After finishing their game against the Timberwolves, the New York Knicks had opened the season with six straight wins, becoming one of the few teams in the league still undefeated.
And three of those six games had come against strong, quality opponents.
The Celtics, Mavericks, and Timberwolves should all have been playoff-caliber teams, barring any surprises.
Interestingly, the Knicks had actually won by larger margins against those three stronger teams.
They had won all three games by more than twenty points.
Their opponents' poor form and lack of chemistry might have played a part.
Still, those results said something about the quality and strength of the Knicks' new-season roster.
At the same time, the potency of the wing pairing of Chen Xi and George had largely been confirmed.
So far this season, among all the perimeter pairings that had faced the Knicks, only the Mavericks' Irving and Doncic had put up individual numbers that looked reasonably impressive.
Every other player, without exception, had been tormented by the Knicks' army of wing defenders.
Only now did people realize just how ridiculously stacked New York's wing rotation was.
They had a DPOY-caliber defender in Chen Xi and an All-Defensive First Team-caliber defender in Paul George.
Alongside them were two athletic freaks in Tari Eason and Obi Toppin. Even Chris Murray, who had been glued to the end of the bench and rarely saw playing time, looked like a promising defensive wing.
Inside, they also had Horford, whose feet might have been slow but whose help-defense instincts were excellent, along with centers like Harten and Adams, who provided solid rim protection.
Excluding the guards, their worst defender was actually Strus, a product of the Heat with outstanding defensive discipline and fundamentals, whose physical talent kept him from reaching another level.
That was just