We are at about the quarter-way point of the NBA season and the Knicks find themselves with the second worst record in the league and at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
At 4-17, the Knicks have fallen to new lows and are on pace to break the record they tied last season for the worst season in team history.
Head coach David Fizdale has been in an extremely hot seat ever since Knicks president Steve Mills and GM Scott Perry held a rare press conference after the team started the season 2-8.
Since then, the Knicks have gone 2-9.
After failing to draw in big name free agents--specifically Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, who many within the organization thought were surefire locks to come to their New York team, and not the one in the other borough--the Knicks proceeded to Plan B.
The Knicks signed the likes of Elfrid Payton, Taj Gibson, Bobby Portis, Reggie Bullock and Wayne Ellington to two-year deals with team options in all of their contracts for the second year, keeping the majority of their cap space open after this season.
However, their biggest splash came in signing Julius Randle to a three-year, $63 million deal (team option in third year) and somehow sniping Marcus Morris away from the Spurs on a one-year, $15 million deal.
Despite Plan B certainly not being the worst crop of players one could round up--plus the young talent the team already had on the roster like the newly drafted RJ Barrett, Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr. and Mitchell Robinson--this team has been shockingly bad a quarter of the way through the season.
Morris is surprisingly the team's leading scorer at 18.7 points per game and is shooting the lights at from three at a 52.4 percent clip, but the forward isn't getting much help elsewhere.
Randle has experienced some real struggles adjusting to his role as the No. 1 option of a team, despite coming off a big season with the Pelicans where he put up over 21 points per game on 52.4 percent shooting.
The sixth-year forward has regressed to about 17 points per game on less than 45 percent shooting--plus a rough 25 percent from three. Watching him so often get called for offensive fouls when he leads with his shoulder as he tries to bully his way into the paint has become too common of an occurrence.
With Payton having been sidelined for most of the season with a hamstring injury, you would have hoped to see a bit more progress from Smith Jr. or Ntilikina, but neither have taken a big jump yet.
Smith Jr. continues to shoot poorly from the field and isn't even putting up six points per game.
Ntilikina has been great on the defensive side of the ball for the Knicks, but we already knew that was a part of his game. The point guard is shooting 38.2 percent from the field and often doesn't even look to shoot--at only 3.5 assists per game, what's he even doing when the team has the ball on offense?
But the real spot to put the magnifying glass on this team is on RJ Barrett, the clear potential future star on this team--Knox has shown nothing to compete against that idea.
Barrett has certainly shown flashes--a 26 point game here, a six steal game there--but has also put up some shocking duds, like Monday night's game against the Bucks when he went 0-9 from the field and finished with two points off free throws.
Now the Knicks got blown out in that game by 44, but you need Barrett to be able to remain a bright spot on this team even as they fail and not see his performance spiral down with them.
With tanking for the No. 1 pick now out the window with the new draft lottery system, which the Knicks learned about the hard way (CC: Zion Williamson), it will be very interesting to see where the team goes from here and how they figure out how to become the best team in New York.
