The Knicks had a remarkable season, making it deeper into the NBA playoffs than they’d been since Bill Clinton was still in office. But what do they do now, when they’re good but not great, fun but also maddening, and cool but not that cool?
ByMatthew Roberson
June 1, 2025
New York Knicks Jalen Brunson KarlAnthony Towns NBA playoffs
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The New York Knicks are a very good basketball team. Pop the cork on that idea, pour yourself a glass, and marinate in all the unfamiliar tannins. For anyone under the age of 35, this is a hugely dizzying reality. The Knicks were a total abomination for most of the 21st century. It was not long ago that Kevin Knox, Damyean Dotson, and Noah Vonleh led the team in minutes played. Without the anonymity that a small market affords, the New York of it all also meant that the Knicks were embarrassing themselves very publicly. When they do that now, at least it happens three rounds into the postseason.
Today, the franchise—and its “brand,” eyeroll required—are firmly entrenched near the top of the NBA again. This season, the Knicks won 50 games for the second consecutive year, something that hadn’t happened since 1995. (During the leanest years of the not-so-distant past, there were times when these guys couldn’t crack 50 wins total over two years.) More importantly, they made the Eastern Conference Finals this spring, something that even the most hating-ass naysayers should acknowledge as a major accomplishment. Despite losing to the Indiana Pacers in six frustrating games, there is no universe in which being one of the last four teams remaining in the NBA playoffs is a bad thing, no matter how much trouble they had getting past the upstart Pistons, how many times Pacers scapegrace Tyrese Haliburton put them in a food processor, or which of their competitors got injured on the way there.
But now that the Knicks have officially been eliminated, the requisite offseason questions come charging toward them like so many of Karl-Anthony Towns’ bull-like plows to the basket. What can the front office add to this roster in the offseason? Is head coach Tom Thibodeau the right guy to take the Knicks from playoff mainstay to actual title winners? Does Josh Hart move to the bench full-time? Off the court, there’s a lingering question that’s become fodder for the fans that judge the Knicks from every possible angle, not just by their basketball acumen. When it comes to the actual human beings who make up the New York Knicks—dudes who, respectfully, have powerful Murray Hill energy—it’s hard not to wonder: Are these guys cool?
Over Memorial Day Weekend, with the Knicks very much still alive in their Conference Final cage match, writer Ock Sportello published a blog post examining a phenomenon he calls the NBA’s swag crisis. As it pertains to the Knicks, Sportello points to star player Jalen Brunson’s status as a coach’s son—and his affinity for Eminem—as things that would traditionally work against a person when determining their coolness. But, on the other hand, captaining the Knicks to the brink of the NBA Finals is objectively cool, and injecting a potent dose of steroids into New York’s collective basketball fandom is the kind of thing that earns you both a literal and figurative key to the city. (Or in Brunson’s case, a table at Carbone whenever he wants.)
Noah Kulwin, the writer, co-host of the Blowback podcast, and sanguine Knicks fan, doesn’t think Brunson’s aversion to getting a fit off means the ceiling is caving in. “Jalen Brunson is the captain of the Knicks. Jalen Brunson will forever be the coolest person to me on that simple level,” Kulwin said. Much like New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the truculent point guard might not possess the right kind of cool, but he’s the right guy for this particular moment. In the current NBA landscape, where a growing majority of players now come from upper-middle class upbringings, and spent their entire youths playing AAU ball, Kulwin thinks we’re seeing a homogeneity that’s draining the cool reservoir. “They come from more similar backgrounds than before. That background is not necessarily a crucible for interesting personality formation when combined with the amount of hours that you just have to spend putting a fucking ball in a hoop. These are things about athletes—and what makes athletes the kinds of people they are, that we know. But it's also, to me, about the risks that they're not allowed to take.”
