Good morning! As the basketball world awaits the decision of a 41-year-old LeBron James, we kick off our big summer project here at the KFS Newsletter with the beginning of our top 100 Knicks of all time list. As a reminder, the newsletter will be coming your way every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until late September. Let’s start the list!

Alec Burks, or “Alex Burk” as Clyde lovingly called him, was no one’s idea of a future top-100 Knick when he signed here in November 2020.

And honestly? He probably wasn’t at the forefront of anyone’s mind when I announced this project earlier in the week.

That makes him a curious choice to be our first entrant on the list, which is fitting, because Burks as a player was always a bit of an odd duck.

Odd or not though, when I think back to this era of Knicks basketball, Burks will always have a special (if small) place in my heart.

Drafted 12th overall out of Colorado in 2011, Burks spent seven and a half injury-riddled years with the Jazz before a flurry of moves left him without clear NBA future. In the two years before signing in New York, he’d been traded from Utah to Cleveland, then traded from Cleveland to Sacramento, then signed by Golden State for the minimum, and finally traded from Golden State to Philly. He ended his brief time with the Sixers by shooting 33 percent in four playoff games, including 3-of-16 from long range. That Leon Rose gave him a one-year, $6 million deal tells you everything you need to know about how desperate the Knicks were for semi-competent two-way players.

By the end of training camp that year, Tom Thibodeau quickly established a starting five of Elfrid Payton, Reggie Bullock, RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, and Mitchell Robinson. Beyond that though, there were only questions. How much could either Obi Toppin or Immanuel Quickly provide as rookies? Did Austin Rivers or Nerlens Noel have any bloom left in their roses? Could former lottery picks Frank Ntilikina or Kevin Knox be redeemed?

This was the muddled morass Burks found himself in, but it didn’t take him long to emerge from the pack. Not only did Burks prove himself to be a steady hand on both sides of the ball, but he quickly became New York’s most versatile player. An argument could be made that the Knicks were a better team with Burks in place of Payton, Bullock or Barrett in the starting five, all of whom had more defined strengths but also undeniable weaknesses. Even if it was just in faint pencil, Burks checked all the boxes Thibs needed (and those chickens would indeed come home to roost a year later). As a result, Burks finished the season averaging more minutes than Payton and eventual starter Noel.

His efforts off the bench were soon overshadowed by midseason acquisition Derrick Rose, who turned the Knicks from a solid team into a briefly unstoppable one. It all led up to arguably the most anticipated home game in 20 years. With the country still emerging from the COVID pandemic, Game 1 against the Hawks would feature a packed MSG for the first time in over a year. That moment turned out to be too big for almost all of New York’s key players, and they lost a heartbreaker.

It wasn’t too big for Burks though. He shot 9-for-13 and led the Knicks with 27 points on a day the rest of his teammates shot 33-for-81 from the field. Along with Rose, Burks almost snatched victory from the jaws of defeat for New York.

Fast forward four years.

If Game 1 against the Hawks was the biggest Knick home game in decades, Game 7 against the Pacers in 2024 was right there next to it. The Knicks were banged up beyond recognition, but they had overcome all the odds for four straight months. Could they do it one more time against their most hated rivals?

Not only were they unable to, but the game was never really close. OG Anunoby lasted just a few possessions on a bum hammy, Josh Hart wasn’t himself playing through an injury that should have kept him out for weeks, and Jalen Brunson broke his hand midway through the third quarter. Once again though, the unheralded Burks showed up to try and make it a fight, netting an almost identical shooting line as he did four years earlier: 26 points on 13 shots.

It may not have cemented Burks as a big game player, but he did end the series averaging 18 points in just 24 minutes over the final five games. Believe it or not, he’s just inside the top 70 all-time NBA playoff scorers on a per minute basis, right behind Dr. J and his old teammate, Derrick Rose.

That turned out to be Burks’ last game as a Knick, as he’d sign in Miami the following offseason. It meant he’d never get to see the fruits of what he helped establish over two different stints in New York, but that isn’t even the most unfortunate part of his story as a Knick. More than his role on the #WeHere team and more than his efforts in those two big playoff games, he’ll be remembered by many as the man Thibs stubbornly stuck with ahead of Immanuel Quickly throughout the entirety of the lost 2021-22 season.

Here’s the thing though: that was unquestionably the best individual season of Burks’ career. It should add to his resume as a Knick, not detract from it.

It’s one of the reasons he gets the last spot on this list over guys like Taj Gibson, Reggie Bullock and Quentin Grimes, all of whom I considered in his place as a representative of the Leon Rose Knicks who will likely be forgotten a few decades from now.

Speaking of forgotten Knicks, let’s check in on the Knicks ranked 86th to 99th, and why each player slots in where they do…