With training camp about three weeks away, here’s an informal mailbag culled from some tweet replies over the past few weeks:

@JimboBleu — Hey @IanBegley what’s going on with the Knicks for a team that’s not a contender going into the season they are way too quiet for my liking

Hey Jimbo, thanks for the question and for the entertaining Knicks takes on Twitter. I have a couple thoughts here: Usually, if your team is making a lot of noise at this point in the NBA calendar, it’s a sign of instability. Back in September 2017, the Knicks were searching for ways to send Carmelo Anthony out of New York and end an acrimonious relationship.

This season, there will be a lot of noise around Portland and Philadelphia at the start of training camp for the wrong reasons. That’s what happens when your star player requests a trade.

Will the Knicks make any noise prior to training camp?

My educated guess is that they won’t add any potential rotation players before camp opens. If I had to guess, the Knicks sit tight (unless an Evan Fournier trade emerges), in part, because they are comfortable with Josh Hart as a backup PF who screens and makes plays out of the short roll, as noted earlier.

But maybe I’m misunderstanding your point. Maybe you’re saying that you wished the Knicks made bigger moves in the offseason. If that’s the case, I understand but I didn’t see a big move out there that made a ton of sense for the Knicks. I don’t think they ever expressed strong interest in trading for either Damian Lillard or James Harden. I assume that there wasn’t enough internal support behind the idea of adding either player. Maybe the Knicks’ thinking on Lillard or Harden changes if they get off to a slow start?

Outside of those two trades, I don’t see an obvious opportunity that the Knicks passed up in the 2023 offseason.

Now, that doesn’t mean that a bigger move isn’t coming. We all expect New York to trade for a big-name player at some point. Knicks governor James Dolan has referenced that as part of New York’s plan under team president Leon Rose in past interviews.

Whether it’s Joel Embiid, OG Anunoby, Donovan Mitchell (again), Karl-Anthony Towns, Zion Williamson or – further down the road – Giannis Antetokounmpo, I assume the Knicks will seriously engage another team in trade talks for its star player.

(If you’ve listened to recent quotes from Antetokounmpo, you know he is putting pressure on Milwaukee to improve. That’s why, as we noted in June, teams are keeping an eye on Antetokounmpo’s situation in Milwaukee. As an aside: When I wrote that, some Bucks fans said some not-so-nice things to me on Twitter. I won’t hold my breath waiting for an apology from them).

With all that said, the Knicks had a relatively quiet offseason. They bet on internal improvement and the idea that adding Donte DiVincenzo and subtracting Obi Toppin will lead to improvement from last year’s 47-win season.

We’ll find out over the next six months or so if that bet was correct.

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