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As anyone who’s ever been to a live sporting event knows, the game has become inextricable from the corporate entities who provide the funding. It’s not just the ads that litter the court, field, or ice—it’s the shoehorning of random companies into every available moment. A timeout is no longer just a timeout; it’s a timeout presented by MasterCard or Chipotle. The Knicks play every game with an ad for Abu Dhabi on one shoulder and an unmissable Nike Swoosh on the other. In Kulwin’s eyes, it’s all created a disconcerting merger of man and corporation.
“If players were not constantly made to feel like they're part of the corporate [machine], if they were encouraged to be people, be fucking weird, say stuff…I don't think it's easily resolved,” Kulwin reasoned. “But the Knicks in particular, I think it's just a testament to how fucked they were for 25 years of sucking.”
That’s the other thing. The Knicks were horrendous for so long, broke a seven-year playoff absence when Thibodeau was hired, and then ascended to the realm of Actual Team when Brunson came aboard prior to the 2022-23 season. The emotional whiplash of going from zero to hero has New Yorkers in a tizzy. No longer do they drive themselves to the psych ward because a 20-year-old prospect isn’t panning out. Instead, they drive themselves to the psych ward because the Knicks can’t get over a hump that used to seem thousands of miles away. “For 25 years, people in New York were delusional that Knicks basketball could ever be good,” Kulwin said. “Now that they’re one of the last four teams in the NBA playoffs, people are delusional about how much of a catastrophe it is. I think that's a beautiful thing, and I only hope that we have many more years of that kind of delusion coming in.” In an Icarian sense, the Knicks flew too close to the sun and their cutesy feel-good status melted.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 31: A New York Knicks fan sits on the ground outside Madison Square Garden after the team's season-ending loss against the Indiana Pacers in Game Six of the Eastern Conference Finals.Angelina Katsanis/Getty Images
While chatting with Kulwin, I presented the idea that while these Knicks (as presently constructed) are the type of team that could regularly be in the Conference Finals, that doesn’t mean that each passing year without a championship banner is some sort of failure. The failure would come from losing the eternal battle with New Yorkers. If the Knicks maintain their place as one of the league’s best teams, but keep bowing out from the playoffs in winnable series, New York City’s concerns about the Knicks’ validity will only grow louder and louder. The city will never abandon the team, of course, but they’ll absolutely see through any sort of fabricated attempts at big dog authenticity. Think about how many times you’ve overheard someone theorize—even though their acquisitions changed the entire tenor of the Eastern Conference—that Towns is too soft, or that Mikal Bridges doesn’t get to the free-throw line enough, and then multiply that by infinity. The current version of the squad is defined by great team chemistry and what seems to be a genuine sense of love for one another. But will the path to salvation eventually have to include a personality overhaul?
“It's so disorienting to have a team this good and this exciting,” Kulwin began. “But for the New York Knicks to have personalities on the court who, as players, are so exciting, and then for them to just be complete non-entities beyond that, it’s pretty puzzling.”
While it may seem counterintuitive to look to baseball—the sport where outsized personalities are fewest and furthest between—Kulwin pinpoints one of the Knicks’ neighbors as a modern athlete who’s cracked the coolness equation, albeit with a much different set of circumstances. “The person who I think of who's cool or who's interesting and sophisticated as an athlete is Francisco Lindor.” Kulwin stated. “He cares a lot about his wife. He cares a lot about proving to everybody that, I'm just fucking good at this shit, dude. Part of why Lindor has that freedom, I think, is because the baseball season is longer, individual games and performances are way less scrutinized.”
So, what is there to do? The Knicks cannot, should not, and will not blow it up. The Brunson-Towns-Bridges core has only played one year together, and definitely have room for improvement in both the regular and postseason. But a leaguewide metamorphosis is upon us, and has been for years. The Knicks can run it back with their fraternal group of millennials all they want, but as the runaway train in Oklahoma City has proved, the younger basketball-watching crowd have a new crop of exemplars. “The stars hitting their primes now, they're solidly Gen Z,” Kulwin identified. “Maybe Zoomers would want to hang out with them. I don't know.”