Ranking The Top 75 Knicks in Franchise History - Part 3

Amar'e Stoudemire started his Knicks career with a bang, averaging 29.8 points and 9.7 rebounds per game in December of 2011. He set a franchise record by scoring 30+ points in nine straight games...

Hey, y'all… I hope you guys had a wonderful weekend. Today we'll pick up the third installment of the "The Top 75 Knicks in Franchise History" series. The first two posts ranked players 75 through 50 and 49 through 35.

But one quick note before we get into it… The first round of the 2022 NBA playoffs wrapped up over the weekend. And the leading scorer in the first round of the 2022 playoffs was: Jalen Brunson, who poured in a total of 167 points in the Mavs' 4-2 series victory over the Utah Jazz. Furthermore, here are the finals stats for Brunson and Donovan Mitchell in that series:

Jalen Brunson:
27.8 points per game,
4.8 rebounds,
4.2 assists (vs. just 0.8 turnovers),
53.2% effective FG%

Donovan Mitchell:
25.5 points per game,
4.3 rebounds,
5.7 assists (vs. 2.7 turnovers),
43.6% effective FG%

It could be argued that no player has boosted his stock more over the past few weeks than Brunson, who will become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st. It will be interesting to see if he can keep performing at this level in Dallas' second-round series vs. the Suns, which begins on Monday night. While Utah's perimeter defense is among the worst in the entire league, Phoenix is on the opposite end of the spectrum. 

Conversely, Mitchell's struggles (as inefficient as he was on the offensive end, somehow he looked worse defensively) and Utah's first-round loss will almost certainly lead to a massive shakeup in Jazz-land this summer. It's an absolute nightmare scenario for Utah. At this point, after two straight postseason collapses, the Jazz has no choice but to blow up the team; however, the value of their two most valuable assets (Mitchell and Rudy Gobert) have taken an enormous hit right before they are forced to trade one away. It sounds like their preference is to move Gobert and re-build around Mitchell, but the calculus may change if Donovan demands a trade.  

This is all relevant to New York's offseason plans, as both Brunson and Mitchell are considered Knicks targets. We'll tackle all this in depth over the next couple of months.

Okay, now back to the rankings…

34. Ray Williams

The Knicks selected Williams with the 10th overall selection in 1977. He struggled as a rookie but then averaged at least 17 points and five dimes per game for each of his next three seasons. His best season with the Knicks was his third, when he averaged 20.9 points, 6.2 assists and 5.0 rebounds per game in 1979-80.