Raise the ceiling.
That was the New York Knicks’ primary goal when they parted ways with two core pieces of a second-seeded squad to acquire four-time All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns. As we sit here 32 games into the 2024-25 season, it is clear that New York has accomplished that goal.
At 22-10, the Knicks are tied for the fourth-best record in the NBA, while their +7.4 point differential ranks fifth-best. They have the third-best odds to win the 2025 NBA title at all major sportsbooks.
Will this culminate in an Eastern Conference Finals run, or perhaps something even greater? That remains to be seen. New York needs to maintain this success the rest of the way and carry it throughout the playoffs. Nonetheless, it is already obvious that the team’s ceiling is higher than it’s been since Patrick Ewing was in town.
It’s not at all surprising that the Knicks are displaying such a high ceiling. That was the expectation after the moves they made in the offseason.
Despite already having the on-paper talent to perform at their current level, New York’s strong start to the 2024-25 season has actually been powered by significant individual improvements by multiple players. Without these improvements, the Knicks would have gotten off to a rockier start and had a lower ceiling in the long run.
Instead, the Knicks now look even more dangerous than expected, thanks to the plethora of skill progressions they have experienced across the roster.
Here are the top three individual skill improvements made by New York Knicks players throughout the first 32 games of the 2024-25 season.
Josh Hart’s inside scoring
Josh Hart has provided a surprising scoring punch for the Knicks, averaging 14.2 points per game. It is the second-highest mark of his career and a large increase over his 9.4 points per game in 2023-24.
Hart is only taking 0.9 more field goal attempts per game than last season, yet he is scoring 4.8 more points. This is due to an astronomical rise in his scoring efficiency. Hart is up to a true shooting percentage of 68.4%, best in the NBA among qualified non-bigs. Last season, he was at 52.2%, ninth-worst in the NBA among all qualified players.
This jump is powered by Hart’s massive improvement as an inside scorer. Hart is shooting a career-high 78.8% from within three feet of the basket, third-best in the NBA among players 6-foot-8 or shorter with at least 50 attempts in that range (trailing Jayson Tatum and Tobias Harris). It is a 9.0% improvement over his career average of 69.8%, and a 12.7% improvement over his 2023-24 average of 66.1%.
Hart is also taking more shots at the rim than usual; 39.4% of his field goal attempts have come from within three feet, 6.4% higher than his career average. It is the highest rate among the Knicks’ five starters.
The addition of Karl-Anthony Towns’s floor spacing was expected to open things up around the rim for New York’s offense. So far, Hart has been the biggest beneficiary.
Jalen Brunson’s ability to get to the line
It was a given that Jalen Brunson would score fewer points per game than he did last year, as his 2023-24 spike was powered by an enormous volume of shot attempts due to numerous injuries. With more weapons around him, there would be fewer shots for Brunson.
The hope, though, was that Brunson could become even more efficient than he already was. So far, he is doing just that.
Brunson is taking 3.6 fewer field goal attempts per game than last season, dropping from 21.4 to 17.8. However, his drop in points per game is not as large as you’d expect given the decline in shot attempts, decreasing from 28.7 to 25.5.
This is because Brunson’s efficiency has improved, just as the Knicks hoped when they surrounded him with Towns and Mikal Bridges. Brunson’s true shooting percentage is 61.3%, his best as a Knick. It is over 2% better than his 59.2% mark in 2023-24.
That is a fantastic mark for a high-usage player. Brunson’s 61.3% true shooting percentage ranks ninth-best among the 35 players with a usage rate above 27% (Brunson is 22nd in the NBA with a 29.2% usage rate). The only players with a higher TS% and a higher USG% are Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Kevin Durant.
The primary driver of Brunson’s improved TS% is his propensity for generating free throw attempts. Despite averaging 3.6 fewer field goal attempts per game than last season, Brunson is shooting 0.3 more free throws per game. In turn, his free throw attempt rate is a career-best 0.383, well above his 2023-24 mark of .302. Since Brunson is a great free throw shooter (82.1% this season), a higher rate of free throw attempts leads to better overall scoring efficiency.
Karl-Anthony Towns’s rebounding
Knicks fans expected Karl-Anthony Towns to perform better offensively with a move back to the center position. A jump in rebounding was also expected. But nobody saw this coming.
Over his final two seasons in Minnesota, while playing power forward next to Rudy Gobert, Towns averaged 8.3 rebounds per game. However, while playing center over his first seven seasons, he averaged 11.3 rebounds per game, including three seasons above 12.0 with a career-best of 12.4 in 2018-19.
Given his rebounding production at center, it was reasonable to expect a large jump in rebounding from Towns, especially considering the lack of a second big man in New York’s starting lineup to compete with Towns for rebounds (although Josh Hart is a tremendous rebounder). Still, Towns’s jump in this department is beyond what any realistic Knicks fan was projecting.
Towns leads the NBA with a career-high 13.5 rebounds per game. He also sits atop the league with a 22.8% rebounding percentage.
It’s on the defensive side where Towns is dominating the glass. He is only 17th in the NBA with 2.8 offensive rebounds per game, which is slightly less than the 3.0 he grabbed over his first seven NBA seasons. Defensively, though, he is in a class of his own. Towns leads the NBA with 10.7 defensive rebounds per game, 0.8 ahead of second-ranked Domantas Sabonis and 1.1 ahead of third-ranked Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Towns’s 34.6% defensive rebounding percentage is also first. It puts him 3.3% ahead of second-ranked Sabonis (31.3%), which is a larger gap than the one between Sabonis and seventh-ranked Jarrett Allen (28.4%).
One of the concerns of adding Towns was whether he would hurt the Knicks’ defense under the defensive-oriented Tom Thibodeau, especially in comparison to his predecessor at center, Isaiah Hartenstein. Towns does have some holes in his defensive game (especially as a rim-protecting 5), so it’s vital that he makes up for those holes by providing a massive impact on the defensive glass.
Towns’s jump to becoming a league-best defensive rebounder has transformed him into a respectable defensive center despite other shortcomings. He ranks in the 64th percentile in defensive EPM, which the Knicks will gladly sign up for as he simultaneously ranks in the 96th percentile in offensive EPM.
Many people figured the Knicks would be an improved team in 2024-25, but it’s not just the outside additions that have made them better – it’s also the improvements from within. The unexpected jumps in Hart’s inside scoring, Brunson’s ability to get to the line, and Towns’s defensive rebounding have raised New York’s ceiling to new levels.
