3 Concerns That Must Be on the Knicks' Radar in 2026-27

The paradox of conquest is that it’s built by failure. A prizefighter wins a unanimous decision, after 12 rounds taking repeated blows. A housebroken dog is the endgame of countless “Not inside the house!” moments. NBA champions are no different.

Whether the New York Knicks are different enough to buck the trend and repeat as title-holders won’t be known for nine more months. Last year’s run asserted their quality to the basketball world. Here are three potential pitfalls they’ll face this season.

Size matters

A glance at today’s roster suggests nothing amiss from recent years. The 2024 Knicks had four players 6-foot-10 or taller. So did the 2025 and 2026 Knicks. And so do the 2027 Knicks.

But while losing a Jericho Sims is a body blow, the loss of Mitchell Robinson is the kind of punch that can send a team to the mat. At the moment, the two Knick bigs besides Karl-Anthony Towns and Andre Drummond are Drew Eubanks and James Wiseman, both signed to Exhibit 9 contracts. Robinson has played 53 playoff games. Eubanks? Six. Wiseman? None.

It seems unlikely New York signed two players to non-guaranteed deals in the preseason who they think will be rotation regulars come the postseason. Ideally, Eubanks and Wiseman are competing to replace Ariel Hukporti, not Robinson. But how often does anything in life conform to our ideals?

If Drummond is injured or ineffective and Eubanks or Wiseman are the fill-in, the Knicks would be as thin at the pivot as they have been since 2020, when after Mitch their tallest player was the 6-foot-9 Taj Gibson. If Towns goes down for any length of time, the spacing on offense will shrink and they’ll suffer on both ends of the glass, meaning tougher first looks for them, fewer second-chance points for them and more for their opponents.

And New York’s likeliest conference rivals all have deeper reserves of size than they do. Cleveland has Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley. Boston now employs Mitch and Neemias Queta. If Detroit gets its act together and strikes a deal with Jalen Duren, the Pistons will have him and Paul Reed at the pivot. A Drummond/Wiseman pairing doesn’t have quite the cachet or skill sets that KAT/Robinson did.

It’s a long season, the Knicks understand. But while no one’s asking them to go 74-8, any extended absence for Towns or Drummond would result in fewer wins, a lower playoff seed and a tougher gauntlet to run.

Strain

Last season, the 76ers played 93 games total, regular- and postseason. The Celtics played 89. The Pistons played 96. The Pacers, who knocked the Knicks out of the 2024 and 2025 playoffs, played 82. The Knicks played 101, after 100 games in 2025 and 95 in 2024. Their only mainstay who wasn’t a part of all those campaigns, Towns, played 78 of the Wolves' 98 games in his final year in Minnesota.

That’s a lot of wear and tear. Some say it’s not the years that get you, but the mileage. If that’s the case, recent history suggests the Knicks may be more at risk for injury than some of their competitors.

When Denver won the 2023 title, five Nuggets played 2,000-plus minutes; a year later, four did. Boston won in 2024 with four Celtics exceeding that number, and though the same number did in 2025 that season was defined by Jayson Tatum’s Achilles tear. In 2025, three Thunder played that many minutes; last year it was two.

The Knicks played four starters more than 2,000 minutes last year, with Hart six minutes away from joining them, a year after that quintet set a league record for most minutes ever by a starting five. If the trend continues, their depth will be put to the test.

Jordan Clarkson (34) is the only Knick older than 31, the age Josh Hart is and Towns will turn in November. Bridges and Brunson, born one day apart, are both 30. Yet the only Knick younger than 25 likely to play any real minutes is Mo Diawara, who’s 21 and one of their most appealing trade candidates—no small consideration for a payroll pressed as tightly up against the second apron as riders in a rush-hour subway car.

The Knicks talked after the Finals about recognizing they were stronger than the Spurs, better conditioned for the marathon they’d run. Will that carry over into this season? Or is one of the wheels getting ready to pop?

Lightning bolts

Pat Riley used to talk about “lightning bolts,” events that happen during a season that there’s no way to predict. Every team deals with them. The Knicks will at minimum hear some booming thunder in 2026-27.

First, the league and its CBA are hostile to their chances of repeating. Socialism for the owner class means every collective bargaining negotiation attacks the evil “big-market” clubs in defense of the poor little “small-market” teams. That means stacking the deck and changing the rules to pressure people who’d never wanna live in Utah or Indiana to feel they have no choice. Even though the Knicks went 53 years between titles, the Lakers have won one in 16 years, the Celtics two in 41 years and the Sixers one in 44, this pernicious myth persists.

That’s why there’s a second apron. It’s probably why Denver traded Michael Porter Jr. for a downgrade (and a future first), why Boston traded Jaylen Brown for Paul George, why OKC traded three rotation players for second-round picks and why James Dolan didn’t re-sign Mitchell Robinson to the reasonable deal the Celtics gave him.

When Leon Rose began to build a contender, he was working under a different set of rules. Under the old rules, veteran ring-chasers would be trampling over one another to come join a title chase in New York City. Who’s the biggest name to join them this summer? Drummond? Bruce Brown?

Knicks fans have been on cloud nine for months. This is a talented, resilient group. If any team can break the one-and-done curse, it’s them. If they don’t? Well, whoever wins it all in 2027 will face the same pitfalls in 2028.

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