Why Knicks Are Already Being Underrated in Eastern Conference

Winning a championship is supposed to buy a team at least one summer of respect.

The Knicks are finding out it does not, because only weeks after they finished off the Spurs, the conversation about the Eastern Conference has already moved on to Philadelphia.

New York returns the core of a champion, kept its stars together, and spent July watching analysts talk themselves into a team it just swept out of the playoffs.

That is what being underrated looks like, and it is happening to the defending champs in real time.

On ESPN's NBA Today, Kendrick Perkins ranked the 76ers first in the East and dropped the champions to second, reasoning that Philadelphia added Jaylen Brown and LeBron James without giving up Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey or VJ Edgecombe.

His doubt about New York came down to drive.

"I don't know if the hunger is gonna still be there," Perkins said, per ClutchPoints.

It is a fair question to ask about any champion and a strange one to ask about this particular team, which spent five decades hearing about everything it had not won.

A fuller look at Karl-Anthony Towns' standing in New York suggests a group that is settled, not satisfied.

The part that makes the ranking strange is fresh on the record.

New York went 53-29 and won the Finals in five games over San Antonio, and on the way there it swept Philadelphia out of the second round and swept Cleveland in the conference finals.

Jalen Brunson averaged 26.0 points and 6.8 assists, won Finals MVP, delivered the franchise's first title in 53 years, and is expected to sign a long-term extension.

The 76ers team that Perkins likes better won zero playoff games against New York last season.

LeBron and Brown change that roster, but they arrive with new roles to sort out while the champs return a group that already knows exactly who it is.

Philadelphia got better, and pretending otherwise would be silly.

The path back to the Finals is tougher with LeBron in the conference, and the East will be deeper than it was a year ago.

Still, there is a difference between a harder road and a changed pecking order.

The champions should be first until someone beats them, and a team built around Brunson's steadiness has earned the benefit of the doubt on hunger.

New York spent 53 years chasing this.

The idea that one parade made the group comfortable is a take that will age badly by spring, because everything about how this team carried itself last season points the other way.

The biggest doubt in the league is now aimed directly at a group that spent years feeding on exactly that, and teams have won for less.

A defending champion with its core intact and something left to prove is the most dangerous version of a contender there is, and my guess is the rest of the East gets reminded of that fairly quickly once the games start to count again.