“And just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
That’s the mindset of many New York Knicks fans after their latest victory, a 119-92 beatdown of the Toronto Raptors across the border.
Given the context—Toronto had won four straight games (the latest being a road win over the NBA-best Thunder), the Knicks were on the second night of a back-to-back, both Miles McBride and Mitchell Robinson were sidelined, the Raptors were at full strength, and the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference was on the line—this was arguably the Knicks’ most important victory of the season.
It moved them back into a tie for second place in the East standings, showed they can pummel a strong team on the road, and stretched their win streak to four games.
Coming off a dismal 7-11 stretch following their NBA Cup win, New York’s latest four-game win streak has reignited the fanbase’s confidence in the team’s potential to compete for the trophy that really matters.
A rock-bottom loss to the Dallas Mavericks seems to have lit a fire underneath the Knicks. Over the last four games since the nationally televised debacle, they have returned to playing championship-level basketball.
The catch is that the confidence-infusing victory in Ontario comes at a point when the franchise is pursuing what would be the most significant trade in its 80-year history.
Hours before the Knicks took the court at Scotiabank Arena, ESPN’s Shams Charania dropped the league-shaking news that Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo “is ready for a new home at the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline or in the offseason.”
This immediately fueled speculation that New York could make a serious push for the two-time MVP, and SNY’s Ian Begley turned that speculation into reality, reporting that the “Knicks will be among teams making aggressive offers to Milwaukee for Giannis Antetokounmpo.
With the Knicks surging after their latest triumph, it is easy to do a 180 and pretend the team no longer needs Antetokounmpo. However, that would be an overreaction from the franchise.
As promising as the Knicks have looked over the past week, they cannot allow a handful of games to change the reality that has been clear for most of the season: If there is any way for them to land the Greek Freak, they need to do it.
Four games (two of those being against bottom-feeders) are not enough to alter the franchise’s course.
The Knicks haven’t done enough to pass on the chance to land Giannis
As we ponder whether the Knicks should pursue Antetokounmpo (and how aggressively), the best way to evaluate New York’s position is to analyze their entire body of work. That means we focus not on the last four games, not on the last month, and not on the team’s red-hot run through the NBA Cup, but all 47 games as one.
The Knicks are 29-18. Their .617 win percentage has them tied for the sixth-best record in the NBA, although they are 8.5 games back of the league’s best team, the Thunder (38-10) and 6.0 games back of the East-leading Pistons (34-11).
More valuable than the Knicks’ record is their net rating. According to Basketball Reference, the Knicks have a net rating of +5.0, which also ranks sixth-best in the NBA, verifying their win-loss record as a legitimate indicator of how well they have played.
However, the Knicks are 2.2 points behind the second-ranked Pistons (+7.2), which is a decent gap. They are also 1.5 points behind the third-ranked Celtics (+6.5), another Eastern Conference rival, with whom they are currently tied in the standings.
Based on net rating, the Knicks are the third-best team in the conference, and comfortably so. That is not where they expected to be entering the season.
Perhaps most notably, the Knicks are a whopping 7.7 points behind the top-ranked Thunder, an enormous margin that speaks to how far ahead Oklahoma City is of the rest of the NBA.
Top NBA net ratings as of Jan. 29, 2026 (per Basketball Reference):
- Oklahoma City (+12.7)
- Detroit (+7.2)
- Boston (+6.5)
- Houston (+5.9)
- San Antonio (+5.1)
- New York (+5.0)
- Minnesota (+4.7)
- Denver (+4.4)
- Cleveland (+3.0)
- Golden State (+2.9)
It seems clear that the Knicks are a good team. That much is certain.
But are they so good that they should write off the opportunity to add a player who is averaging 28 points, 10 rebounds, and 5.6 assists (in 29.2 minutes) on 65% shooting, while coming off seven consecutive top-four finishes in MVP voting? A player with a Finals MVP pedigree and a career-best +16.6 on-off net rating this season, marking his ninth straight season making his team at least six points better when he is on the court?
No, they are not that good.
It is true that the Knicks could win a title without Giannis. As constructed, they are certainly good enough to at least make a run to the NBA Finals, especially given the wide-open landscape in the East.
At that point, anything could happen, even if they would be clear-cut underdogs against the Thunder (should OKC get that far). After all, the Pacers took the Thunder to seven games in last year’s Finals, and Indiana was not nearly as prolific in the regular season as this year’s Knicks, posting a +2.2 net rating.
Failing to land Giannis would not remove the Knicks from title contention. However, if the Knicks want to maximize their chances of winning the championship in 2026 (while Jalen Brunson is still in his prime), there is no doubt that adding Antetokounmpo is an opportunity they cannot pass up on.
The fact of the matter is that New York has been nowhere close to dominant enough to think that adding Giannis would not make them a substantially better team.
If the Knicks were firing on all cylinders, they could write off the idea and confidently stick with the chemistry established by their current group. But considering that the Knicks have only been a “pretty good” team at best (their net rating isn’t even close to the Tatum-less Celtics, for crying out loud), the risk of breaking up their current core is worth the potential reward of Giannis lifting the Knicks from “pretty good” to “elite”.
What allows the Knicks to feel especially confident that their current core is capped out is the fact that we already watched them play essentially the same way for an entire season in 2024-25. Last season, the Knicks had a +4.2 net rating, the same ballpark as the current team, despite a switch at head coach. New York made a run to the East Finals but ran into a wall against a team they were favored to beat.
Has there been enough improvement in 2025-26 to suggest that the Knicks’ ceiling is higher than it was a year ago?
Not quite. And that’s why Giannis Antetokounmpo should remain squarely in the Knicks’ sights, even after last night’s triumphant win.
The value of New York’s recent win streak is that Knicks fans should no longer feel like it’s Giannis-or-bust. Should the Knicks move past the trade deadline with the same core, fans can remain similarly confident in the roster’s potential as they were last year. Whether that is a good or bad thing is subjective, but it sure beats where the team was as recently as a week ago, when it seemed like they had zero chance of winning a championship without Giannis.
Four games, though, are not enough to alter the reality that New York would have a significantly better title shot if it were to land Giannis, no matter what it takes to land him.
The unfortunate reality is that the Knicks, as currently constructed, have likely capped themselves out as a “pretty good” team rather than an “elite” one. And a pretty good team can still win an NBA title, as the Pacers proved last year. But there is no doubt that an elite one has a much better shot.
If the Knicks’ goal is to head into the playoffs as an elite juggernaut instead of a talented but flawed team that needs everything to go their way, they will remain aggressive for Giannis; fun win in Toronto be damned.
