Where Knicks Stack Up Against New-Look 76ers, Heat Next Season

The Knicks spent June celebrating the franchise's first title in 53 years, a five-game Finals win over San Antonio with Jalen Brunson taking home Finals MVP.

Their two biggest East challengers spent July stacking up, and neither one hid what it was doing.

Philadelphia sent Paul George to Boston in the deal that brought in Jaylen Brown, then signed LeBron James to a two-year, $8 million deal with a player option.

Miami went further still and turned Tyler Herro and a huge package of picks and young players into Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis.

On paper the East got scarier, and the fun part is figuring out whether either makeover actually closes the gap on New York.

Philadelphia's bet is star power over continuity, with Brown and James joining Joel Embiid, who played just 38 games last season while averaging 26.9 points.

If Embiid is healthy, that trio is as frightening as anything the conference can offer.

The risk is obvious though, because the roster is old at the top, thin underneath after sending out four draft picks for Brown, and depends on the one thing nobody can promise, which is health.

New York just proved a deep, connected roster beats collections of names over seven months, and Karl-Anthony Towns enters the year with championship confidence of his own.

Betting against that because a rival collected bigger names is the same mistake teams make every summer.

Miami's version is cleaner, since Antetokounmpo is still a top-five player and Bam Adebayo, who averaged 20.1 points and 10 rebounds last season, gives him an ideal frontcourt partner.

The Heat gave up a lot of depth to get there, moving Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis and a stack of picks, and their guard rotation now has some very real questions.

A healthy Giannis-Bam pairing wins a playoff series on effort alone, but the roster around them is thinner than what Milwaukee surrounded Giannis with a year ago.

Brunson averaged 26 points a game during the title run season and returns almost the whole core, with the main loss being Mitchell Robinson signing in Boston.

The front office is still working on the center depth chart and has open two-way spots plus room for one more minimum signing, so the roster is not even finished.

"I have the utmost confidence in us night in and night out just because of the way we've been able to work through these couple of years. If we have that same, if not better, work ethic and mindset, obviously, I like our chances," Brunson said this month.

My ranking is the Knicks first, Philadelphia second, and Miami third, because continuity plus a champion's core beats star math in a long season.

Both challengers need their gambles to hit perfectly, and New York just needs to stay itself.

The new superteams have higher ceilings on paper, but the Knicks have the ring and the roster that won it, and that still counts for more.