the Year winner can be happy with through four games is their rebounding ability.
New York ranks third in the NBA in team rebounding, as they've been able to bring down 49.5 boards even in Mitchell Robinson's absence, as the 7-foot center has yet to suit up for the team this season as he continues to follow a load management plan.
Aside from their rebounding, one aspect of their production that Brown could already find quite worrisome is their No. 27 ranked 110.5-point average as a collective.
While Brown will continue to practice patience and wait a little while longer before making any sweeping changes, the team's offense (outside of Brunson) has not been able to keep pace with other accomplished groups of scoring talent so far this year.
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