Katz: Knicks have been patient and are betting on themselves this season

It is the week of proclamations.

New York Knicks media day is Monday, and that means grandiose statements from your favorite players begin imminently.

Someone will be in the best shape of his life. Someone will have gained 10 pounds of muscle. Someone will have honed a jump shot or a handle or defensive smarts. They all spent the summer watching video, and they’re all better for it.

It’ll be the first time Donte DiVincenzo opens up about why he signed with the Knicks, Julius Randle discusses the rehab from his offseason ankle surgery and Evan Fournier spills the beans on how he plans to carry himself during an awkward first chapter of 2023-24.

Training camp starts on Tuesday. The team’s first exhibition is six days later. The regular season opens before the end of the month.

At some point, we’ll find out how much of that media day optimism, the same hope that springs from all 30 camps, is warranted.

The Knicks are coming off their best season in a decade, tallying 47 wins and downing the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the NBA playoffs before falling to the Miami Heat in six games. But their summer wasn’t as eventful as their spring.

They traded Obi Toppin to the Indiana Pacers, replaced him with DiVincenzo and enter camp with eight of the nine players from last season’s rotation returning.

They passed on trading for Damian Lillard, a superstar they deemed a subpar fit with the leader of their attack, Jalen Brunson, considering two small, offensive-minded guards could transform into minced meat come May or June. They didn’t pony up for Jrue Holiday, whom the Boston Celtics traded for Sunday. Both of those guys are in their 30s.

The Knicks are young. Their oldest regular is the 28-year-old Julius Randle.

It’s why they’ve been patient. It’s why this roster isn’t all that different from last season’s. It’s one reason why the Knicks are betting on themselves.

If they take a leap, it will be because of the incumbents, not fresh additions.

Maybe Immanuel Quickley will take another step forward. The general sentiment within the organization is that Quickley, who finished second in the NBA Sixth Man of the Year voting last season, will bounce back from a wishy-washy playoff performance. He’s only 24. There are important people with the Knicks who believe he’s due for a breakout from 3-point land and that his patience as a facilitator will continue to build.

Or maybe the 23-year-old Quentin Grimes becomes more consistent. The Knicks are loaded with guards, but league sources say Grimes is the starter heading into training camp, unlike last season, when Grimes ripped the job from Fournier by mid-November. The first unit with Grimes, Brunson, RJ Barrett, Randle and Mitchell Robinson outscored opponents by an impressive 7.0 points per 100 possessions last season. The team won’t fix something that isn’t broken — at least, not right away. Maybe Grimes hits 40 percent of his 3s and fortifies his defense even more during his third season.

Or maybe the 23-year-old Barrett looks more like he did during this past playoff run than he did during this past season.

Or maybe Brunson is the one who hits another level. Maybe the sequel to a season when he was a most improved candidate includes another leap. After all, Brunson didn’t show up last autumn the same player he was by the Heat series. He averaged a hyper-efficient 27.9 points over after Jan. 4 and sliced up Miami’s swarming defense with jukes in directions no one knew existed. There are people inside the Knicks who insist that version of Brunson — the one who scored 32, 38, and 41 points to close out the Heat series — is the one who shows up for 2023-24.

The Knicks aren’t just betting on their players, either. They’re betting on their plan, the one that’s kept them dormant as the NBA’s plates shift.

They want a star, not a two-time All-Star who is 33, like Holiday, but a real-life, ground-shakes-beneath-his-steps, best-player-on-a-title-team star. They also know that a trade for someone of that ilk is more likely next summer than it is during the season. They know that whatever it would have taken to beat the Celtics’ massive package for Holiday would have left their armoire too empty to deal for the world-beater they’ve been after ever since team president Leon Rose took over the front office in 2020.

The top of the Eastern Conference is a monster.

The Milwaukee Bucks’ perimeter defense won’t be the same without Holiday, but they employ the best rim-protecting frontcourt in the league with Brook Lopez clogging up the paint and two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo flying from oblivion to swat away shots. Their offense, with the addition of Lillard, will be a slaughterhouse. Lillard was a nightmare to cover running pick-and-rolls from 10 feet behind the arc with the Portland Trail Blazers’ personnel. Now imagine when defenses have to choose between trapping him or sticking to the man who will become his many-time screen partner, Antetokounmpo.

The Boston Celtics are shallow but their top six is as dominant as they come, now that they’ve acquired Holiday, who has to be only their third-best player for the season to end with a win in June.

The Knicks drummed the Cavaliers last spring, but like New York, Cleveland is young. Third-year forward Evan Mobley should enter camp with an edge after the bullying he and Cleveland center Jarrett Allen received in Round 1. The Cavs added in the right ways, too. They couldn’t find the proper fifth man during that series against the Knicks, who encouraged Cleveland to beat them with Isaac Okoro, Cedi Osman or Caris LeVert. But none could do it. Now, that final option during important moments, the one who will be open in the corner for 3, is either Max Strus or Georges Niang, two free-agent additions whom defenses can’t ignore.

But the Knicks still squashed Cleveland five months ago. And they have a chance to handle the rest of the conference.

The Philadelphia 76ers are an unknown. The defending East champs, the Miami Heat, lost multiple big-time contributors this summer and didn’t add a star, as the world assumed they would (though never doubt Miami’s ability to dig up a player you’ve never heard of and turn him into the Knicks’ worst enemy). The Atlanta Hawks went salary dumping. The Brooklyn Nets will drop. The Pacers are ready for a jump but not that jump.

So, the Knicks bet on themselves. They bet their young players would improve. They bet they would continue an era of competency, which has led to two playoff appearances in three years, and it would mean someone of consequence would want to join.

They bet that last season’s competitive squad would carry positive momentum into this one. And it all begins Monday.

(Photo of Julius Randle, Jalen Brunson and Mitchell Robinson: Rob Carr / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k3JocmhmaHxzfJFsZmpoX2V%2FcLfArbFmo56esKy%2FjKmYraGVo8FuvMuapWg%3D