How Will the Knicks Use Their New Depth?
When looking at the most recent successful NBA championship teams, one of their biggest strengths is their depth. The 2025 Oklahoma City Thunder, the 2024 Boston Celtics, and the 2023 Denver Nuggets, just to name a few. The New York Knicks struggled with depth in the 2024-2025 season, relying heavily on their starters to play longer minutes than other teams' starters. In the upcoming 2025-2026 season, a lack of depth won't be a problem, but let's see how the Knicks can use their newly found depth.
The main reason the Knicks had an issue using their bench unit is that previous head coach Tom Thibodeau had a problem playing his bench players. Thibs is known for only playing players he fully trusts, which leads to his bench not getting enough minutes to get into a comfortable rhythm, and then whenever they were inevitably needed, they ended up looking rough around the corners. Now that the Knicks have hired Mike Brown to be their new head coach, the bench unit will get more opportunities to prove themselves. The Knicks have signed two previous Sixth Man of the Year winners, Jordan Clarkson and Malcolm Brogdon. These two improve the guard rotation significantly, ensuring that the starting guards can go to the bench more often. The Knicks also signed Guerschon Yabusele to a two-year deal. His performance in the Euro league shows he'll be a solid spark plug off the bench with an impressive defensive upside.
The current way things stand, the Knicks have a solid backup five of Miles “Deuce” McBride, Clarkson, Brogdon, Yabusele, and Mitchell Robinson. This lineup has no deficiency of offensive capabilities, and with a frontcourt of Yabusele and Robinson, the defense would be a problem for other bench units and could even give some starting units a run for their money. The only concern is that this would leave Karl-Anthony Towns as the starting center, and KAT performs best when moved down to the power forward position in a double big lineup. To maximize the starting and bench units, it would be best to put Robinson as the starting center, move Josh Hart to the bench at the power forward position, and move Yabusele to the backup five. This adds more front-court defense to the starting unit and gives the bench unit more rebounding and passing.
