Even a championship roster has players chasing something, and in New York three names stand out heading into camp.
The parade ends, the summer passes, and then around October, everyone starts asking questions again.
The New York Knicks went 53-29, finished third in the East and beat San Antonio in five games for the franchise's first title since 1973.
A few players still head into training camp with a point to make, though, and how their seasons go will decide whether the repeat talk holds up.
The three names below all finished the title run with a question attached, and that tension between a ring and an open question is what makes this team interesting all over again.
Karl-Anthony Towns
Winning did not silence every question.
Towns put up 20.1 points per game in the regular season, then watched that number fall to 15.9 in the playoffs, and during the Finals that he had not scored a fourth-quarter point through the first three games of the series.
Mike Brown did also resort to benching him in crunch time at points during the regular season.
The championship answers a lot, and Towns was plenty confident after beating Victor Wembanyama's Spurs, but a dominant closing season would end the conversation entirely.
He sounds motivated for it.
"That's just the competitor in me that's not allowing myself to get satisfied and to be stagnant. I'm looking for that next one," Towns told GQ.
Miles McBride
McBride's season never got going.
Sports hernia surgery cost him 28 games, and he hurt his groin again diving for a loose ball soon after returning.
He still hit 41.3 percent of his threes across 41 appearances, which is why the playoff version was so jarring, at 5.6 points per game on 33.3 percent shooting in a reduced role.
A healthy McBride gives Mike Brown a two-way guard every contender wants, and a full season of the shooter he was in the regular season would make the deepest part of this roster even deeper.
Tyler Kolek
Kolek is the one fighting for his basketball life in this rotation.
The third-year guard logged just 11.7 minutes across 62 games and averaged 4.4 points, stuck behind Brunson and Jose Alvarado in the point guard pecking order.
Barring injury, Kolek will sit outside the rotation again this season, and roster spots behind him keep getting examined as the front office sorts out its depth options.
Training Camp is his real season.
A strong September changes how the coaching staff sees him, and a quiet one could make him a name at the trade deadline.
The stage for all three arrives quickly, with camps opening September 29 and ring night set for October 20 against Philadelphia at Madison Square Garden.
Jalen Brunson has already said he likes the team's chances of running it back, and the stars will shoulder most of that load.
Repeats usually swing on the players underneath them, though, and that is why these three seasons are worth watching from the first day of camp.
