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The New York Knicks are heading to their title defense, banking on continuity rather than stacking their roster to overwhelm their opponents. While fellow Eastern Conference teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and the Miami Heat added former MVPs to their fold, the Knicks kept most of their title-winning core together. They added former All-Star Andre Drummond to replace Mitchell Robinson as the first big man off the bench.
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Gilbert Arenas, though, believes the Knicks sitting on their hands could handicap their chances of going back-to-back, saying the prudent move would have been to keep pace with everybody else during the offseason arms race.
Could the Knicks go back-to-back?
The NBA is thriving in an era of parity amongst teams. The last team to win consecutive NBA titles was the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018. Since then, the league has crowned a different champion every season, and according to Arenas, that won’t change this season, given how the Knicks measured moves in the offseason.
“So nobody went back-to-back? What? Last eight seasons?” Arenas
“Make it nine. Nine. Make it nine.”
The former NBA All-Star explained that when teams taste bitter defeat in the later parts of the playoffs, they immediately look to bounce back. And one surefire way to do that is to add more firepower, which is precisely what the Sixers, Heat, and San Antonio Spurs have done.
“‘Cause what I do know is when you beat someone, they load up. So the whole theory of, ‘We won it, let’s run it back the same,’ pretending that we have the number one guard, the number one shooting guard, the number one small forward, so we don’t have to upgrade while everybody else is upgrading, is the reason that they don’t make it back,” Gil added.
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Tinker around the edges
Having players that trust one another and know how to play off each other is something that most teams do not have. And the Knicks’ core has that in spades, having gone through the mud the past few years before ascending the NBA mountain last season. Arenas, though, asserted that continuing to rely on a bench led by Jordan Clarkson, Jose Alvarado, and Landry Shamet might no longer be enough.
“You do need new pieces, right? A better bench, a better sixth man, a better seventh man. Like, you do need to load up on your team to get better pieces. Not just the starting five, but the people that’s going to come off that bench. You’re going to need more help ’cause everybody else is going to get it,” Arenas stated.
“San Antonio is going to get better. The teams that you beat are going to get better. OKC in its own self. Not saying San Antonio is the team to beat, but when you look how OKC drafted, like, who we go get? We went and got a Aday Mara just to combat who? The big fella a couple hours away, ’cause they figure, ‘Yo, we win this. I like our odds when we go maybe up against the eventual champions,” he continued, referring to OKC’s drafting of the 7’3″ Aday Mara from Michigan, who could match up against Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama.
The Knicks have a lot going for them. Brunson remains one of the most lethal scoring guards, especially in the clutch. Karl-Anthony Towns will continue to provide solid inside-out contributions, while OG Anunoby is one of the most underrated forwards in the entire league. However, the question is: will these be enough to stay on top?
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This story was originally published September 17, 2026 at 11:06 PM.