The 2014-2015 New York Knicks…A Season Post Mortem

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Well New York Knick fans, it’s over. The 2014-2015 NBA regular season is in the books and nothing nice can be said about this season. The team that president Phil Jackson said would make the playoffs did not make the playoffs. Actually not even close to the playoffs…like not even close to the number eight seed in the Eastern Conference. They were not even close to 30 wins for the season.

The season was an epic fail for the Knicks and honestly, we saw it coming after a 4-14 start. This season started with Carmelo Anthony re-signing with the team with a new fiver-year contract worth about $125 million. You had some good players like Iman Shumpert and a resurgent Amar’e Stoudemire on the roster to attempt to help the team. You also had some issues like no legitimate center in the middle and a ball hog named J.R. Smith, who never got the Triangle Offense but let’s be honest. He refused to learn it because it took away from his horrible shot selection and twenty shots per game.

When many Knick fans were ready to jump off a building it only got worse. Anthony began having left knee issues during the first half of the season. Even with a bad knee, Anthony still managed to score 24 points a game but with no real help, the Knick struggles continued and Anthony eventually had surgery to repair his left patellar tendon and was out for the rest of the season in February. But hey, he did play in the All-Star Game in the Garden (sarcasm).

Eventually New York began cutting salary and players as they traded Smith and Shumpert to the Cavaliers for what amounted to be a second round draft pick in 2019. They traded Pablo Prigoni for two more distant second round picks. Compare those moves to the moves of the Denver Nuggets who traded Timofey Mozgov, who the Nuggets acquired in the Anthony trade to New York trade, for a first round pick from Cleveland. By the trading deadline, everyone began thinking that Phil Jackson had a well thought-out plan…or he was a complete idiot who was pillaging the team of $12 million a year over five years.

Even with this year of disgusting basketball, there were a few bright spots. Langston Galloway was an undrafted player out of St. Joseph’s University. After playing with the Knicks during summer league action, he was cut by the team but picked up by the Westchester Knicks. After playing two months with the D-League team scoring 16 points per game, Galloway was called up to the Knicks team on a 10-day contract and never looked back. Galloway added a spark to the team when there was nothing to get excited at times averaging 12 points a game and earning himself a contract for the 2015-2016 season. A player like Galloway coming off the bench as a role player may be what the Knicks needed to find and something that the fans can get behind next season.

Another bright spot from this season was the total ineptitude that the Knicks showed. Stay with me here. Based on their horrific play this season, the Knicks are guaranteed a top-five draft pick, maybe even as high as number one depending on the lottery balls. Yes this is something that Knick fans would have never imagined but there is a silver lining in this. If New York decides to keep the pick as Anthony and Jackson wants to do, they could pick up a player who would be ready to contribute immediately such as Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns or even Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell. This gives Carmelo someone that could take a bit of pressure off of him and another weapon that the Knicks need desperately.

This season for the New York Knicks was a total and complete disaster from beginning to end. Honestly this was a hard article to write and frankly, I had stomach pains for each paragraph I wrote. However for all the bad that this season brought, next season could be a turning point for the team and hopefully the beginning of the New York Knick franchise coming back to relevance in the NBA. I mean let’s be honest…it can’t get any worst…right?