{"id":194949,"date":"2025-10-07T09:58:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T09:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/194949\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T09:58:06","slug":"knicks-awards-chances-by-jonathan-macri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/194949\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks Awards Chances – by Jonathan Macri"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning! It\u2019s been a few slow news days in Knicks land (other than the latest round of Pacome Dadiet trade reports<\/a>), so let\u2019s take today to look into one of my favorite preseason topics: individual awards.<\/p>\n

This upcoming season will be the 80th year of Knicks basketball. Shout out to anyone who has been around for each of the previous 79 (hi Ray).<\/p>\n

Even if you are one of the rare folks who have been rooting for the team since the days of Frank Mangiapane<\/a> and Frido Frey<\/a>, one thing you haven\u2019t seen is a whole lot of individual Knick award winners. Granted, many of the current NBA awards haven\u2019t been around since the league\u2019s inception, but the number of recipients is still a little on the low side for a soon-to-be-octogenarian. <\/p>\n

Here are the 13 honorees for the seven individual awards:<\/p>\n

MVP: Willis Reed, 1970<\/p>\n

Defensive Player of the Year: Tyson Chandler, 2012<\/p>\n

Rookie of the Year: Willis Reed, 1965; Patrick Ewing, 1986; Mark Jackson, 1988<\/p>\n

6th Man of the Year: Anthony Mason, 1995; John Starks, 1997; J.R. Smith, 2013<\/p>\n

Most Improved Player: Julius Randle, 2021<\/p>\n

Clutch Player of the Year: Jalen Brunson, 2025<\/p>\n

Coach of the Year: Red Holzman, 1970; Pat Riley, 1993; Tom Thibodeau, 2021<\/p>\n

On the bright side, the Knicks do have a defending champion for one of these belts, and Jalen Brunson is the co-favorite to take home the Jerry West Clutch Player of the Year award once more. Courtesy of our friends at Fanatics Sportsbook, he currently has 10-to-1 betting odds along with Anthony Edwards and just above a host of recognizable names:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While Jalen\u2019s win was an outstanding achievement and it would be very cool for him to take home the trophy again, I don\u2019t quite look at this one on the same level as some of the others, mostly because it\u2019s a very new award, but also because it\u2019s largely determined by how many close games a team happens to be in.<\/p>\n

Also, if we\u2019re keeping it a buck, will we even remember 2025 as the most \u201cclutch\u201d season from Jalen Brunson? Was it all that different from either of the previous two years? It might just be my perception, but I felt like the 2023-24 season contained at least as many if not more huge buckets from the Captain.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the case for some of these other awards though. I\u2019ll always remember Julius rising from the ashes of the decrepit \u201819-20 Knicks to win Most Improved, just like I\u2019ll always remember JR\u2019s 6th Man campaign in \u201812-13, just like I know fans older than myself still recall Mark Jackson\u2019s incredibly promising rookie year. Whether you\u2019re 19 or 99, you surely know that 1970 is the only time a Knick has ever captured the league\u2019s most coveted individual prize, in part because it was the same year they won their first ever title.<\/p>\n

Can history repeat itself now? Let\u2019s start looking at the Knicks who will vie for individual awards by examining the race for Most Valuable Player\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning! It\u2019s been a few slow news days in Knicks land (other than the latest round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-194949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}